Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Gerunds and Infinitives
Gerunds and infinitives are very useful, but are tricky for remembering how to use them correctly. They are especially great when you want to share your bad habits or tell others what you do or don't like to do. This Smith’s School of English
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
One common grammar mistake among students at Smith's School of English Kyboashi is confusing gerunds with infinitives. A great way of ironing out these little slips in an otherwise perfect sentence is with practice.
This was the first time that this student had gone through the gerunds and infinitives lesson so we took it slow. After reviewing her one point from the previous lesson, I asked her some questions to elicit either a gerund or infinitive response. She would make such mistakes as, "I like to go to shopping."
Once I had a pretty firm grasp on where and why she was making those types of mistakes, I wrote up 2 separate boxes on the board. 1 contained a list of bad habits involving the usage of gerunds. For example, smoking, staying up late, or eating sweets. When asked about her bad habits, she identified with several of the ones from the list, responding to some gentle correction along the way. She eventually got the hang of the gerunds so we moved onto the infinitives.
She was a bit shakier on the infinitives because she kept omitting the 'to' in her sentences. I asked her to list some things that she doesn't like to do. She admitted that she doesn't like to wash dishes, go to bed early, nor wake up early.
By the end of the lesson, she was giving her answers in gerund and infinitive form with much more confidence. So we used the remainder of the time to get through the questions from routine 1, and then wrapped the lesson up with a new one point.
This is a great lesson to get some rapport with students through sharing bad habits. Doing so while practicing grammatically correct contexts also makes discussing what we can't help but love to do educational!
I had an over-excited student at Smith's School of Kyobashi this afternoon. Perhaps his mood had something to do with the beautifully bright sunny weather outside. Either way, he was geared up into study mode and ready to learn.
We first reviewed his previous one point, his example being, "When I was 10 years old, I wanted to become an English singer but I couldn't because my English wasn't good enough."
His item today would be the gerunds and infinitives lesson. I noticed in previous lessons that differentiating between the two was a bit of a problem for him so this was the perfect way to engrave the grammatical differences into his mind. We started out by taking turns asking what the other liked to do on the weekends, in summer, and at home. He revealed that he liked going to jazz clubs on the weekends. This is where he began to make mistakes in the grammar, answering with, "I like go to the jazz club on the weekends." I gave him a few examples on the different grammar points and then allowed him to have a chance to correct his own mistakes. He made it halfway before I helped him perfect the sentence and then moved onto another example.
By the end of the lesson, he was making very few mistakes on gerunds and infinitives, and the ones that did slip by him he corrected on his own after a brief pause. This was certainly a beneficial lesson for his needs as an English student.
Post a Comment