Made Up Model Texts for Grammar Lessons

(TESOL Materials--Sources for Model Texts)

[I have previously posted my collection of Articles, Fairy Tales, Jokes, Movies, Picture Books, Poems, Songs, and Youtube Videos as sources for model texts.  But if all else fails, and you just can't find a good model text anywhere, you can always just make up your own.  And below is a collection of all the model texts that I've made up over the years.  Now, caveat lector, some of my model texts aren't very good, but I'll list them all first, and then I'll critique them at the bottom of the post.]

A Few and A Little
* Lesson on "a few" and "a little"--model text

Adjectives

* Adjectives (and 3 noun phrases) to Describe Personality--model text

Adverbs

* Adverbs: Total Physical Response--model text

2nd Conditional

* 2nd Conditional Story--model text

3rd Conditional

* 3rd Conditional Story--model text

Going to

* What am I going to do next year?--model text

* Going To Lesson Plan--model text

Infinitives

* Lesson on Infinitives With and Without "to"--model text

Mixed Conditionals

* Mixed Conditional Story--model text

Modals

* Modals: Can, Should, Must, Have to--model text

* Modal Verb Story--model text

* Schools Rules: Must and Mustn't--model text

More, Less, Fewer

* Presentation for More, Less, Fewer--model text

Passive

* Fortune Teller for Future Passives--model text

* Frankenstein: Passive Voice--model text

* Nonsuch Palace--Past Passive--model text

* Passive Voice with Modals: Test Rules--model text (dictogloss)

Past Forms

* A Trip to the Jungle--Past Verb Forms--model text

Past Perfect

* Past Perfect Dictogloss--model text (dictogloss)

Past Perfect Continuous

* Past Perfect Continuous Dictogloss--model text (dictogloss)

Past Simple

* Regular Past Simple Verbs Pronunciation Lesson--model text

Past Simple versus Present Prefect

* Past Simple versus Present Prefect--model text

Present Continuous for Future Arrangements

* Present Continuous for Future Arrangements: What is my schedule?--model text

Present Perfect

* What have I done this year?--model text

Present Perfect Continuous

* Lesson on Present Perfect and Present Perfect Continuous--model text

Present Simple

* Daily Routines--model text

* Like, Hate, Love + Ving Lesson Plan--model text

Quantifiers

* Quantifiers for Countable and Uncountable Nouns--model text

Questions

* 20 Questions Speaking Lessons--model texts here, here, here and here

Reflexive Pronouns

* Reflexive Pronoun Ghost Story Lesson--model text (taken from a colleague)

Reported Speech

* Reported Speech Worksheet--model text

So and Such

* So Such Lesson--model text

Commentary

I've gone through the trouble of listing all my model texts mostly just to illustrate that it can be easily done.  So remember, if you can't find a good model text anywhere, it's simple enough just to make one up.

That being said, a lot of these are flawed.  The problems with these texts are usually two: firstly, they are not interesting.  Secondly, in a lot of these, I tried to cram in more examples of the grammar point than was natural.

I'll talk bout the first problem first--the fact that these texts are not interesting.  

The best model texts are when the text is an authentic story from the teacher's real-life.

When I was in the teacher training department, I watched an experienced CELTA trainer expertly demonstrate how to use interesting model texts from his own life experience.  All of  his model texts were little short stories about dramatic moments from his own life.  The students would get really involved in the story, and they kept asking him more questions to get more details.  ("What happened next?" "How did you feel?" etc).  In fact, they would be so involved in the context that they would be completely unaware they were in a grammar lesson until he got to the clarification stage.  Which is exactly what he wanted.  Not only did it show the students that the grammar point was part of real-life communication, but it also brought down their resistance to learning grammar.  (If you tell the students at the beginning of class, "today we're going to study grammar", a lot of them will immediately want to tune out.  But if you get them involved in an interesting story, you can keep them engaged for the lesson.)

Now, in his case, he had lived a really interesting life, and he had a lot of interesting anecdotes from his travels.  You or I might not have adventurous lives, but just by virtue of being human, we all have experienced universal human situations--the common drama of life--which are of interest to other humans: a fight with a friend, an embarrassing moment, a time we were scared, a troubled relationship, etc.  The students will be interested in these, because humans are interested in real stories about other people.

By contrast, if the students know that the text is just made up to illustrate a language point, they will be less interested.

When I was on the Delta, I did a lesson on regular past tense pronunciation, in which I used the following manufactured text to put the verbs into context: 

I wanted to make my wife happy, so I decided to make her dinner. I asked her what she wanted

to eat. She answered spaghetti. I hated spaghetti, but I wanted to make her happy.

So I cooked the spaghetti. I planned everything. I started cooking at 4pm. I needed a pot of

water. I waited for the water to get hot, and then I added the spaghetti. I hoped she would like it.

She tasted it, and it she liked it. She was so happy that she kissed me. We enjoyed the dinner

together. She talked about her day, and I listened. We finished dinner at 6pm.

Afterwards, I washed the dishes. My wife helped. Then we walked in the park together. We

looked at the trees. I climbed up one of the trees

Then we returned home. We opened the door and entered the house, and then relaxed on the

sofa. We watched a movie on TV. The movie ended at 10, but we were tired, so we stopped

watching at 9.

When I was getting feedback from the tutor, he said to me: Why would the students have any motivation to listen to your story, when it was neither interesting nor authentic?

Ouch!  But he was absolutely right.

The second flaw in a lot of my model texts is that they confuse quantity of examples with quality.  

I used to think that a good model text must have as many examples of the target grammar point as possible, so I would try to cram in as many examples as I could, even if it made the text sound unnatural.

But you don't actually need the model text to contain 20 examples of the grammar point.  A couple good examples will do the job fine.  In fact, you only really need one clear example that you can illustrate to the students in the clarification stage.

Again, to go back to the experienced CELTA trainer I used to watch: he had a story about how he had taken sleeping pills to help him sleep on a long flight, and then woke up to realize he'd slept so long that he'd slept right through his flight and also missed his connecting flight.  (Again, this was a true story from his life, so the students were really interested.)  The grammar point was the past perfect continuous (had + been +Ving) and the target sentence was "I realized I'd been sleeping for 8 hours."  In this case, he didn't need to put in ten sentences with had+been+Ving.  One clear sentence was enough, and the rest of the story was just providing the context for the grammar point.

And, in fact, it would have been unnatural to put in ten sentences using the past perfect continuous into one story, because the past perfect continuous (like a lot of other verb tenses) is only used to emphasize that this action has a different time perspective than the rest of the actions in the story.  Use it too much, and it quickly becomes unnatural.

[...although, possibly you can justify using a grammar point more than is strictly natural if you're using the technique known as "flooding the input" or sometimes "input flooding", in which you increase the amount of a certain grammar structure in the input in order to get learners to notice it--see here , here , here, etc for more information.]

Note 2

In my staffroom, a lot of my colleagues have started using Chat GPT to create model texts for grammar points.  I've not created a Chat GPT account yet, but apparently you tell it to create a short story using examples of  a certain grammar point, and it can just write that story for you.

Considering Chat GPT is still in its infancy (it only just got released into the world a few short months ago as of this writing), I can only imagine how it will change materials creation in the coming years.  If nothing else, it will certainly save time.

[A lot of the model texts linked to above took me some time to create.  So if Chat GPT can lessen the teacher's workload, so much the better, I guess.  But at the same time, though, I did take pride in the creation of them.  I mean, for all their faults, they were things that served a purpose, that didn't exist before, and that I was responsible for creating using my own creativity.  I got a certain satisfaction from making them. I feel it would be a bit sad if the future was just computers writing everything.  But my feelings on AI are a topic for another day.]

But whatever your thoughts on using AI, remember, if you can use a real life example from your own life, that will always be more interesting for your students than using something auto-created by Chat GPT.