This lesson entails familiarizing our students with some of the basic sentence structures in English – especially where word order is concerned. See handout attached to begin and later expand this lesson to other English structures.
The lesson entails beginning with the basic subject-verb structure and ending with subject-verb-noun structure shown on the handout.
The instructor writes the first structure and ask students from the various language-groups represented in the class to come to the board and write the sample sentence in their language, and then label the parts of speech to compare the similarities and/or differences between the word order between English and their language. See samples of results attached.
This lesson enabled me as the instructor to also gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by groups I was less familiar with such as Dari (Afghani students) and Punjabi (Indian students).
After we examined the similarities and/or differences, the homework was then for students to write two of their own sentences for the first five basic sentence structures on the attached. More examples are shown with other attachments page.
[ATTACHMENTS/HANDOUT] The link takes you to the handout of all English sentence structures. The attachments illustrate how students match the respective structures in their language.
Hi, I’ve been a professor of ESL at Yuba College since 2003. In that capacity, I teach our advanced writing courses and VESL-related courses; i.e., Computer Skills for ESL and English for Employment. Prior to Yuba College, I have lived and taught in The Czech Republic, Turkey, Kuwait, and England. My interests are sports such as skiing, hiking, biking, and traveling for long periods to anywhere I have not been.