Relative clauses: Defining and non-defining clauses
Upper Intermediate B2 level
Description
Materials
Main Aims
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To provide clarification and practice of defining and non-defining relative clauses in the context of festivals and celebrations
Subsidiary Aims
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To provide fluency and accuracy speaking practice using the target language in the context of festivals and celebrations
Procedure (33-45 minutes)
T begins by showing Ss a realia. (Realia is an item which T's culture use to make rice cakes for a special festival. The item called 'Ketupat' (in Malay), is a type of dumpling made from rice packed inside a diamond-shaped container of woven palm leaf pouch) T explains that this rice cake is an important food serve through Eid (In Turkey: Bayram) and the Malays eat it with beef stew gravy. Eid, like Bayram, is a festival Muslims in Singapore celebrate at the end of the fasting month.
T provides a reading text on Eid Festival in Singapore. Before reading, T asks Ss to think about their own festival and compare it with the Eid Festival in the reading text. Ss read for 1 min. T asks Ss to buzz about the pre-reading question. T invites Ss to share their responses.
In groups, Ss will answer a series of questions about TL in the text that will help them discover and work out the meaning of the TL. Ss to discuss about the meaning and form of the sentences and try to distinguish between defining and non-defining relative clauses. T writes two sentence markers on the WB and uses CCQs to check on meaning. Sentence marker 1: Children are usually the ones who get very excited. CCQs Is there meaning if we remove the relative clause? –No Does it give us the main information on the sentence? –Yes The relative pronoun ‘who’ refers to? – children Sentence marker 2: Families, who live far away from their parents, leave their homes a day earlier in order to celebrate the festival together. Is there meaning in the main clause when the relative clause is removed? –Yes Does the relative clause give us more information about the main clause? - Yes What punctuation separates the main clause from the relative clause? – commas T gets students to share about the form and drill pronunciation. T emphasises to Ss on the need to pause in between the commas for non defining relative clauses.
Ss complete a controlled practice exercise on the same context: Celebrations. Ss to check in pairs once they are done. T does WCFB and error corrections, when necessary.
For speaking, Guess 3 & and Win! Ss are given a card that has 3 words. Ss are to use relative pronouns when describing each word to their partners. The activity is similar to the 'Taboo' game. Ss cannot tell the word to their partner. T demonstrates the activity on the w/b. They win the game if they guess all 3 words correctly. After the activity, T does WCFB and error corrections.