Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (34 page)

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In the sentence, ‘Yesterday afternoon Rex went to the supermarket’, the subject is
Rex
not
yesterday afternoon
, which appears first in the line up.

In this case it’s important to show the connection between Rex and the verb – Rex is the person who
went.

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Students repeat the subject word instead of using a subject pronoun. So for a student, Rex’s story may continue: ‘After Rex finished in the supermarket Rex walked in the park. Rex got a sandwich in the café and Rex ate it on the grass.’

It’s therefore important for students to practise replacing the name of the subject word with a pronoun once they’re clear about who or what that is. As students progress, you also need to point out that later in the sentence it’s possible to leave the subject word or pronoun out, as long as it’s there in the first part and the meaning is obvious. So they can say,

‘Rex got a sandwich in the café and ate it on the grass’ instead of ‘Rex got a sandwich in the café, and Rex ate it on the grass’.

Activating verbs

A
verb
is a word that describes an action. It can be manipulated into different tenses to show when something happened. When you talk about a verb in its original,
infinitive
form, you put ‘to’ in front of it.

Finding verb forms

A main verb can be manipulated into different forms to show which tense it’s in or what purpose it serves in a particular sentence. (I talk about auxiliary verbs in the next section.)

Verb forms are:

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Infinitive:
The infinitive form of the verb is the original form before it changes to make a tense. It’s the form with ‘to’ in front of it, for example

‘to play’. You usually need to know this form to look up the meaning in the dictionary, although you cut the ‘to’ off.

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Gerund or present participle:
This is the verb with ‘ing’ on the end. So the gerund of ‘to play’ is ‘playing’.

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Past simple:
The past simple is a particular tense that describes completed actions in the past. Some verbs have regular endings in the past simple. You add ‘ed’ to the end (or just ‘d’ to a verb ending with ‘e’

already). For example, the past simple of ‘play’ is ‘played’.

Many verbs are irregular though, so they change a lot in this tense. For example: say /said.

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Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It

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Past participle:
When you use a passive sentence (‘the book was written’ instead of ‘someone wrote the book’) you use another form of the verb called the past participle. You also need this form when you make perfect tenses. For example: I have
seen
it (present perfect), Bob will have
done
it (future perfect), Kenny had
drunk
the beer (past perfect) .

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Third person singular of the present simple:
When you write a sentence using he, she or it in the present simple tense, you need to put ‘s’

(or ‘es’) at the end of the main verb – He
plays
guitar.

A verb table is a necessary but hated part of kit for EFL students. It consists of a long list of irregular verbs (verbs that don’t conform to usual patterns in English) and you usually find verb tables at the back of course books and in dictionaries for students to memorise or refer to. Verb tables are usually written in three columns:

infinitive

past simple

past participle

(to) sing

sang

sung

Helping out with auxiliary verbs

Some verbs don’t have much meaning all by themselves but when you put them with another verb, a main verb, the sentence has a new shade of meaning. Or even if the verb can be used alone, when you put it in a sentence next to the main verb you can construct a tense.

In the sentence, ‘I am drinking coffee’,
drinking
is the main verb and
am
has no real meaning; it’s just there to make the present continuous tense so you know that the action is happening now.

The auxiliary verbs we use in the English language are:

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to be

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to do

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to have

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may*

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might*

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must*

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ought*

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shall*

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should*

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will*

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would*

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The verbs marked with * never change form or tense. By this I mean you can’t add anything to the end of them. You don’t say, ‘He shoulds go’, for example.

Others can change because they’re sometimes used as main verbs, such as to have (has, had).

In the following sentences I’ve italicised the auxiliary verbs. They help the main verb in bold.

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I
have
finished.

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They
are
working.

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Can
you
speak
French?

Recognising regular and irregular verbs

Lots of verbs in English are irregular. They don’t follow the same patterns as most verbs, especially in the past simple. I discuss the past simple in Chapter 16 – it’s the tense we use to say what happened yesterday, for example. Most verbs add ‘ed’ in the past simple, such as ‘looked’ and ‘washed’. The irregular verbs don’t change in this way, for example, ‘wore’ and ‘swam’.

Probably the most important verb and the trickiest one to explain is ‘
to be’.

Fortunately, most other languages have an equivalent verb so you don’t really have to explain its meaning but rather demonstrate how it operates in English.

It’s the verb with the most changes and exceptions –
am, is, are
for example.

Subject Pronoun

Present Simple

Past Simple

I am

was

You are

were

He/she/it is

was

We are

were

They

are

were

I talk about the present simple and past simple tenses in Chapter 16.

The gerund or present participle of
to be
is
being.
The past participle of
to be
is
been
. I explain the meaning of these gerund, present and past participles in the following section.

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Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
Shortening verbs with contractions

In English, sometimes you can make verbs shorter by omitting letters and using an apostrophe instead. This is very common in conversation and informal writing. You can’t use contractions in academic and formal writing though.

am= ’m

I’m tall

is/ has= ’s

He’s here. He’s got a car

will= ’ll

We’ll help you.

have= ’ve

You’ve been there.

had/ would= I’d better go.

I’d like milk please.

are= ’re

They’re at work.

Not= n’t

He didn’t come. Notice that when
not
becomes
n’t
it’s attached to the verb and written as one word.
Cannot
becomes
can’t.

Acting on the object

In the sentence:
Peter loves ice cream,
‘
Peter’
is the subject word and ‘
loves’
is the verb. But what does Peter love? He loves ice cream. So
ice cream
is the object word. It’s involved in the action. Peter may love other things too: Peter loves
her
.

Peter loves
eating
.

Peter loves
the fact that the town was lively
.

All these endings are the object of the sentence.

In English you don’t always need an object word: ‘
Peter loves’
is
actually a complete sentence in itself.

The main reason why students get confused with object words is because they’re not sure where to put them in the sentence. In a simple sentence students can just follow the SVO (subject, verb, object) pattern. So even very low-level students can usually manage sentences like

S (subject)

V (verb)

O (object)

The dog

brings

the newspaper.

However, what if the student wants to mention the owner of the dog? There are now two objects.

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When you mention the person who receives the action, you’re talking about an
indirect object.
An indirect object goes after the verb and before the direct object: The dog brings
its owner
the newspaper.

The indirect object may be a thing not a person but it still receives the action, as in: John made
the book
a new cover.

Placing an object with a transitive verb

However some verbs, called
transitive verbs
need an object. For example the verb ’to drop’ is transitive. In the sentence, ‘I dropped the cup’, ‘I’ is the subject, ‘dropped’ is the verb and ‘the cup’ is the object. If you’re not sure whether or not a verb is transitive, use a dictionary to check. Transitive verbs are listed with a
T
or
tr
in brackets next to the verb and the definition often includes
something
or
somebody
to emphasise that you need a direct object.

Standing in with object pronouns

You use ‘her’ not ‘she’ as the object. So these are the object pronouns that replace nouns and phrases:

Subject pronoun

Object pronoun

I me

you you

he him

she her

it it

we us

they them

Proposing Prepositions

Prepositions are words that come before nouns and pronouns and show how words in a sentence relate to each other in terms of amount, direction, time, place, cause, or manner. Here are a few examples:

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Prepositions of manner: by, via

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Prepositions of amount: about, over

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Prepositions of time: before, after

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Prepositions of direction: into, towards

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Prepositions of place: next to, in front of

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Prepositions of cause: because, due to

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Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
Unfortunately, prepositions don’t translate very well into other languages.

Some have fewer; some have ‘postpositions’ that go after the noun and some just use different expressions entirely. Be prepared for a lot of groans from students whenever they have to get the right preposition because in many cases they simply have to learn the whole phrase by heart .

When an expression needs a particular preposition in a sentence, you should highlight that to students. For example:

to marry: to be married
to
someone.

to agree: to agree
with
someone or something.

Introducing Articles

Articles appear before nouns in a sentence. Fortunately for students there are only a three:

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A: The indefinite article.

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An: The indefinite article before a vowel sound only.

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The: The definite article.

You can’t teach the students that ‘an’ comes before a vowel. You need to say a vowel sound or phoneme because they to need to rely on pronunciation, not spelling. For example:

a
fire

an
aeroplane

But:

a
university /junivsitii/

an
honest man /ɒnist/

Although there are only three articles, quite a number of rules surround them.

Teach the rules for articles whenever you teach the vocabulary associated with them. It’s really difficult for students to remember lists of rules but they get a feel for what sounds right if they learn whole phrases. For example, you teach ‘to have dinner’ instead of just ‘dinner’, and if the students tend to make errors by inserting an article, you can write it this way on the board: ‘to have a dinner’ and cross out the ‘a’.

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Using the indefinite a/an

You use the indefinite articles for non-specific singular nouns, in cases where you’re referring to any of the items within a group. For example:
A pet is for
life
.

Use ‘a’ or ‘an’ for these situations:

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Jobs: I’m
a
teacher.

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Religions and nationalities in the form of a noun: I’m a Hindu. I’m
a
Briton.

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Something you’re talking about for the first time: I met
a
doctor at the party.

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With
what a/such a
and a singular noun: What
a
shame!

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Only one: There’s
a
Briton and two Brazilians in the office.

Getting specific with ‘the’

By using the definite article, you make clear which particular thing you’re referring to. For example:
This food is for the pets.

Use ‘the’ for these situations:

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Specific things or things mentioned before: In the following example
a
refers to any book but
the
refers to a particular one: I wanted a book so I chose
the
one on the middle shelf.

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In geography for the names of rivers, oceans, seas, and also unique places:
The
Thames is beautiful today. That country is near t
he
equator.