I wanted to pass this on to all my English teacher and student friends out there. I put this together several years ago but I actually never had a chance to use it in class.
You will find a good explanation of the differences in usage between "too" and "enough." I heard my students say they loved their boyfriends too much and, while it could be true, I rather doubted it. On the last page, you will also find some basic exercises which can help a little I hope. In any case, if you find it useful, feel free to download it. Good luck to you.
Also here is another English lesson I posted:
http://nomadicjoe.blogspot.com/2009/04/and-now-for-english-l...
Please note: As with all writing and notes on this website, this material is copyright-protected and downloading is intended for personal use only. The terms of use of this website explicitly say that publication or commercial use of those worksheets is not allowed.
This is a good lesson. Russian speakers at any rate have real issues with these words--and so. I hear the same sorts of things you were talking about: "It is good to have a job with too much salary, but I am not enough qualified for so job like that."
ReplyDeleteThe thing can suddenly become complicated when you add "There is/are.." Suddenly the student has to think of the count/non-count problem plus the the matching verb (and its tense)and this has to be done before even mentioning the subject! Isn't language an amazing feature of human behavior?
ReplyDeleteA role-play would be an ideal follow-up because this alone is rather dry and technical. Ordering in a lousy restaurant (ala Fawlty Towers?)? There isn't enough wine.. The soup isn't hot enough. This place is too noisy. Your waiter was not polite enough.. etc etc. Just an idea.
In my early years of teaching, one of my most elaborately prepared and gloriously failed lessons was on the topic of "too." I never dwelt on it since in the classroom, though somewhere in my mind I'm forever trying to think of a way to make them get it...
ReplyDeleteIt requires the student juggle a lot of variables in their heads in some sentences. Add a negative into the mix and you have a class of cross-eyed pupils.. nuk nuk.
ReplyDeleteThe concept also depends on the student understanding the amount of "sufficient quantity."
That graphic on page 2 (or is it 3?) can help a great deal "Watch out! There is TOO much wine in my glass!!" I often use this in class until I get too drunk to stand upright.
By the way, I would love to hear about one of your glorious failed lessons.We could do a bit of horse tradin'
ReplyDeleteFor this "too" lesson, I worked really hard (I think I trashed the worksheet afterwards). The students had requested the activity, and I was so pleased I spent a lot of time. I did something with a series of sentences, things like, "These green shoes are too big" followed by "You should choose some smaller ones" and "These red shoes are even bigger" then making them choose which sentence made more sense to come after the first.
ReplyDeleteThey were doing all right until they got to the sentence, "That woman is too beautiful" and they had to choose between "I want to kiss her" and "She can't possibly be a boxer." Then it fell apart.
We wrestled with all the accompanying grammar madness, and did lots of new sentences and practice, and they even came up with their own similar activity to have their classmates do.
At the end I returned to the beautiful woman sentence, thinking they had it pretty well down, and all of them unanimously said "I want to kiss her" was the correct ending, and nothing I said could make them understand why that didn't make sense.
In retrospect, my mistake was probably using that sentence with a classful of men.
That sounds like a typical week for me! In my first year of teaching, I resolved to learn all the students' name as soon as possible. A noble effort, it must be said. However, after about three weeks of me proudly exclaiming each name, one of them came to me and told me there was a problem with my pronunciation. One student, Dilek, I had been calling Delik. She was a rather shy girl and didn't have the heart to tell me I was calling "HOLE." for nearly a month.
ReplyDelete