Saturday, September 12, 2020

Relative Clauses with "This is the House that Jack Built"

(TESOL Worksheets--Relative Clauses)

Video link HERE
Google: drive, docs, pub

This is an expansion of a previous post HERE, in which I talked about using "This is the House that Jack Built" to teach relative clauses. 
First I play the video.  I give the students a task, which is "Listen and answer: How is the farmer, related to Jack?"  This is somewhat of a Joke task, since the students can't possibly be expected to answer this (I use it only with classes I have good rapport with).  But it does at least give the students a reason to listen and focus their attention.  Afterwards students check with their partner, and, when they inevitably have trouble answering, I pretend to be exasperated and say, "The answer is the farmer kept the cock that crowed in the morn, That waked the priest all shaven and shorn, That married the man all tattered and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milked the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt, That lay in the house that Jack built..  It's perfectly simple."
We then do a memory game.  Students sit in groups of 4.  In the middle are the cards, stacked in order.  The first student takes the first card and says it.  The second student then takes the next card, and must remember the previous card as well.  Again, it's somewhat of an impossible task, but the students have fun trying.
The second sheet of the worksheet has an exercise where students distinguish between subject relative pronouns and object relative pronouns.  But upon reflection, this was one of my less-inspired ideas, because only "This is the house that Jack built" is using an object relative pronoun.  All the rest are subjects.  So I usually don't bother with the second sheet.  I just put two sentences on the board: "This is the house that Jack built" and "this is the cat that killed the rat" and just use eliciting questions to contrast those two in terms of subject vs. object relative pronouns.
The final task is that in groups the students have to write their own story similar to "This is the house that Jack built", using ever expanding relative clauses.


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