TeachingEnglish
      Structure

      Dear Teachers,

      I'm a novice teacher and I would really appreciate it if someone could pitch in and,suggest  a good, i.e communicative, way of teaching the structure the more ...the less. It's really giving me pain.

      Many thanks in advance


      girishseshamani's picture
      girishseshamani
      Submitted on 11 October, 2009 - 13:25

      The delivery of the grammatical part has to be interesting and humourous. I suggest you get in touch with experienced ELT trainers and get a feel of how they go about introducing structures which students can grasp easily. Depending on the age group of your students, you need to decide the time to be devoted for educating them on structures. Ensure that you do not load them too much.

      Your biggest challenge is to send across a strong message to the students that the grammatical part is interesting and enjoyable. It should be a dialogue and not a monologue. Any sentence needs to adhere to the fundamental strucutre of Subject + Verb + Object. Here the object can be a direct or indirect. In the case of Imperative sentences, the subject is understood, as in, Get out, means, You get out.

      Also take them through non finites ( participle, infinitive - to followed by the verb and bare infinitives and gerund )  

      evergreen's picture
      evergreen
      Submitted on 12 October, 2009 - 01:00

      Dear girish seshamani

      Thanks a lot for taking the pain to attend to my enquiry; however, I don't think my enquiry was well formulated to be adequately assimilated. My question was highly specific and it was about the structure "the more...the more" For example: THE MORE YOU READ,THE MORE YOU LEARN or THE MORE YOU EARN,THE BETTER YOUR LIFE  BECOMES.

      I hope you can help with it now that is made clearer.

      truly yours

      anupkumarr's picture
      anupkumarr
      Submitted on 9 September, 2010 - 12:03

      Yes, strutures are important. But how to introduce structures?

      It was thought that ss would pick up structrues easliy by listening and following i+1 input. This now falls short of ideal teaching condition so far as ESL/EFL is concerned. So how to get structures conveyed? With a focus on form. It is better to teach inductively and then go on to explain rules. S-V,S-V-C,SVOC,SVOO,SVOC all these need to be explained by way of illustrations from the text. Structures are to be explained according to forms, functions and in terms of simple-compound, complex, multiple- complex structures from contemporay writings because the more recent writings give us a feel of contemporary usage. This too, can be inductively put by giving them (SS) exercises from recent text materials in the form of cloze, fill-in the blanks type exercises.

      Tense is a crucial area. Present perfect is one such. One can prepare exercises like Complete the postcard of a place visited. Gerund-particle-infintive should be stressed and the can be taught using picture compositions. What i want to stress is that we should give our ss an integrated exercise and then move on to explain in order to drive a difficult area of grammar thrugh  an isolated sentence again to embed and intuit into an integrated speech and writing. Sentence pattern is very important.

      divakar3368's picture
      divakar3368
      Submitted on 13 August, 2010 - 07:46

      Hi dear,

                  It would really be a worth trying exercise to provide the ss some specially designed worksheets with the sentence structure and then introduce a game ifpossible.

      Regards ,

      Divakar,Eng teacher.

      rolandgill's picture
      rolandgill
      Submitted on 9 September, 2010 - 08:50

      Structure is a fundamental if sometimes intangible notion referring to the recognition, observation, nature, and stability of patterns and relationships of entities. From a child's verbal description of a snowflake, to the detailed scientific analysis of the properties of magnetic fields, the concept of structure is now often an essential foundation of nearly every mode of inquiry and discovery in science, philosophy, and art.

      vishal pandey's picture
      vishal pandey
      Submitted on 8 January, 2011 - 11:05

      Hey dude ..Its good to talk to u..N its my pleasure

      Hey man i know that there is no grammar in the speaking sense..But we have only a short knowledge ..Why it is that students are only urging on the grammar.Is it so,if it is then shall we have the command on grammar..But i feel boar.I can speak very pretty English and persons are learning from me .And i have contentment in which i have its good and by the grace of god.I m poor and i belongs to poor family so that i cant afford to purchase new books ? Please help me in the grammar topic