Teaching the passive voice to low level students

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BelindaBee
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Joined: 29 Sep 2011, 08:43
Status: Trainee Teacher

Teaching the passive voice to low level students

Unread post by BelindaBee »

Hello Lucy,
Thank you for your feedback. I am following your suggestion and sending you what I have come up with for the Study stage of this lesson plan:


Study stage:
For the study stage, we can post two pictures on the board with a sentence next to it:

1) Picture of a farmer milking his cows: ‘The farmer milks his cows at 5 am every morning.’
2) Picture of cows with full pails of milk next to her: ‘The cows are milked at 5 am every morning.

Now we highlight the differences between the two sentences:

Active:
‘The farmer milks his cow at 5am every morning.’
S V Ob

Passive:
‘The cow is milked (by the farmer) at 5am every morning.’
S V Ob

Next we write the form on the board: auxiliary verb ‘be’ + past participle.

Here we can add, to indicate that the object is not important:

‘The cow is milked by the farmer at 5 am every morning’ = ‘The cow is milked at 5 am every morning.’

We can also give them the past simple form of the passive voice:

‘Yesterday the farmer milked his cow at 5 am.’ (Active voice.)

‘Yesterday the cow was milked at 5 am. (Passive voice.)

Form: was/were + past participle.

To check the students’ understanding, activities in the study stage for low level students can be giving a list of active and passive sentences and having the students identify them correctly.

Ex.: ‘The chicken ate the corn: active or passive?
‘The chicken was eaten by the farmer and his family’: active or passive?Etc.

I look forward to your comments, corrections and suggestions.

Best regards,

Belinda
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Lucy
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Joined: 13 Jan 2004, 15:09
Status: Teacher Trainer

Re: Teaching the passive voice to low level students

Unread post by Lucy »

Hi Belinda,

I've copied your question and inserted my comments. You'll see them below.

Lucy

Study stage:
For the study stage, we can post two pictures on the board with a sentence next to it:

1) Picture of a farmer milking his cows: ‘The farmer milks his cows at 5 am every morning.’
2) Picture of cows with full pails of milk next to her: ‘The cows are milked at 5 am every morning.

I can see how this would work but the choice of subject is unusual. Low level students rarely discuss pails, milking, etc.
Now we highlight the differences between the two sentences:

Active:
‘The farmer milks his cow at 5am every morning.’
S V Ob

Passive:
‘The cow is milked (by the farmer) at 5am every morning.’
S V Ob

I don’t think your grammatical structures are correct.

Next we write the form on the board: auxiliary verb ‘be’ + past participle.

Could you elicit this from the students rather than just giving it to them?

Here we can add, to indicate that the object is not important:

‘The cow is milked by the farmer at 5 am every morning’ = ‘The cow is milked at 5 am every morning.’

This is good

We can also give them the past simple form of the passive voice: rather than giving it, can you elicit it from students?

‘Yesterday the farmer milked his cow at 5 am.’ (Active voice.)

‘Yesterday the cow was milked at 5 am. (Passive voice.)

Form: was/were + past participle.

To check the students’ understanding, activities in the study stage for low level students can be giving a list of active and passive sentences and having the students identify them correctly.

Ex.: ‘The chicken ate the corn: active or passive?
‘The chicken was eaten by the farmer and his family’: active or passive? Etc.

This is a good activity
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