To Be – Possessive Adjectives (This/That/These/Those) / Adjectives

To Be – Possessive Adjectives (This/That/These/Those) / Adjectives

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Daily Grammar Sentences

Instructions:  Give the student the sentences in the second column (Sentences to be Corrected).  Students write corrected sentences and turn them in to the teacher to be checked.

Theme: Home	Sentences to be Corrected	Corrected Sentences
Monday	This is me house. Are those you parents? These is not my toys.	This is my house. Are those your parents? These aren't my toys.
Tuesday	That room is no clean. Is this you cat? Those is its kittens.	That room isn't clean. Is this your cat? Those are her kittens.
Wednesday	These is my sisters. Is that they is room? These isn't for her.	Those are my sisters. Is that their room? These aren't for her.
Thursday	This is us family room. Is this like you T.V.? This are not a fun game.	This is our family room. Is this like your T.V.? This isn't a fun game.
Friday	Are these you is brother's keys? Those isn't his keys. That is me little brother.	Are these your brother's keys? Those aren't his keys. That is my little brother.

Assessment can be made on three levels in Daily Grammar Sentences:

1. Did the student recognize the mistake?
2. Can they fix it?
3. Can they produce a sentence using that grammar point in free speech?

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Activity
My House
Type of Activity:  Independent
Materials Needed:  Drawing paper, markers, crayons, pencil, vocabulary cards of household items and members of the family
Directions for student:
Draw a picture of your room and label the items:  This is my bed.  These are my books.  This is my brown dog.
Do the same for other rooms in your house.  To whom do these things belong?

(Note to teacher:  Before expanding this activity to other rooms, make sure students know how to use ‘s to show ownership – my sister’s bed)

Assessment:   Written, based on the quality of sentences produced.

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Grammar Explanation

The system of auxiliary verbs is often one of the most difficult areas for learners to perfect, especially if their native language does not involve conjugations for different cases (e.g. many Asian languages).
The words this and that (plural these and those) is also sometimes a difficult concept because of different categorizations in the native language (e.g. Japanese: "far" objects have two categories - direct and indirect reference)
Often it is helpful to show the students a chart of the conjugations:
 

	singular	plural
near	This is	These are
far	That is	Those are

Key points to understand are the different pronouns and the different forms of the verb to be.  Often this is very difficult to do without referring to the learner's native language.  If the learner has difficulty understanding, ideally, the teacher should find another native speaker of that language (preferably another student) to explain it.
Possessive adjectives should be linked to the subject pronouns:
 

	singular	plural
first person	I - my	we - our
second person	you - your	you - your
third person	he - his she - her it - its	they - their

Adjectives
One relatively simple category to start with is colors.

This is blue.
That is red.

Possessive adjectives must be linked to personal objects:

This is my bag.
That is her chair.

They can be expanded with other adjectives:

Those are her new pencils.
These are our red markers.

Negation is straightforward:

This isn't my desk.
Those aren't your books.

Questions
It may be useful to go over "What is this/that?" before yes/no questions.
5Ws - What
Question words are placed at the beginning, before the auxiliary.  Note that, as in a yes/no question, the auxiliary is before the rest of the sentence.
What is this?  What is that?
What are these?  What are those?
Yes/No questions
These are formed by putting the auxiliary verb at the beginning of the sentence.

Is this your eraser?
Are those your books?

Of course the same effect can be achieved by giving the sentence a rising intonation:

That is my chair?