Practical tools for learning and teaching grammar
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Part II Introduction It is easy to assume that secondary school students would already know what a noun is. But when the time comes to build on that knowledge, for example to investigate noun forms such as noun phrases and clauses and their role in the sentence, we realise that the foundation we are about to build on may itself be shaky. Make sure to give a definition with a full explanation for each part of speech. Then follow with reinforcement activities geared to the level of the students. Practice exercises will reveal any defi- ciencies in their understanding. Common and proper nouns are easy to understand by even the youngest students. Collective and abstract nouns, being less obvious, may be left a little longer or until they figure incidentally during teaching. By practising these terms, students are also enabled to increase their vocabulary and gain confidence from the ability to spell. For each category about to be learnt, students should firstly be given, according to their age and learning level: • a definition of the term, with discussion • examples, preferably written on the board The students, themselves, should then be able to: • give the definition, i.e. correctly answer the question ‘What is a …?’ • give examples (or word groups) in that category • recognise examples in a sentence or list of words • use each one correctly in a sentence Older students may also learn the origins of the words, as given in the following definitions, or in a dictionary. … 21 A Nouns Nouns mean every thing to us! Definition: The word ‘noun’ comes from Latin nomen meaning ‘name’. A noun is the name of a thing. Everything that exists has a name, whether you can see it or not. A blind person cannot see something, but that does not mean that it isn’t there! It may only exist in our minds, like hope, beauty or calories. There are four kinds of nouns. Common nouns These are names of everyday things that we can see, hear or touch. For example: table, banana, volcano, song We can put the word ‘the’ in front of them and make sense, as in: Yüklə 3,56 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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