Moving Up from ” I Made

Tea” to” I made myself a

nice, hot sandwich of low-
fat blue cheese because I
was starving”
9 February 2015Games, Grammar and Exercises, Lesson Plan:
Intermediate, Writingadjectives, fun, games, grammar, methodology, order of adjectives, writing
Subtitle:

Improving Writing Skills: how to move up from the Elementary

to the Intermediate Level using Adjectives.

If you are a teacher you would agree with me that helping

students move from an

Elementary Level to an Intermediate one takes time and
practice. One does not acquire the level in one day, you need to
go step by step and you’ll need to climb all the stairs to be
successful, there is no lift here.

When I mark their compositions some students find it difficult to

understand why a composition with almost no mistakes
deserves a Pass whereas another one with more “red” ink gets
a better mark. Although I explain to them that you’re not only
marked for grammatical mistakes and they seem to understand
I thought it might be a good idea to do an experiment so that
they could clearly see my point.
The little experiment was carried out during the last 20 minutes
of the lesson after having dedicated most of the lesson to
working with adjectives. The aim was letting the student see for
themselves the difference, in terms of adequacy, between two
or three grammatically correct sentences by voting on the best
one. By letting them be the judges of the best sentence, they
also become aware of why essays with no mistakes might score
significantly higher or lower.

Before starting with the activities dedicated to Adjectives, I told

my students that my aim on that day was to improve their
writing skills to help them move from an Elementary Level to an
Intermediate one. In my opinion, this bit of information before
starting is essential to get their full attention!

Blog de Cristina is also on Facebook. Click to follow!

STEP 1. ORDER OF THE ADJECTIVES

Although not all grammarians agree on the order of the

adjectives and the rules for adjective order are quite
complicated, it is necessary to give them some kind of order
they can stick to. I always use this sentence to help them
remember

Important points:
1. Don’t overuse adjectives. While having two adjectives before
a noun sounds natural, more than three would have the opposite
effect.

2. Purpose adjectives go just before the noun: riding boots

( boots for riding), sleeping bags (bags for sleeping).

3. Numbers go before adjectives: three huge houses.

STEP 2. USING STRONG/EXTREME ADJECTIVES

Isn’t it true that when you cross out things like very furious,
students invariably ask … but, “why can’t you say very
furious??”

1. I find it important to see the before and the after. So, prior to
beginning with step 1, show them an example of what they
normally write, well, a bit exaggerated maybe .

Last week I went to a very big beach. It was very hot and I
was very angry because I couldn’t find a place to put my towel
as it was very crowded. Finally, I saw one of my best friends
and I managed to squeeze in next to her. We went for a walk but
after half an hour I was very tired and very hungry so I
bought a sandwich, but it tasted very bad. Oh My God !!!

1. Brainstorm extreme adjectives like angry-furious, small-tiny,

big-enormous, dirty-filthy, happy-delighted, sure-positive…etc.

2. Point out you cannot use very with these adjectives, but
“absolutely” or “really” -among others.

3. Practising intonation with extreme adjectives in dialogues is

always an enjoyable activity! Even more fun if you give them the
card and get them moving around the class and talking to
different people. For this activity, I always use this handout
from onestopenglish.com

4. That might be a good time to display the text above again so

that they improve it using extreme adjectives.

STEP 3. WRITING GAME

Before the game: Write down on slips of papers, verbs that they
have recently studied. For this exercise, I chose verbs with
dependent prepositions. Put them in a bag or envelope.

Explain that this writing exercise is going to be a competition,

where only sentences without grammatical mistakes are going
to be shortlisted. These sentences will be read aloud and
students will vote for the best one taking into account the
length of the sentence, the use of adjectives before the noun
and also the use of extreme adjectives

1. Students work in pairs competing for points against the other

students in the class.

2. From the bag, ask a student -the innocent hand-to pull out a
slip of paper containing a verb in the infinitive form.

3. Students have 2 minutes to write a good sentence containing

the verb.

4. Quickly correct mistakes and put a tick to the ones being

shortlisted.

5. Sentences are read aloud for students to choose the best

one, which is awarded one point. The pair with the highest
number of points wins.

At some point during the game, I make a point of telling

students once again to reflect on why they feel some sentences
are intuitively better.
Hope you find it useful!