multiword verbs
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multiword verbs
I am teaching a lesson on multiword verbs to elementary students. Any ideas on how to teach them?
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Sally Olsen
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Do you already have a chart for single verbs and their tenses? If you don't then perhaps you could demonstrate how it works and then how you add verbs to the single ones to further distinctions of meaning. You can then give them blank charts and let them fill in verbs that interest them or they need in their next reading.
You can put the different verbs on coloured cards and see how to combine them.
You can hand out coloured pencils and have the student find the verbs in a passage and then discuss why the author used these verbs.
You can play games with action verbs - have a path the children to have to follow. I used to use chalk on the floor to make a path much like a path on a games board with a square just big enough for them to stand in if they couldn't move. You can have certain squares in a different colour and make up tasks for that square depending on what you want to teach them. Children divided up in teams and started at the four corners of the room to go around the path according to some formula - they can move as many letters as the verb they get in the manner of the verb - so jump they must jump four squares. If they got a new card with the past - did jump, they had to stay there one turn. If they got a new card with 'will jump' they could go forward another four. The first team back to home wins. You need to get the children to make up cards and one person on each team to hand out new cards to keep them moving. You need to keep track of them somehow although other teams usually catch people cheating and you can send them back four squares or whatever.
You can put the different verbs on coloured cards and see how to combine them.
You can hand out coloured pencils and have the student find the verbs in a passage and then discuss why the author used these verbs.
You can play games with action verbs - have a path the children to have to follow. I used to use chalk on the floor to make a path much like a path on a games board with a square just big enough for them to stand in if they couldn't move. You can have certain squares in a different colour and make up tasks for that square depending on what you want to teach them. Children divided up in teams and started at the four corners of the room to go around the path according to some formula - they can move as many letters as the verb they get in the manner of the verb - so jump they must jump four squares. If they got a new card with the past - did jump, they had to stay there one turn. If they got a new card with 'will jump' they could go forward another four. The first team back to home wins. You need to get the children to make up cards and one person on each team to hand out new cards to keep them moving. You need to keep track of them somehow although other teams usually catch people cheating and you can send them back four squares or whatever.
ah... semantics!
Sally, I think the OP was asking about what are known variously as "multiword verbs" or "phrasal verbs" rather than verbs that employ an auxiliary.
However, your idea about using COLOURED cards is excellent. This is waaaay underutilised even with adult learners. Colour is a great learning aid.
Also, your idea about an obstacle course kinda think reminded me of a lesson I haven't used for ages. It's not STRICTLY about phrasal verbs, it's more about prepositions of movement, but it could be the perfect introduction to these kinds of patterns for the OP's students.
It involves designing an obstacle course just like you would imagine in a military bootcamp, but with lashings of fantasy thrown in. I got it from some teacher resource book in the Cambridge Series, I think. Can't remember which one. If someone knows maybe they can post here.
I usually get students to draw the obstacle course on a large sheet of paper. In addition to standard things like a row of tires and a set of monkey bars, I usually get things like a pit full of snakes with a huge dragon guarding it, or a swinging pendulum-like guillotine to negotiate your way through, and so on.
The idea is that they create the obstacle course in a certain time-limit and then we work out the language that is required to negotiate it. I then collect the artworks and use them to periodically test their recollection of the vocab (jump over the pit, crawl through the pipe, etc.)
This activity takes a LOT of time!
But the payoff is worthwhile because this is incredibly frequent language.
---------
Re: the OP's question, then, this might be a way to illustrate to students without the need for explicit explanation--which I'm not a big fan of (it has its place, but most language teachers think, incorrectly, that it is de rigeur)--how PATTERNS operate in language.
It's then a fairly small leap to phrasal verbs proper (pick s/t up, look into s/t (both meanings), etc.)
Hope it helps!
Tanuki
However, your idea about using COLOURED cards is excellent. This is waaaay underutilised even with adult learners. Colour is a great learning aid.
Also, your idea about an obstacle course kinda think reminded me of a lesson I haven't used for ages. It's not STRICTLY about phrasal verbs, it's more about prepositions of movement, but it could be the perfect introduction to these kinds of patterns for the OP's students.
It involves designing an obstacle course just like you would imagine in a military bootcamp, but with lashings of fantasy thrown in. I got it from some teacher resource book in the Cambridge Series, I think. Can't remember which one. If someone knows maybe they can post here.
I usually get students to draw the obstacle course on a large sheet of paper. In addition to standard things like a row of tires and a set of monkey bars, I usually get things like a pit full of snakes with a huge dragon guarding it, or a swinging pendulum-like guillotine to negotiate your way through, and so on.
The idea is that they create the obstacle course in a certain time-limit and then we work out the language that is required to negotiate it. I then collect the artworks and use them to periodically test their recollection of the vocab (jump over the pit, crawl through the pipe, etc.)
This activity takes a LOT of time!
But the payoff is worthwhile because this is incredibly frequent language.
---------
Re: the OP's question, then, this might be a way to illustrate to students without the need for explicit explanation--which I'm not a big fan of (it has its place, but most language teachers think, incorrectly, that it is de rigeur)--how PATTERNS operate in language.
It's then a fairly small leap to phrasal verbs proper (pick s/t up, look into s/t (both meanings), etc.)
Hope it helps!
Tanuki