yatcb lesson plans sentence blocks without function words

Verb Forms Revision
Sentence Blocks – without Function Words

Method:

1.

Follow the same procedure as for Sentence Blocks (p.62). The only difference is that T, or whoever writes
the starting sentence(s) on the board, omits the function words – articles, prepositions, pronouns, etc. The
aim is to make the sentence blocks activity more challenging, making SS supply more of the language
themselves, rather than reading the whole sentence from the board. For example, if the starting sentence
is:
Mark was buying a sandwich when he saw a notice about working in a restaurant.
...the sentence without function words would be:
Mark ____ buying ____ sandwich ____ ____ saw ____ notice ____ working ____ ____ restaurant.
You could leave a gap for the missing function words, as above (which would be easier), or write the
sentence without gaps, like this:
Mark buying sandwich saw notice working restaurant.
T should ensure that SS are clear what the correct sentence is before they start to build each sentence
block. SS may not paraphrase or otherwise change the content words in the sentence. (Or, T may allow
this, to make it easier.) This activity may require more monitoring, checking, and correcting than the
regular sentence blocks activity! If SS produce a sentence that is different to the original one, but it works
grammatically and makes sense, then that is fine, e.g.
Mark was buying a sandwich and saw a notice regarding working at a restaurant.

Tips:

•

This challenge may be better suited to higher-level SS, but of course you could still do it with lower-level
groups. A simple sentence without function words might be:

____ like coffee. (I like coffee.)
WHAT
Or, you could simply write ‘like coffee.’ and elicit the whole sentence.

•

T may need to elicit from SS what function words are before doing this activity. Function words are the
words that make the grammar in the sentence, e.g.
articles

determiners

quantifiers

auxiliary verbs

prepositions

relative clause words

conjunctions

pronouns

verb ‘be’

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