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I am teaching Italian adults (some true beginners, as they took French for their second language in high school and had no English, and others "false" beginners). To help them understand possessive adjectives, I put a sticky label on four pens: my pen, your pen, his pen, her pen. Then, I put the pens on the desk in front of me, and demonstrated to whom the pens belonged. Then I reversed it and had each student place each pen with its owner. As they did this, I had them say aloud " this is my pen" , "this is your pen" etc.

But when I asked some of them, "where is your pen?", they responded with "your pen is here". Hmmm.... They also seemed to have trouble with the his/her aspect. Because Italian has masculine and feminine nouns, the possessive adjectives correspond. It was very hard for me to explain his/her depends on the recipient of the object, not on the object itself. I tried to explain that, in English, only PEOPLE are masculine and feminine, not words or objects. What a mess! HELP!

n.b.: I did this same exercise with a class of mixed-level adults earlier that day, and they got it right away, so I am really confused as to why it didn't work with this second group.

Thanks for any insight,
Emi

I'm a great believer in: when all else fails use the students' L1. You could try flogging the subject for half an hour in English. Or you could spend 30 seconds giving them the answer / translation.

Also, when things aren't working simplify. Instead of using the phrase "This is my pen". Try drilling them with

"My pen" - point at it.
Ask "Whose pen?" (assuming they understand "whose") to elicit "Your pen"
Drill them for a couple minutes, then introduce the third person singular.
"Whose pen?" to elicit "his/her pen".

It took me years to get familiar with the Spanish phrase "Es mio", or "it's mine". I used to say "Es de mio" which is wrong, but "Es de Carlos" is correct. My point is simple things are sometimes difficult for learners.

Iain

I teach in Italy as well and can say that, except for the third personal singluar, the other possessive adjectives have a one-to-one correspondence (more or less) between English and Italian.

However, I have found that when it comes to teaching "his" and "her" , it is better to explain that you teach them to think of these as either "di lui" or "di lei". Also, the misuse of "your" for the third personal singular may also be due to the courtesy form (Lei) used in Italian.

Since I figured out how to explain this to my students in terms that they could understand, there have been fewer problems with understanding the use of "his/her".