TRY
tips 
Expanding sentences
With small groups, a useful exercise is to write down a simple, basic sentence and ask the students to add as many adverbs and adjectives to make the sentence more "colourful".

 

For example- "The man entered the room" becomes "The large, fat and sweating man came very slowly and silently into the dark and silent room".

This transforms a statement of fact into more of an "atmospheric story".

Thanks to Dr Howard Peak for this tip which comes from his blog on Teaching English.

Average: 3.5 (74 votes)

Comments

Submitted on 27 June, 2008 - 20:35
Thank you dr Howard peak
Submitted on 4 July, 2008 - 10:17
Thanks to DR Howard - GBU
Submitted on 6 July, 2008 - 18:56

Hello all my friends

A similar roll-play exercise we have done in this category which will expand student's vocabularies is that we ask a student to say a name or a word in English E.g. David. The second student has to say a word which begins with the last letter of what has been said, for instance door after David. By getting 10 words in this way, now the students have to make some sensible sentences (Of course some new words can be added to make good sentences and students have been in different groups):

David, door, radio, orange, egg, goat, terrible, evening, Germany, yellow

Students will have a lot of fun by making different sentences but finally we got this one:

The terrible yellow goat was eating the orange in the evening when David came back from Germany to listen the radio or having an egg.

This sentence was chosen as the best answerer and the related group got a prize. The important fact to be considered is that the teacher leads the sentences according to the subject of teaching.

In above example we were practicing past and past continuous tenses.

Best wishes

Ali asghar Mazinanian, Shahrood, Iran

© British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN, UK         © BBC World Service, Bush House, Strand, London WC2B 4PH, UK