Tag Archives: relative sentences

A Word on Grammar: Relative Adverbs: Where, When and Why. use and Omission

I have to say that I have an incredibly complicated relationship with grammar. I don’t like it and that’s my problem. I wouldn’t go as far as Michel de Montaigne and say “The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar”, that’s probably going too far but, for me,  “Grammar is a piano I play by ear” as Joan Didion said,.

Obviously, this is something that, as a teacher, I cannot share with my students.

So, in order to make teaching grammar more palatable, I am forever trying to present it in a more appealing way. Not only to my students, but also to me.

Embedded below is a more visual explanation of the use and omission of the relative adverbs: where, when and why.

I have used one of my fav free tools, PlayBuzz, which is not specifically designed to be used as a teaching tool but it really has a lot of potential for language teaching.

 

A Guess the Word Game to Practise Relative Sentences and Paraphrasing

What do you normally do when you are talking to a person in English and you don’t know the word? I guess you don’t tell the person ” OK, right, hold on! I am going to look it up on my mobile phone”. You might be tempted to do it, but know that the person you are talking to might lose interest in what you are saying.
So, the thing to do would be Paraphrasing.

How do we paraphrase?? There are some expressions you can use
It’s A KIND OF house
It’s THE OPPOSITE OF lazy
It’s LIKE cleaning but… trying to explain what you want to say but using other words you know. That’s calle
It’s SIMILAR TO book but..
FOR EXAMPLE, you do this when
It’s A SYNONYM OF..
It’s A PERSON/SOMEBODY WHO…
It’s a THING/SOMETHING WHICH…
It’s SOMEWHERE/A PLACE WHERE

It can also help to say “ It’s a noun, or an adjective…. “ If it’s an expression, you can also say “ It’s an expression and there are three words in it”

Right, now we are ready to play the game. It’s called WHAT’S THE WORD?

How we play the game:

  • Divide the class into two teams
  • Ask a member of Team A to sit on chair with his back to the whiteboard.
  • Display the first word on the screen
  • The members of the team have two minutes to describe the word but they cannot use any parts of the words on the screen. For example if it is “teacher” they cannot use the word “teach”.The aim is for the student to guess as many words as possible in one minute. Every word in black scores one point , the ones in red score two points.
  • Then, it is the other team’s turn to choose someone to take the hot seat.
  • Needless to say, you keep the score on the board for everybody to see. Have fun!!!

 

Can you help me?

Dear students
I want to create a very simple exercise but for this, I need your help. I know you’re all willing to do so and that you need no further encouragement, so I’m going straight to the point. We have been working with relative sentences and I think it could be a good idea if we could all together build a Multiple Choice exercise (you know, the one where you choose a, b, c, and sometimes d). Well, the idea is that you send me something like this:

A lawyer:
a. is someone who loves his family
b. is someone who practises law
c. is someone who cuts the lawn

A teapot
a. is something you use to drink tea
b. is something you use to make tea
c. is something you use to plant tea.

A butcher’s
a. is a shop where you can buy brushes
b. is a shop where you can buy buns
c. is a shop where you can buy meat

As you can see , nothing too complicated .The thing is for you to use relative sentences giving three options . Only one should be the right definition.
To send a comment, you have to click on “Can you help me? “And then fill in” Leave a Reply”  Come on!! What are you waiting for???

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Great!!! Thanks!!! You’re amazing.

Relative sentences Quiz I

Relative sentences Quiz 2

Relative Sentences Quiz 3

Grammar related link : relative sentences