ESL Lesson Plan

hello dear

thank you very much , it is really a good wau thank you for your help.
my dear if i would like to talk to the manager .how can i do it . please tell me her or his email address , thank you very much .

ali

Heh,heh, I know for sure what you meant about that old mental block Michelle. Been having one of them since I got into this business that's for sure. Shoot, I got blocks on everything I got just abouts including this old car I got parked in the yard.

Hey Michelle,

That sounds like a great idea. Having the students write their own stories is very good for their creativity and common two-part verbs are really confusing for most learners. Mine in Korea study formal vocabulary but when it comes to common combinations with 'take' or 'get' they have a hard time using them properly.

One exercise I tried last summer with a group I had to teach phrasal verbs to was splitting them into pairs and giving each pair a phrasal verb to define, use in an example and then draw a funny picture demonstrating the meaning.

We ended the activity by putting them all together into a book. I also did a pictionary style game on the board that reinforced the words.

I can almost hear the moaning of your students if they are anything like mine when you mention phrasal verbs.

Kevin

MIchelle,

One of the techniques I have used successfully is to present phrasal verbs to the student as one word, rather than 2 separate words in the beginning.

For example, "getout" means go! Imperatively of course. Takeup means simply, to begin something new.

You see, the concept of auxiliaries within phrasal verbs can be understood more completely later in the lesson. But I try to make it super simple at first. As teachers we know that communication is more important than the grammar rules.

Chris

Michelle,

I like your ideas I think dictionaries are under used in the classroom, but I have one problem, trying to write a story using one verb and all its particles makes the story sound very contrived.

I think students groan when they here the term Phrasal Verb is becasue of this style of teaching, teaching al the PVs made from 'make' or used with the particle 'up'.

This approach decontextualises the verbs and overloads the students. I think Chris has hit the nail on the head, teach the word as a vocabulary item, don't single it out as a phrasal verb.

I bet your beginners don't moan when you teach them 'get up', 'sit down' etc. they just accept the meaning.

Gareth

Hi,

I was interested to read your comments about teaching phrasal verbs. In any class I've taught I've always found that when it comes to these particularly pesky so-and-sos, students often have an innate knowledge or understanding of which phrasal verbs 'work' and which don't. Because phrasal verbs are so common in spoken English, many students are false beginners (rather than absolute beginners) in this respect. Give them a passage of text which contains both real phrasal verbs (e.g. take over, break down, get into) and made-up ones (e.g take up to, break over, get under) and you'll be amazed how quickly they can pick the phoney ones.

Cheers,

Chris

Michelle,

The BBC has an excellent source for Phrasal Verb teaching.

Find their link here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/148_phrasalverbs/index.shtml

Pete

Yes writing a short essay with as many phrasal words as possible is great practise. I have a great small phasal word dictionary that I copy for all my students we try to use this every day. These are easier to use than a dictionary and some are specific to a subject such as business terms and expressions.