Teaching The Verb To Be To True Beginners. Starting From The Basics.
The verb “to be”
The verb
"to be" is one of the most common verbs in the English language. It
has many different forms and is the first verb students learn in their
English studies.
It is used
extensively in the English language and will allow students to create simple
sentences with the vocabulary they have learned to date.
The “to be” is a verb used
to describe something or someone. In English, it can be used to say different
things according to the context. However, the most common use of the “to be” verb is to talk about names, ages, feelings,
nationalities,and professions, especially when talking in the present tense.
How To Start Teaching The Verb To Be
Warm-up
For this first lesson, it is best to focus on only the I, You, He/She/It structures which you can
build upon in later classes. If students have not really done a lot of
activities with the words he, she, and it, you may want to consider simply
using names in the practice activities. Once you have determined what you would
like to cover in the first lesson, create a basic warm-up activity to
review the vocabulary students will need later on in the lesson.
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Introduce
Vocabulary
During the introduction section of your lesson, introduce any new
vocabulary you plan to use in this lesson. Some emotions and adjectives
would be good because students will then be able to form complete meaningful
sentences. Introduce words such as happy and sad if
students have not yet learned them. Use flashcards to teach them the
vocabulary and have students complete some simple worksheet activities for
further practice.
Introduce
“to be”
Show students how to make sentences such as “I am happy. You are happy.
Jenny is happy.” Ensure that students understand how the subject and forms of
the verb are paired. You can practice this before introducing the full sentence
structure you would like students to learn. Call on students to make sentences
choosing a subject, verb, and adjective from columns on the board. Without
introducing the question form “Is she happy?” you can use such questions to
test comprehension and students should understand what you are asking. Have
them answer by saying “Yes, she is happy.” so that they continue to practice
saying the target structure.
Practice
Simple
You can use worksheets or PowerPoint for practice. Have students complete
a fill in the blank exercise where they must choose am, is, or are to complete
sentences to ensure that they understand which form of the verb agrees with
certain subjects. You can also have students match sentences with images or
with translations for practice and to test comprehension. As a class, check
the answers before continuing on.
Practice
Complex
Students can then complete an activity such as Battleship for further practice. You can adapt this classic game for use in the classroom. While it can be time-consuming to explain, especially to beginners, your students will enjoy playing and it can be used to practice a wide variety of topics. To play Battleship students should work in pairs using a worksheet. For this class, the grids on the worksheet might have I, You, He, She, Jenny, Ms. Smith in the first column and happy, fun, from Korea, sad, silly, from America in the first row. Students then practice sentences such as “I am silly.” to try to locate and sink all of their opponents' ships first. There may not be enough time in the first lesson to begin this activity but devoting the second lesson entirely to Battleship would give your students a lot of speaking practice. For a third class, introduce the question that goes along with this target structure and have students play using the same worksheet but by making questions such as “Is Ms. Smith from America?” The really great thing about this activity is that students essentially have to speak in order to play whereas with board games students may be tempted to simply roll the dice and move their pieces around the board without really practicing English.
Review
As a general review activity, you can divide students into groups and play
Hangman with sentences or words from their textbook. It is perhaps not
appropriate to play the original game in your classroom so you can just adapt
it so that no one actually hangs. One adaptation is to simply have a very large
fish where when students guess incorrectly, a little fish gets closer and
closer to being eaten. This is not very accurate as you can either draw the
game out or end it whenever you choose. Another method of playing is to assign
a point value to certain things. For example, if a group guesses the letter “A”
and there are three in the sentence, the group would get three points. A
correct guess of the entire sentence would be five points while there should be
a penalty for guessing the entire phrase incorrectly but no penalty for
guessing a letter that is not used. You can alter the scoring anyway you would
like to make it more appropriate for your class.
Once your students are quite confident with making the sentences practiced
in this lesson, you should include the plural we, you, they as well. As the
first verb they study, “to be” is very important for your students and it is
essential to get them to understand that the form of the verb is affected by
the subject of the sentence.
Good luck, and good teaching.
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