“HANDMADE ENGLISH”Just swap or drop!

A new teaching strategy

by Anna Piermattei and Paola ReggioESOL TeachersOctober 2010

graficol1.xls

How to use and tackle different tenses – present, past, future, conditional - in questions, sentences, negative forms with an absolutely new and innovative approach.

•global system •a rule that is just one page long though it covers 80% most common mistakes•short time – 20 LESSONS

Students will be ready to use their communicative skills much sooner than with any other method.

LESS

GRAMMAR

LOGICAL

MORE

SPEAKING AND WRITING

SOONER

GRAFICO TRIENNIO.xls

Focus is completely different from traditional methods. They introduce tenses one by one (3 years)

LIMIT IN COMMUNICATIONLIMIT IN PRACTICE

•miss the chance to optimize what students are learning•miss the opportunity to easily re-apply it to other tenses

1a media (tot. 90 ore)                                                                                                                                                                                    

Handmade English (20 h.) present/past/future/conditional

dict verbs (5 h) conversation + listening/speaking/writing/reading (65 h.) (thanks-greeting-introducing myself or others - meet new friends - likes and

dislikes - suggest, refuse, accept and arrange something together)

                                                 

2a media (tot. 90 ore)                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

Handmade English (10 h.)

present/past/future/conditional

dictionary and conversation (80 h) + listening/speaking/writing/reading

 (describing people/places, daily routine, weather, shopping, at the table, travelling, talking (ask and answer about present, past, future)

                     

film/songs

3a media (tot. 90 ore)                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

Handmade English (10 h.)

present/past/future/conditional

dictionary and conversation (80 h) + listening/speaking/writing/reading (test ket/pet)

  (conversation games and cards)

more grammar rules (comp/superl, if clause, reported speech, etc.

film/songs

GRAFICO TRIENNIO

We do the opposite:Focus is first on the way auxiliaries work, and then on the tense they are made for.

EASY TO LEARN

4cartellone orizzontale_Layout 1.pdf

Main concept – English auxiliaries just swap or drop.Which are the auxiliaries that “swap”?

(be+ing, have+participle, will+verb, would +verb) Which are the ones that “drop”?

(do, does, did)

(DVD lesson 2- 10 minutes)

Learning strategy - “TPR – Total Physical Response” Render more visible and fun the grammar rule by

representing the rule with the hands and fingers. This enables teachers to make their lessons more fun and

interesting and students to love learning.(DVD Are you kidding?- 6 minutes)

Objectives:

To highly fasten and secure the learning process of English, so as to prepare the groundwork for simple conversation about what has been done or what will be done or what is happening at the moment.

To synthesize in one page all main grammar rules, so that all students will learn more easily and much more time can be devoted to communicative activities.

To let students understand the basic mechanisms of the English language, which apparently no school/method seems to have yet realized or pointed out to students. They change their way of thinking, not only their dictionary or language sounds, into something completely different from the Italian, French or Spanish language. Most of the students who tested this project said at the end ...

“Now I understand how English works!!!” “I’ve got it! And guess what, I can speak!”

BenefitsVery few lessons allow those students who have best mathematical-logical-musical skills to perfectly use all tenses, so they can sooner get to more challenging language activities.

Those who need more time, often complain with other teaching methods because of getting bad marks and think they do not understand or like foreign languages. With this method they get great satisfaction in overcoming different obstacles, so that they feel they know some steps and are slowly going on through others. They feel they are making progress whilst “getting to next level”. TUTOR1.pdf With short specific projects (max. 10 hours) to be carried out at any time of their learning path, they will be able to revise a lot and attain to same skill level of the rest of the class.

Finally, the teacher knows exactly what each student knows and still doesn’t know or remember, so he can work more efficiently to solve individual problems.

TUTOR

Main Steps of the project

1st hour class:to be – to have – will – would

(in order of sequence, forwards and backwards, and then “haphazardly ”)

2nd hour class

Handmade English – The super grammar ruleJust….swap or drop!

3rd hour

Hand practice

4th to 9th hour Choose the tense and the auxiliary

First written exercise in class with teacher supportWHICH AUXILIARY

MODELLO ESER.BREAK

Other exercises by themselves with score and registerREGISTRO

statistiche ausiliari

10th hour class and following ones

Oral practice for 0+0 students TO EAT

TO HAVETO LEAVE

WHICH AUXILIARY

MODELLO ESER.BREAK

REGISTRO

statistiche ausiliari

TO EAT

TO HAVE

TO LEAVE

“HANDMADE ENGLISH”

(DVD achievements 1 -5 minutes)Register

(DVD It works!- 3 minutes)(DVD class ativity- 5 minutes)

(DVD achievements2 – 15 minutes)