TP 3 - Countable & Uncountable nouns
Intermediate level
Description
Materials
Main Aims
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To provide review of the differences between countable & uncountable nouns and using quantity expressions about food preferences.
Subsidiary Aims
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Using quantity expressions to talk about (eating) habits.
Procedure (30-45 minutes)
As it is the first lesson of the week, the teacher will have a brief conversation with the students about their weekends. Afterwards, he will ask them to sit in a semi-circle pattern that centres him.
As the preceding lesson, in which the context of food was supposed to be set, was cancelled, the teacher has to make sure that the context is set correctly. In order to do that the teacher will display food related pictures on the board, asking the students what they see in each picture. Afterwards, in order to activate the students' schemata, the teacher will ask how these pictures could be grouped (countable - uncountable). The teacher will ask daily questions about the pictures using the vocabulary that will be used further on in the lesson. Then the students will be given a list of nouns and they will group the nouns.
In order to point out the difference between the auxiliary verbs used with each category, the teacher will write two simple sentences on the board and the whole class will answer. The teacher will then ask the students whether they think some of the nouns can be both countable and uncountable. The teacher will give a few examples and explain the difference in the meaning depending on whether a noun is countable or uncountable.
In order to elicit the difference between how much and how many, the teacher will ask a few model questions using the nouns that are already on the board (CCQ - Can you say how many money? Can you say how much friends? How much time? How many hours?). This will be followed by the teacher bringing up quantifiers like some, a few, several, etc. subsequently, the teacher will give the handouts for the grammar exercise 3. In this exercise, students will be required to make a choice between many and much for the question lines, and circle the only incorrect option for the answer lines. (ICQ - How many correct options are there? Are you looking for the correct or incorrect one?) Depending on how quickly the students finish the task, they might write the answers on the board for feedback.
The teacher gives students cards with partitives and pictures on them. All students get up, walk around and talk to each other trying to find the matching pairs of papers. Some partitives are repeated more than once. In case they might attempt to use their L1, the teacher will ask them to use only English in advance.
The teacher gives handouts where the students are supposed to match the partitives in column A with the nouns from column B to make common collocations. The students are to work individually on this one. (CCQ - Are you going to do it alone or in pairs?). Then they check answers in pairs.
13 new words will be added to column B and the students will be required to find the correct partitive for each one. The students will then ask each other how often they buy, consume, or use these items.
Students arrange their seats as a full circle, depending on the number of students, they might form 2 different circles. Every student starts with saying "I went to the shop and bought..." ,for example, a packet of cigarettes. The next student has to remember what the previous person said and add what he bought himself. e.g "I went to the shop and bought a packet of cigarettes and a box of chocolate" - so the following student has to say "I went to the shop and bought a box of chocolate and a jar of honey" and so on. The students who make a mistake is given a sheet with 10 partitives and nouns to be matched as a punishment.