Page 221 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

LEXICAL CLASSES OF VERBS 207
(5) Word, Verb, or Prefix Competitions
Individual or pairs of students receive a list of verbs where each represents a
lexical synonym starting point.
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Each student or a pair needs to come up with as many lexical synonyms, associations, collocational phrases, or sentences for each verb in a limited amount of time. Then students can count and compare their lists to see which students won the competition.
With prefixes, students receive a list of similar starting points:
Re- Con- De- In- Pro-
Similarly, students need to come up with as many verbs, phrases with verbs, or sentences with these prefixes to see who can top the class counts.
It is important that at the completion of each competition, the winning student or team read out their list to the rest of the class. In addition, if the winners missed some verbs or phrases, the rest of the class can supplement it; as a result of the cooperative effort, the entire class arrives at the com- plete accessible list. Later the list can be photocopied and distributed to the entire class for all students to have and review. To maximize the learn- ing benefits, students should be told a fewdays in advance of the competi- tion when it is scheduled to take place so that they have the opportunity to study their words, verbs, and affixes for an extended period of time.
(6) Omitted Verbs
(see chap. 5 on nouns for a similar exercise)
In an excerpt from an academic text or textbook, all verbs should be deleted (whiteout would work well), and the list of the omitted verbs should be given to students on a separate sheet of paper. Individually or in pairs, students can re- place all the omitted verbs. To add a level of complexity, students may be re- quired to confirm that verb tenses are used correctly in the replaced structures. As in (1), when the task is completed, students can compare their replaced verbs with those of other students and see who has correctly replaced the most verbs. It is important that when comparing the replaced verbs, students or pairs of students discuss their reasons for making particular (correct) choices.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What would be an effective lesson plan for teaching verbs to be- ginning level students? To advanced students?
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