Error Analysis: Verbs
To help your students master standard academic forms of English, you have to recognize patterns of errors that show up in their written and spoken English. You also must find ways of helping students practice the correct or standard forms, going beyond simply pointing out errors in their writing and speaking. In this Assessment, you will practice error analysis by responding to a sample student essay containing multiple errors in verb usage. You also will consider how you might either give feedback or design tasks that allow students to practice common trouble areas.
Instructions:
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Using the Error Analysis: Part I handout, analyze the two paragraphs for errors in verb tense and form. Identify these errors using the “track changes” feature on your word processing program. Then, using the comments feature, explain how you would correct these errors.
- Example: “This verb is present simple but needs to be present perfect because it’s describing something that happened in the past and continues today.”
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Choose two of the identified errors and explain, in Section 2 of the handout, how you might teach correct usage of this pattern.
- Example: “One activity I might do to reinforce accurate question formation is a game called ’Alibi.’ Two students are told they are suspects of a crime. They have 2 minutes to talk privately and construct an alibi. Afterwards, the class questions each individually to see if their stories match up, using forms like, “What were you doing when…?” and “When did you go…?” To follow up, students can use reported speech to write a summary of the crime and “alibi.”
| Helpful Teaching Ideas: To find more teaching ideas related to these grammar issues, look at the resources and sample activities in the readings for Weeks 4 and 5, especially the glossary of activities from Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning, listed as Optional reading for this week. The course text also offers “Ideas for Teaching” at the end of each “key,” which may need to be adapted for your students’ ages and proficiency levels. |
- Save this Assessment as “VerbEdits_firstinitiallastname” and submit it to the Gradebook by the end of Week 2.
Lesson Plan Prep, Part I: Analysis of Current Teaching
In your teaching experience thus far, you’ve most likely already taught lessons in which a particular language form was prominent. For example, you might have read Brown Bear, Brown Bear with kindergartners, reinforcing adjectives and question forms. (“What do you see?”) You might have asked older students to write a narrative paragraph or essay from their own lives, using past tense verbs. You may not have even thought specifically about the particular language forms students were producing while they were learning the content of your lesson. In this Assessment, you will analyze your current practices in order to prepare for the lesson plan you will submit in Week 5.
Instructions:
- Choose a lesson plan you have already used in your class that required your students to write.
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Write a 250- to 300-word analysis of this lesson. Include a brief description of the lesson, then respond to the following questions:
- What language forms in the lesson were difficult for your students? Did you expect these forms to be difficult?
- How did you introduce or review the language form? Through modeling? Introducing a pattern for them to follow? Direct instruction?
- How will you use the insights gained from this reflection in your lesson plan?
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Save this Assessment as “LessonPrep1_firstinitiallastname” and submit it to the Gradebook by the end of Week 2.
