Teach English in ZhAngyi Zhen - Wuwei Shi

This unit explains the form and use of modal auxiliary verbs, phrasal verbs, relative clauses, and passive voice. Modal auxiliary verbs (can, could, may, might, will, etc) are used before other verbs, and they add meaning to the main verb. They are used to express obligation (I must study today), possibility (It may rain tomorrow), permission (You can go home now), prohibition (You can't leave, yet!), ability (He can swim like a fish), advice (You should send an email), offer (Would you like some tea?), and request (Could you help me with this?). To teach the modal auxiliary verbs the teacher can use activities like role-play (doctor ? patient, one student is a patient and the other plays a role of a doctor giving advice), making rules (e.g. in a hotel), creating signs for traffic, teacher makes a drawing on the board and students try to guess what it is (It could be a ball, it must be the sun?), and many others. Passive voice is the opposite of active voice. In the active voice the focus is on the agent (doer of an action), in the passive voice the agent is less important, or we don't even know who the doer is. The object of an active verb becomes the subject of the passive verb. Passive voice is formed with the auxiliary verb ?be? (form depends on the tense of the sentence, always the same as tense in active voice) and past participle (e.g. The house was built in 1865). We use passive voice when we do not know, do not care, or do not want to say who performs the action. The teacher could use activities like matching passive and active sentences, or students could write a general knowledge test with examples in passive voice, to teach passive voice. There are three types of clauses: independent (it is a complete sentence, with main subject and verb), dependent (it must be connected to independent clause), relative (it is a dependent clause that modifies a noun). We know two types of relative clauses, defining (includes information that is essential to the meaning of the sentence; e.g. They are the people who want to buy our house) and non- defining (information is not essential to the meaning; e.g. My friend, who lives in Canada, has been arrested). Relative pronouns (e.g. what, which, that) are usually used to introduce a relative clause. Phrasal verbs, also known as multi-word verbs, are formed with a verb and one or two participle (that can be a preposition, adverb, or preposition plus adverb). There are three types of phrasal verbs: intransitive, transitive separable, and transitive inseparable. Intransitive phrasal verbs are not followed by a direct object (e.g. My car broke down), when using transitive separable phrasal verb the object pronoun is placed between the verb and participle, and the object noun is placed between the verb and participle, or after the participle (e.g. She took Anna on.). Transitive inseparable phrasal verbs are formed with the object or pronoun placed after the participle (e.g. She got over it). Phrasal verbs can be difficult to understand so it might help if the teacher would used them naturally, drop one in now and then, to help students get used to them and maybe they will try using them in different situations. H In this unit I learned about different grammar items, their form and use, and few teaching activities to use in the classroom. Those items can be hard for students to understand, especially phrasal verbs, so it depends on the teacher how he or she presents the material to the students, and what activities she or he uses. Also the teacher can use phrasal verbs and modal verbs through the course (not only when teaching them, but also when giving instructions or just speaking to the students), and the students will hopefully get used to them enough to make the learning experience easier.