Games for Subject Verb Agreement
An easy way to reinforce or introduce the correspondence between the subject and the verb is to give students a short reading passage with various examples of this. Next, students need to quickly scan the text and highlight topics and verbs. After that, they can compare the examples found with a partner and finally with the whole class. In this case, dictate to students a few sentences with different themes and verbs. In addition to checking, it also helps students with spelling, punctuation, and listening skills. Then check the sentences together as a class. The games are great for motivating students to learn. By playing our fun educational games, students can practice and repeat important English vocabulary, grammar, and phrases without the boredom that usually occurs with gap filling exercises on paper. Play the game below and feel free to share these resources with other learners. This is the philosophy behind our website – www.eslgamesplus.com. And they are certainly useful for teaching students topics and verbs. For some of the best ideas, be sure to check out the following: Grammar lessons can become outdated and boring for kids.
Subject-verb-match class games allow a student to better understand this sometimes confusing part of grammar. Use this simple warm-up exercise to check the subject-verb chords at the beginning of the lesson. Or as a quick test at the end. The way it works is that you write a series of sentences on the whiteboard or PowerPoint. Some have flaws, others don`t. In this case, you want to focus on the problems of matching topics and verbs. If you want to change this, you need to omit some of the keywords. In this case, removing the verbs works well. Next, I make a list of the basic forms of verbs. Students must choose the right verb according to the context and then conjugate it correctly according to the subject. Simple sentences are sentences that express a complete thought and contain both a subject and a verb (predicate).
They must correspond to others in number (singular or plural). For example: She ate. Subject-verb agreement A list of 6 possible teaching activities that will help students learn subject-verb agreement. Here`s one of my top picks for subject-verb tuning lessons: This relay game takes something old (bug fixes) and makes it new by adding elements of teamwork and collaboration! In this case, you can focus most of the errors on the subject and the verb. Subject-verb correspondence means that the subject and verb must match in number. Simply put, they must agree on the singular form or plural form. Here are some examples with the subject in bold and the wrong verb in italics: This activity also works very well for auxiliary verbs. As you can see, there are many correct uses of subject compliance. As students write their sentences, move through the class and focus your error correction on them. Read more here: Next, say a topic and the student must form a sentence with that topic as well as their verb and then finish the sentence somehow. Simple but effective! One way to introduce and teach this important grammar point is through a listening lesson.
In this case, students may need to hear something and choose examples of correspondence between the subject and the verb. Or you may want to find a non-native speaker exercise that contains errors and get students to choose it. Ah, okay. My students in China have such a hard time with that. Any advice or suggestions? I will definitely try some of your games and ideas. A fun grammar checking activity is string writing. All students stand up and you say both a topic and a basic form of a verb. For example: He leaves.
The subject-verb transition rules are as follows. If the subject is singular, then the corresponding verb must also be singular. However, if the subject is plural, the verb must also be me. If the subject consists of two or more connected nouns or pronouns, use a plural verb. Choose whether you want to practice verb matching while navigating a treacherous galaxy full of green monsters, a sea full of pirates, or a river full of crocodiles. Either way, it will make your heart beat. Suddenly, the English grammar exercise no longer becomes boring with these games. One way to make them more valuable and memorable is to remove some of the words. In this case, it is either the verb or the subject. Then, when students read it with a partner, they also need to fill in the gaps. It transforms it from a kind of senseless activity to a much more difficult activity. In particular, I like to use this activity for irregular verbs.
Of course, it is also possible to plan a lesson for the adjustment of the material. More details here: In my real life, I love playing board games. So expect me to ask my students to play them too. But I adapt the games to the specific grammar point I teach. In this case, I use questions related to the correspondence of subjects and verbs. Students must answer them correctly in order to progress in the game. The way it works is that you write corresponding topics and verbs on separate cards. For example: After that, I let the students memorize it by heart and then present it to the class. This is a great way to hear many examples of correct subject/verb matching, but take a quick look at the dialog boxes to avoid errors before the presentation phase. A topic can be at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.
If you have trouble finding the subject, you can identify it with the verb in the sentence. The time spent working with our students on better sentences will never be a waste of time! And of course, a big part of that is the subject/verb agreement. What is my topic? A subject-verb chord Minilesson High school students explore subject-verb correspondence using examples from newspapers and song lyrics. In addition to checking and identifying both the right and wrong subject-verb correspondence, students examine when it may be appropriate to use ungrammatical language and talk about the difference between formal and informal language. They then invent quizzes to share with their peers. The goal of the lesson is to ask students to understand how to use (or intentionally ignore) this important grammatical rule in a variety of environments. In my opinion, flashcards are one of the least used ESL activities. The way it works with matching topics and verbs is that you can show each student a card. Or each student can choose one from a stack facing up in the middle of the room. Teaching the correspondence of subjects and verbs is a relatively simple concept that even beginners can understand in English. Use a few sample sentences in context, and then provide students with plenty of opportunities to practice both writing and speaking. Students in some countries have more difficulty with the correspondence between subject and verb because of their mother tongue than in others.
For example, in Korean, the verb is always at the end of the sentence, so as in an English sentence, it can be a bit difficult to have it at the beginning. For this reason, I often like to introduce this topic using certain elicitation techniques. Start with the subject, then act confused as to the correct verbal form! Students will love to tell you what it is. Learn more about using this technique in your courses: Elicit. You can use the image prompt as a kind of test at the end of your subject/verb chord class. The way it works is that you find an image with a lot of people doing things. Then students have to make a number of sentences in their notebooks based on this. In this online game, students have one minute to choose the right verb for each basketball-related phrase. Wrong answers bring points to the other team. Available in “simpler” and “harder” versions. Designed for elementary school students; This website contains advertisements.
A verb describes an action, state, or event. It is the main part of the predicate of a sentence. You`re ready? Let`s move on to our top 20 choices of themed games and verb sharing to try with your English as a Second Language students. There`s nothing better than a good old yes or no question to see if your students understand the correspondence between the subject and the verb. For example: When I teach children, I never go to class without flashcards! They are such a valuable teaching tool and there are many games and activities you can do with them. A subject-verb match error occurs when the subject and verb do not match in number. For example, a singular subject (he) with a plural verb (to eat). The correct form is: “He eats.” While it takes a bit of time to prepare for this activity, it`s definitely worth it if you can recycle it for a number of courses. Students love it and there are also serious learning processes. The way this works is that students have to bid on words to form complete sentences, including topics, verbs, objects, and other words.
Then they can negotiate with other groups to trade, and the winner is the group with the most complete sets. Even advanced students may struggle with the nuances of it, especially if the subject and verb in the sentence are not side by side. Want to know more about this ESL writing activity? Find out here: ESL Proofreading Activity.. .