Grammar: Simple Sentence Building

Sentence Building  (CLB 1 and 2)

This activity is designed to help students build simple sentences to describe given pictures. The objective is for the students to begin see that sentences have a subject and predicate, and to be able to structure their sentences in the proper order. They are given a group words which are color coded for subjects (article + noun or pronoun), verbs (present simple tense), and ‘other information’ to make up sentences. The focus is not yet on noun/verb agreement, although it should be corrected.

The context is a CLB 1 or 2 level class of mostly literacy students.  There are from a variety of language backgrounds and ages. 

The activity  is pretty basic, but very essential for lower level classes, ie. the understanding of simple sentence structure.  The activity is mostly deductive because at this level it's very hard for students to understand grammar rules, especially if you have a literacy class.  But asking if they see a pattern in the colors (ie. what is the same), is an inductive approach. 

Materials: 

1) Pictures that demonstrate action words (Previously taught for vocabulary, eg. drive, shop, walk, ride, play, go, shop). 

2) Color coded paper with many ‘subjects’, ‘action verbs’ and ‘other information’ (adjectives, prepositional phrases, adverbs). 

Eg. The girl (subject)      These would be on coloured paper. 

goes (verb)

to school. (other information)

Divide these up according to their color and stick to the white board.

Activity: 

1) Show a picture to the class and ask what is happening in the picture? 

2) Review words that make up a sentence. To keep it simple you can use ‘who/what’, ‘action word’, ‘other information’ instead of subject, verb, adjectives, prepositional phrases)

3) Ask for volunteers to look for words on the board that tell us what is happening in the picture. Place them together, but not in the correct order. 

4) Ask for another volunteer to put them in the correct order to make a sentence. Ask for class agreement and change if necessary.

5) Ask the students if they see how the sentences are the same (color order).  

6) Do a few more examples as a class. 

7) Divide the class into groups of 2 or 3 with their own sets of pictures and words

The activity can be modified to make it more difficult later by separating out the articles from the nouns, changing the verb tenses, and separating the words in the prepositional phrases.

To make it easier, simple diagrams can also be added to the words if students don't remember the vocabulary.

The activity can also be done by building sentences using the students names, adding a verb, and other information to create an action for them to do in the classroom, and then ask the student to do what’s in the sentence. The students can then make up the sentences for their classmates. Example: Ahmed closes the door. Katrin sits on the chair. This allows the students to get a bit creative with the words.