English Proficiency Programme

Exercise Session

Exercise sessions in the schedule typically make reference to sentence structures primarily and also a reference to word families. The issue of syntax is at the focus here and construction of sentences in that specific structure is the real lesson. Words of the referred family are merely used as a vehicle to keep the exercise moving and also to make one round of use of the common words that came about earlier in a word family.

In this exercise, since we intend to stress on a particular theme of syntax, it is better to keep the students relaxed on the question of word-meanings. Besides, every student need not know and remember the meaning of every word that appeared in every 'family'. The question arises regarding the subset of words which must be well-known to the entire class. Due to these reasons, a shortlisting of "family" words comes handy for this activity.

The process:

• Keep the short list of the concerned word family displayed.
• First, draw the attention of the entire class about the short list and alert them that everybody must know the meaning of these words clearly. In case of any gap of knowledge, this is the time to ask and note down the meanings.
• Call a student (in turn) to the board and ask him/her to make a sentence of the required 'type' with a word from the list displayed. [Some exercises stipulate multiple related sentences in a group.] Caution on your part is to be exercised in excluding words, which are modified forms of verbs that do not fit the required 'type' of sentences, e.g. "met" in Present Indefinite Exercise.
• Next, others in the class are asked if the sentence is correct. If correct, they are to interpret its meaning. If wrong, they are to advise correction.
• If the sentence is not of the stipulated 'type' but otherwise grammatically right, then appreciate that credit but ask the student to produce another sentence in the 'type' required.
• During the exercise, you get ample opportunity to contribute in several aspects of learning - cursive writing, spelling, pronunciation, meaning, usage - in full earnest of pedagogy.
• Once this is over, get the whole thing erased from the board, send this student back to his/her seat and continue the exercise with another student and another word of the short list displayed.

You would notice that words of a family appear together four times in the course. First, at the time of the delivery of the word family. Next, they come again very soon (next week/day) during the practice session. They appear third time at the time of dictation - after a number of word families are studied and 'practised'. Finally, a subset of the family words, the common/easy ones among them, appear together in this 'exercise' session, even though the focus in this activity is on 'syntax'. With this repeated association, most students in the class are likely to capture the rough correlation between spelling and pronunciation.