AZAR GRAMMAR SERIES expansion activities beginning level 3rd edition

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition Chapter 3: Using the Simple Present Activity: Developing a Character Page 1 of 1 Materials needed: Pictures of interesting people, preferably withi

Expansion Activities

written by Maria Spelleri

Beginning Level

Azar Grammar Series: Basic English Grammar, 3rd edition

Expansion Activities are interactive tasks and games that focus on the grammar covered in the tables of contents of the Azar textbooks or any comparable syllabus You may download, reproduce and adapt the material to suit your classroom needs

Chapter 1—Using Be

Categories

Chapter 2—Using Be and Have

Find the Answer

Chapter 3—Using the Simple Present

Developing a Character

Chapter 4—Using the Present Progressive

Teacher—You're Wrong!

Chapter 5—Talking about the Present

Draw the Picture

Blind Copying

Chapter 6—Nouns and Pronouns

Adjective-Noun Mime

Chapter 7—Count and Noncount Nouns

Shopping for a Recipe

Chapter 8—Expressing Past Time, Part 1

Family Tree

Chapter 9—Expressing Past Time, Part 2

Narrating a Movie Scene

What's going to happen next?

Chapter 12—Modals, Part 1: Expressing Ability

Job Interview Questions

Chapter 13—Modals, Part 2: Advice, Necessity, Requests, Suggestions

Advice, Necessity, Requests, Suggestions

Chapter 14—Nouns and Modifiers

Modifier Mad Lib

Chapter 15—Possessives

Whose are these?

Chapter 16—Making Comparisons

Creative Comparisons

Chapter 1: Using Be

Activity: Categories

Page 1 of 1

Materials needed: Game cards—one card per pair of students

(See sample cards following.) It isn’t necessary to have a

completely different card for each pair of students; it’s OK to

have one or two overlapping categories on each card

Description: Give each pair or group of three students a

grid/game card and make sure they understand their categories

Teams race against each other to complete their grid with a

singular noun that fits in each category For example, if the

category is “machine,” the team might fill their category with the

words “coffee maker,” “TV,” “car,” “washing machine,”

“forklift,” “pencil sharpener.”

Set a time limit depending on the level of your class so that some people might complete their cards, but others won’t At the limit, shout “Time’s up!” and ask everyone to put their pencils down Teams with completed cards get to go first They need to check their answers with the rest

of the class by making statements like “A coffee maker is a machine,” “A car is a machine,” etc The teacher can encourage variety by writing on the board the different ways students can check their answers:

“A car is a machine.”

“A car, a washing machine, and a coffee maker are machines.”

“Coffee makers are machines.” [With common nouns only, not with proper or unique

nouns, like “jazz music”]

“London is a city.” [No article with proper nouns]

The students who have not completed their cards can ask for help from other pairs They can announce which category they need help with, and other students can offer advice using the target language, like “Turtles are pets,” or “Antarctica is a continent.”

In addition, teams can challenge each other by saying things like “Tomatoes aren’t vegetables! They’re fruit!”

Here are some other categories for making game cards Be sure to spread out the proper nouns among various cards:

house pet, musical instrument, wild animal, form of transportation, movie, month, season,

language, city, country, vegetable, fruit, sport, drink, insect, fish, color, number, continent

electronic device, teacher, relative, movie stars, kinds of music, part of the body, class/course (English, math, chemistry, etc.), object in space (planet, star, satellite, sun, comet, etc.)

Chapter 2: Using Be and Have

Activity: Find the Answer

Materials needed: Slips of papers with questions on some and answers on others The questions

should be on one color slip and the answers on a different color slip Be careful to have only one possible answer to each question

Description: First, students should take a minute to read their slip and

commit their question or their answer to memory

Next, have all the students mingle and the students with question slips

ask (not read!) their questions to those students who have answer slips,

trying to find the answer that fits their questions Students with answer

slips don’t have to wait to be approached, however; they can state their

answer to those with questions!

When students have found their match, they pair off, stand to the side, and wait for everyone to finish before orally checking in logical order: question answer, next question answer, etc Sample Questions and Answers (enough for 24 students):

1 Who’s that woman? She’s my aunt

2 What’s that? That’s my pet snake

3 Where is your office? It’s on Third Street

4 Are you sick? No, I’m just sleepy

5 Is your umbrella in the car? No, it’s at home

6 Is your father in Egypt? Yes, he is

7 Are we late? No, you aren’t

8 Is Nina your friend? Yes, she is

9 Where are you? I’m in my car

10 Where are your books? They’re in my office

11 Who are those people? They’re my neighbors

12 Are your shoes dirty? No, they aren’t

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3: Using the Simple Present

Activity: Developing a Character

Page 1 of 1

Materials needed: Pictures of interesting people, preferably within a context

Some sample pictures are linked here, but pictures can be found in magazines

and in photography and history texts

Description: Tell students that when authors write books or screenplay

writers write movies, they need to make their characters come alive This

means they create entire lives for their characters; they give them friends,

families, childhoods, hobbies, work, likes and dislikes, habits, styles of

dressing, and other things that may not be important to the story, but help the

character become a “real person.”

In this activity, the students will create a character and breathe life into him or her

Assign each pair or group a photo of a person Using the simple present tense, students are to imagine a life for this person As a variation on this activity, use a limited number of pictures so that at least two groups have the same picture Afterwards, you can compare the different “lives” each group created for the same picture

Example:

This is Angie She’s 26 years old and single She lives in New York

City She lives in an apartment, and she has a roommate Angie works in a kitchen store, but she doesn’t like her job She wants to be a rock star Every Saturday, she sings with a band She is a good singer She sometimes colors her hair orange Angie has a boyfriend, Ryan He is a lawyer He wants to marry her, but she doesn’t want to get married right now She wants to be famous She has a little brother Her brother lives with her parents Angie calls him a lot Sometimes, she takes her brother out for lunch

Completed work can be displayed together with the picture, or students can read/present to the

class

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3: Using the Simple Present

Activity: Developing a Character

http://www.newseagles.com/portfolio/portrait-01.html (lots of people under “portraits”)

http://www.pbase.com/chris67/130_interesting_people (collection of people pics)

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4: Using the Present Progressive

Activity: Teacher – You’re Wrong!

Page 1 of 1

Materials needed: A variety of pictures showing activity things

that students can talk about as happening now Each photo should have

at least four things that “are happening” now Some sample pictures

are linked below, but pictures can easily be found in magazines

Description: Show the class a picture and begin to describe what is

happening in the picture, using the present progressive At some point, describe something that isn’t true When the students hear something that isn’t happening, they should shout out or raise their hand and use the negative present progressive to state the error, followed by a positive statement, if possible

For example: “The man isn’t walking his dog He is walking a pig!”

It’s important to plan in advance what you want to say about each picture, as well as what false statement you want to make Not having to search or stumble for things to say will make the activity go more smoothly

Also, this activity requires thinking of “happening now” from a different perspective A

deceptively simple photo of a man and woman walking and talking in a park may, at first glance, seem to have two or three progressive elements at most

But in fact:

1 They are walking

2 The woman is talking

3 The man is listening to the woman

4 The man is smiling

5 The woman is moving her hands

6 The woman’s hair is blowing

7 The sun is shining

8 The woman is looking at the man

9 The man is wearing brown pants and a hat

10 The woman is wearing a long skirt

11 The woman is carrying a purse

12 The man is touching his tie

13 They are enjoying themselves

14 They are falling in love

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4: Using the Present Progressive

Activity: Teacher – You’re Wrong!

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5: Talking About the Present

Activity: Draw this Picture

Materials needed: One or several “Still Life” type paintings with many objects As an

alternative to a still life, an interior design photo of a room in a house, or a home exterior

Some linked examples are provided below Also needed: blank paper for drawing and

pencils

Description: Students work in pairs One student has the picture/photo and describes the

scene using primarily the target language of “there is/there are” and prepositions of

location The second student tries to recreate the picture by drawing it as his partner

describes

Example of the language used:

A: “There is a big, round table in the middle of the picture There’s a basket in the center

of the table There are a lot of apples in the basket Under the table, on the left side,

there’s a dog A white dog with black spots.”

B: “Is the dog sitting or standing?”

A: “It’s asleep.”

B: “Is there anything else on the table?”

A: “Yes There is a blue bottle, like a wine bottle It’s next to the basket And there are

some forks on the table.”

B: “Where are they?”

A: “The forks are in front of the basket.”

When the student has done his or her best to complete the drawing, the drawing should be

compared to the original How close did they come in their recreation?

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5: Talking About the Present

Activity: Blind Copying

Materials needed: Create pairs of bags each containing

6-9 common objects Each pair of bags must contain the same

items although variations in details are OK Some ideas for

objects that are easy to find multiples of are cups, saucers,

forks, spoons, napkins, match boxes, fruit, canned or dried

food, desk items like rolls of tape, erasers, paper clips,

pencils, rulers, calculators, staplers, other common items like paperback books, wood or

plastic blocks, toy cars, Lego pieces, play money, other small plastic toys, personal items

like band-aids, nail clippers, toothpaste, combs, bottles of vitamins or aspirin, etc

Description: In this pair activity, students sit back to back with a desk surface in front of

each of them Each student in the pair has a matched bag of items The first student

empties his items on the desk Instruct the first student to quickly arrange the items in a

creative and complicated manner Some objects might be stacked, balanced, placed in a

circle, crossed, stood upside down, placed one inside the other, etc

Now, the first student instructs the second student to arrange his or her items so that the

two arrangements will look identical

Example:

Student 1: Put the book in the middle of the desk Put the cup on the book Put the pencil

on the right side of the book

Student 2: Up and down the book? Or pointing out?

Student 1: The pencil is in a line with the book Now, put the rubber band on the left side

of the book and open it like a circle Put the penny in the circle In the cup, put the

scissors

Student 2: Do the scissors point up or down?

When the second student believes the second arrangement is complete, the student can

describe back to the first student what the copied arrangement looks like to confirm they

are the same Finally, the students should turn around and see what they have

accomplished together

Note: Penny Ur has a similar activity in her book Grammar Practice Activities

(Cambridge University Press) in which Lego blocks or Cuisenaire Rods are used

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6: Nouns and Pronouns

Activity: Adjective-Noun Mime

Materials needed: Index cards cut into quarters, or slips of papers On each slip, write one of the

noun phrases below Put them in a bag, hat, etc

Description: In this activity, students mime noun phrases consisting of an

adjective and a noun Before starting the activity, write all the possible answers

on the board Then ask the first student to select a card at random The student needs to mime the selected noun phrase while the rest of the class guesses Note that the phrases consisting of people will often require the student to think about both the adjective and the noun For example, how will a student’s portrayal of an angry boss be different from a portrayal of an angry mother? Or how will they portray the difference between a sad athlete and a healthy athlete?

To increase language use, omit the article on the board but require students to use it in their guesses

an old man a happy boy

a rich woman a serious teacher

a lazy student a worried mother

a hungry policeman a tired student

a famous actor a healthy athlete

an angry boss an angry mother

an intelligent author a nervous driver

a dangerous driver a poor man

a sad athlete a busy teacher

a kind policeman a tired author

a sour lemon a wonderful smell

a ripe apple a dirty face

a difficult math problem a hot cup of coffee

a boring movie an interesting book

a beautiful painting a bright light

an old car a new dress

a fresh salad a delicious cake

a quiet cat a noisy video game

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 7: Count and Noncount Nouns

Activity: Shopping for a Recipe

Materials needed: None

Description: In pairs or groups of three, students think of a recipe

for something they want to cook/prepare If possible, match students with similar ethnic backgrounds because it is easier for them to come up with a common food If students are of different backgrounds, and they can’t agree on a recipe, suggest an omelet, a green salad, or a sub sandwich

When students agree on a recipe to prepare, one person in the pair/group acts as a scribe to write down the ingredients and the measurements of the ingredients they will need Check them at this point to make sure they have the vocabulary they need for things like “a pinch,” “teaspoon,”

“tablespoon,” “slice,” etc

Next, instruct the class that they now have to prepare a shopping list to purchase the ingredients they will need On this list, they should include the retail packaging/measurement of the item For example, the recipe may call for one teaspoon of salt, and the shopping list would then

include a box of salt If the recipe requires two cups of milk, the shopping list would include a carton/container/gallon of milk A different scribe should take over for this part, writing items in the list

To close this activity, write a creative dialogue about the recipe, the shopping list, and what is needed One possible scenario: one person is going to the store and the other person is telling him or her what they need to buy This scenario will use the packaging/measurement vocabulary Another dialogue scenario is a person passing on a special family recipe to another This will utilize smaller units of measure like “a cup of.” On the board, write the language that you would like the students to incorporate like “How much/many?” “a little/a few,” and “some.”

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition

Chapter 8: Expressing Past Time, Part 1

Activity: Family Tree

Materials needed: Blank paper for drawing

Description: This activity might best be done for homework, with results discussed in class

Demonstrate to the class how to draw a simple family tree You may even want to make a

template that the students can customize

Students draw a family tree that has at least parts of three generations Each

“entry” on the tree should have either a name or relationship (“Myriam Betel”

or “Grandma”) Ask students to think of things to say about each person on the tree that can be put in the past tense This doesn’t mean the person has to be deceased It can be “got married” “was born” “lived in” “went to school,”

“worked,” “won,” “wrote,” etc Each entry should also include two to four words maximum that will remind the student of something the student wants to say about the person For example, “cruise ship” might remind the student to say “My grandfather was a chef on a cruise ship,” or “farm,” “We always spent summers on my Aunt Georgia’s farm in X.”

When the trees are complete, students share them with a partner Tell students to bring in any related family photos to share with their partner Partners should be encouraged to ask questions

For an activity the entire class can share, ask students to choose one relative or ancestor to

“honor.” They will prepare and give a brief biographical presentation about this person, using as many past tense verbs as they can Tell the students to think of two or three interesting or special things about this person to illustrate why he or she was chosen If they have a photograph, so much the better!

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition Chapter 9: Expressing Past Time, Part 2

Materials needed: A previously chosen scene or two from a

movie, a device for viewing in class, a worksheet

Description: Pick a scene from a movie that the students

would be able to watch and narrate It does not have to have a

lot of action although there have to be changes in action in

the scene

For example, “The girl opened the door She entered the house She looked all around

The floors were dirty The furniture was dusty She put down her purse.” and so on

Variation 1: Prepare a worksheet of cloze sentences that follow the action and

description in the story Play the scene or part of the scene (depending on the level of

your students), stop the movie, and ask students to complete the worksheet with the

correct past tense verbs

Variation 2: Write on the board a list of base-form verbs and ask students to use those

verbs, changing them to the past, to describewhat they saw This can be done as a group,

each person adding a bit more

Variation 3: In pairs, students write a paragraph telling the story Or, students can

number their papers from 1-5 or 1-8, and think of a sentence for each number (Using

fewer numbers forces them to think of the key elements of a good summary Using more

numbers encourages them to analyze details and use more past tense verbs

Basic English Grammar, 3rd Edition Chapter 9: Expressing Past Time, Part 2 Activity: Alibi

Page 1 of 2

Materials needed: None

Description: The purpose of this activity is for two separate groups of students to ask questions

of two “suspects” and try to break their alibis

First, pre-plan a crime story Details are not necessary; just a bare sketch will

do Select two students to be the suspects and tell the class the story

For example: “Last night, sometime between 9:00 P.M and 11:30 P.M., two

people robbed the bank at the corner of Main Street and Lemon Avenue The

security camera shows two suspects, well-disguised, turning off the security

system and blowing a hole in the safe.”

At this point, send the two students who are your suspects out of the room Together, they are to plan an alibi for each other where they were together, what they were doing, what they were wearing, etc., during the time in question The alibi should be as detailed as possible: if in a restaurant, what they were eating; if driving, who was driving, where they were going, what time they left, etc

Divide the remaining students into two groups of detectives sitting on separate sides of the

classroom These two groups should write down questions they plan on asking the suspects Questions could include: “Where were you last night between 9 and 11? What were you doing? Who was with you? What were you wearing? How was the weather?”

After the students (especially the two suspects) have enough time to plan, bring the two suspects back in the classroom with a little drama For example:

“OK, detectives, we’ve picked up the two suspects Here they are You go into the first

interrogation room, and you go into the second interrogation room Detectives, when you are finished interrogating your suspects, switch Ask them the same questions and see if they give the same answers If they don’t, we’ll know they are lying!”

Now each group of students begins to question a suspect Instruct your groups of detectives not

to interrogate too loudly, or the suspects will overhear the questions and answers and be

forewarned when they switch groups At least one person in the group should take notes of the suspect’s responses When finished, the suspects should get up and switch interrogation groups The student detectives now interrogate the second suspect, trying to catch him or her in a

response that is different from the first student’s