Sunday, May 25, 2014
POONJAR BLOG: സംസ്ഥാന സിലബസിന്റെ മേന്മകള് തിരിച്ചറിയുക ..
POONJAR BLOG: സംസ്ഥാന സിലബസിന്റെ മേന്മകള് തിരിച്ചറിയുക ..: അടുത്തനാളില് മലയോരമേഖലയിലെ ഒരു വീട്ടില്നിന്നുണ്ടായ ഒരനുഭവം.. അച്ഛനും അമ്മയും കൂലിപ്പണിയെടുത്ത് കുടുംബം പുലര്ത്തുന്നു. മൂന്നു സ...
Thursday, May 15, 2014
A great Cheat-Sheet for mastering English Tense
Dear Teachers,
I think it would be nice if we could include a "learn grammar" link on our site's home page, alongside the links for various classes. You sure must have seen sites like englishpage.com.
I think there is no point in having separate packages for bright and weak students. If our idea is to keep things simple, why split it into easy and hard? Everything gets a bit harder as we move along; we should just focus on getting the basics right. A more practical approach, I think, would be to have separate material for UP, HS and HSS.
I'm sending you, for your feedback, a pdf of a cheat-sheet I prepared for explaining English tense to my students. (The title is intentionally flashy; the kids do hate tense and grammar, after all ;-) When I attempted teaching tense, I found it nearly impossible to sustain their interest and attention as I explained the 12 tenses individually.
So I tried an alternate method - first I would explain the three SIMPLE TENSES in one go, and then introduce the rest of the tenses as the THREE ASPECTS. I have found it to be a more intuitive way to explain tenses. I just tell them that one aspect is for actions in a complete state (PERFECT), another for actions in an incomplete state (PROGRESSIVE) and the third for actions in a prolonged state of continuity (PERFECT PROGRESSIVE). I found it better to avoid the term continous tense, because students tend to confuse it with the perfect continuous tense which actually shows continuity.
I could explain it all in an hour, without having to write down the "Subj.+ aux + verb + @#$!... " formulas for each. I put all these points down on print and give them photocopies. I added quiet a few sample sentences for each tense to illustrate my point. The students tend to grasp the idea better using this method. Then I included other things like irregular verbs and Auxiliaries. Then added a reference chart for passive voice and interrogative sentences, on the last page.
It's a bit confusing to the uninitiated learner. But after a few weeks of refering back to it in between regular lessons, they would get the idea and then, each item on the cheat sheet would become handy as a memory aid and reference chart. At least, I hope so.
I would value your feedback a lot.
Regards,
Anoop MS
Santhigiri Vidyabhavan HSS
Tvm
I think it would be nice if we could include a "learn grammar" link on our site's home page, alongside the links for various classes. You sure must have seen sites like englishpage.com.
I think there is no point in having separate packages for bright and weak students. If our idea is to keep things simple, why split it into easy and hard? Everything gets a bit harder as we move along; we should just focus on getting the basics right. A more practical approach, I think, would be to have separate material for UP, HS and HSS.
I'm sending you, for your feedback, a pdf of a cheat-sheet I prepared for explaining English tense to my students. (The title is intentionally flashy; the kids do hate tense and grammar, after all ;-) When I attempted teaching tense, I found it nearly impossible to sustain their interest and attention as I explained the 12 tenses individually.
So I tried an alternate method - first I would explain the three SIMPLE TENSES in one go, and then introduce the rest of the tenses as the THREE ASPECTS. I have found it to be a more intuitive way to explain tenses. I just tell them that one aspect is for actions in a complete state (PERFECT), another for actions in an incomplete state (PROGRESSIVE) and the third for actions in a prolonged state of continuity (PERFECT PROGRESSIVE). I found it better to avoid the term continous tense, because students tend to confuse it with the perfect continuous tense which actually shows continuity.
I could explain it all in an hour, without having to write down the "Subj.+ aux + verb + @#$!... " formulas for each. I put all these points down on print and give them photocopies. I added quiet a few sample sentences for each tense to illustrate my point. The students tend to grasp the idea better using this method. Then I included other things like irregular verbs and Auxiliaries. Then added a reference chart for passive voice and interrogative sentences, on the last page.
It's a bit confusing to the uninitiated learner. But after a few weeks of refering back to it in between regular lessons, they would get the idea and then, each item on the cheat sheet would become handy as a memory aid and reference chart. At least, I hope so.
I would value your feedback a lot.
Regards,
Anoop MS
Santhigiri Vidyabhavan HSS
Tvm
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Monday, May 05, 2014
Please tell others about English Blog
Dear Sir / Madam / Parents / Students,
English Blog was started on 5th September 2011. Since then English Blog
has been providing study materials for Kerala Syllabus classes
5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and 12. We have also tried to include materials for Std.
1,2,3 and 4 (though not successful). We were one of the first of
educational blogs that published SCERT First Term and Second Term
question bank in 2011. SCERT First Term question bank was password
protected yet we made it available for the general public when the
time of secrecy was over. Thus we started providing study materials for
Kerala Syllabus Malayalam, Hindi, Social Science, Physics, Chemistry,
Biology, Maths and I.T.other than English.
It is 2 years and 8 months now..... What made me write this post is the
surprising fact that 95% of the English Teachers of our state do not
know that there exists such a blog for their help. I realised this when I
went to the valuation camp at Kottayam, this year. There were around 200
teachers there but not more than 15 knew about English Blog !!!!!!!!!
From a person who visited all the valuation camps I came to know that
English Blog is popular in some northern districts like Malappuram and Palakkad.. From the rest of
the districts very few enquired about it.
What adds to my surprise is the reality that if an English teacher
searches something related to any of the chapters in our English Texts,
the Google will display English Blog in the first 10 search results.
This being the fact if there are a huge number of English teachers who
do not know about the existence of such a blog for them. That means,
either they don't search for materials in the internet or they are
indifferent to such a blog.
Then the question arises... Who are we blogging for ? What is the use of running such a blog spending money from my pocket ?
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