Friday, June 6, 2014

Play, Blow, Break, Split, Run, Fly, Fall, Light

I am a big fan of vocabulary building, so I am always looking for ways to squeeze a little extra vocabulary into any class.  This is a great lesson for any level, primarily to illustrate how single words in English can have several  meanings. This particular activity ties in well to Picturing English as it appeals very much to the visual language learner.  

You could also use this activity in a grammar class.  Students can ask each other questions using the vocabulary. Blow, break, split, run, fly, fall, and light are irregular verb forms. Play is a regular verb that ends with a "y" but it's preceded by a vowel. The spelling of the past tense or past participle, then, is "played", not "plaied." You can use the video as an opportunity to review a small set of irregular verbs plus their past tense and participial forms. In addition, the students get to see how these irregular verbs come up in every day life and why it's a good idea to learn them.