Olga Olga

Grammar lesson, Festivals
Upper Intermediate level

Description

In this lesson students will learn about Relative clauses through the guided discovery in the context of festivals. At first students will discuss holidays and festivals from the handout, then they will do gap-activity, check their answers by listening. It will be followed by guided discovery of relative clauses and controlled practice. To provide freer practice and speaking in this context students will play the Taboo game.

Materials

Main Aims

  • To provide clarification of relative clauses thought the guided discovery in the context of festivals and holidays.
  • To provide practice of relative clauses in the context of festivals and holidays.

Subsidiary Aims

  • To provide fluency speaking practice in a conversation in the context of festivals and holidays.

Procedure

Warming up, lead-in discussion (2-3 minutes) • To get students interested in text from the exercise.

As students will be already familiar with the topic I will just ask them to look at the photos in the handout and discuss in groups of three or in pairs (depending on amount of students) if there are similar holidays in Turkey and when they are celebrated. Those holidays do exist in Turkey and students will guess them easily.

Vocabulary drilling/ concept checking (3-5 minutes) • To check if students know some words that may cause a problem.

Reading and vocabulary are not our main aims, but some words can be new for students, to check and fix it students will have short matching activity, where they should join words and their definitions or synonyms. If there are some words that create students don't know and can't match, I will elicit and drill their meanings. The words, that should be checked: a servant, to treat, a florist, a parade, an excursion, a graveside, a skull. Students will try to match words working in pairs, if someone doesn't know a word stronger partner may help. Students will get printed answer key to check their answers.

Gap filling activity (6-8 minutes) • To provide the basis for the following guided grammar discovery

Students will fill gaps in small paragraphs under already discussed pictures. They will need to choose correct relative pronoun or adverb+noun (they will be given). Then students will check their answers in pairs. And then they will get copies with correct answer key.

Grammar, guided discovey (10-12 minutes) • To provide clarification of a new grammatical topic

Students will learn a new piece of grammar, relative clauses, through the guided discovery. They will look at paragraphs again and at first they will need to find and underline relative pronouns and adverbs. Then students will have to decide which of them refer to people and which of them refer to places, things... At first students will look at the first sentence of the first paragraph, i will write it on the board with 2 colors black for main clause and green for the relative clause " Young servants who lived away from their families were allowed to visit their mothers" And "Children`s Day on May 5th, which used to be known as "Boys` Day", is a national holiday". Then, students will look at sentences, only black parts, and decide where are subjects and predicates, then they should decide if we can omit parts with pronouns (green parts) and if we still can understand the meaning of the sentence. Then students will work in pairs, they will look at sentences in the paragraphs and think if we can omit relative clauses. This way they will see that if we can't omit this part it is a defining clause and we don't put it between commas. If we can omit the clause and the sentence is still clear, it is non-defining clause and we put it between commas. Then students will pay attention to defining clause, I will ask them if it is possible to substitute pronouns with "that". The same I will ask about non-defining clauses.

Controlled practice (6-8 minutes) • To check understanding of the grammar.

Students will get an adapted version of the 2nd exercise from the handout and they will have to combine 2 sentences making one. Students will have 3 min, then students will check it in pair and after that we will check it by writing on the whiteboard.

Taboo (7-9 minutes) • To provide freer speaking practice and using relative clauses.

Students will work in groups of 3. Each of them will get a card with a picture of an object which they have to describe. Under the picture will be some words that they must not use when they describe their objects. This way students will practice using relative clauses. When all students finish talking, I will ask what was the most difficult to describe and I will provide some feedback.

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