| LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this lesson are to:
- talk about learning English through apps and other media;
- practise word order in English with funny sentence examples;
- work in groups and create sentences.
This lesson focuses on the grammar topic of sentence word order. Students discuss language-learning apps, read about funny examples of sentences from Duolingo and have a lot of practice. The lesson has been updated to give students more explicit rules on sentence word order.
WARM-UP & GRAMMAR
The lesson starts with an activity in which students talk about different popular apps (e.g Netflix, Spotify, Google Translate…) and discuss how to use them for learning a language. After that, students look at the beginning of sentences about language-learning apps and complete some of them with their own ideas. Then, students move on to grammar. First, they read a short text about Duolingo, find and correct five mistakes. The mistakes are connected to word order in English. Then, students look at the rules of word order in English and find an example sentence for each rule in the text from the previous exercise.
WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH – PRACTICE TASKS
This lesson is devoted to funny examples of sentences from Duolingo so students have a lot of practice working with unusual sentences (e.g. ‘I am the cheese’, ‘Did the fish drink water?’, ‘There is a head in the fridge.’). First, students put the words in the correct order. Then, they find and correct the mistakes in the sentences. You can also have a little discussion with students and ask them if they find such sentences amusing and if they would like to learn using such examples. After that, students proceed to more creative tasks on sentence word order in English. They create funny and unusual sentences using the given words (e.g. there – cheap – students). Then, they compare their ideas with each other. They also work in groups and imagine they have to teach someone four words (e.g. favourite, fridge, aunt, leave). They follow the instructions, create their own sentences and tasks based on them, exchange them with other students and complete the tasks.
HOMEWORK/REVISION
This ESL lesson on farming also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students do two tasks to revise word order in English. First, they complete the sentences with the words in the boxes. Then, they finish the sentences with their own ideas so that they are grammatically correct. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.
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This is lesson is great as it includes a variety of practice activities 🙂
If I may, I’d like to make a suggestion for this lesson and for the other lessons on ESL Brains. It would be helpful for students if the lessons included a slide at the beginning with the grammar rule and explanations before going straight into the practice activities. Often, the lesson plans ask students to guess the meanings of words or complete exercises with new language and concepts. I think it helps students to feel more confident when they can use the activities to practice an already explained concept/language. As a result, I often have to prepare additional materials and content to use before or in the middle of slides so that my students aren’t confused.
Other than that, both my student’s and I really enjoy using the lesson plans and look forward to more topics:)
Hi! Thank you for your feedback 🙂 We always try to include some grammar explanation in a worksheet that practises a grammar structure. In this lesson, you can find some rules and tips in a Teacher’s note in ex. 4.
Just wanted to follow up – we’ve updated this lesson with clearer grammar explanations and examples 🙂
Hey! The lesson isn’t bad, but some of the sentences are slightly inappropriate/ embarrassing (e.g. There was a man in bed.)
Hi! We appreciate your feedback. That’s the idea – the examples are weird, sometimes inappropriate (the one about the men is actually from Duolingo). If you don’t like some of the examples, you can always skip them or edit the e-lesson plan after making your own copy 🙂
Teacher M
I’m really disappointed that I couldn’t open this lesson plan despite the fact that I have a premium account. Moreover, the site itself does not have a http:// address, which may make it somehow unsafe to use. I’ll probably cancel my subscription.
This lesson is available to Unlimited subscribers, while you’re a Premium subscriber and that’s why you can’t access this lesson. In terms of security, we have appropriate security certificate and the connection is secured according to modern cybersecurity standards. BTW what you refer to is actually a https:// protocol (not a http one) as this is the one that provides proper encryption. And contrary to what you say, we use that.
Hello there!
I’ve always been a big fan of ESL Brain and have generally found the quality of their lessons to be excellent. Unfortunately, I’ve found this lesson a bit confusing for both my students and myself.
To improve clarity, I would suggest adding a brief grammar explanation and I’d carefully explain the exercises. . Additionally, some minor tweaks to the sentence structure might be helpful.
Regards
Elena G.
Hi! Thanks for your feedback!
We’re sorry to hear you found the lesson confusing. Our idea here was to have students practise word order more intuitively without giving them too many rules. However, there is a grammar note in a Teacher’s version in ex.4 that you can share with your students if necessary.
By the way, we’ve updated the lesson with clearer grammar explanations and examples, so if you decide to give it another try, it should be easier for your students to follow.
I have to say this lesson was really disappointing. It’s supposed to be about word order, but it doesn’t actually explain the basics of sentence structure at all. For students who are still learning how to form correct sentences, it’s very confusing. The lesson is marked as A2, but there are too many difficult words and too many tenses (including Present Perfect, which many A2 students don’t know yet).
The idea of using funny sentences could have been nice, but in practice it was just frustrating. My student and I both ended up irritated rather than engaged. Also, some of the exercises don’t really teach word order — they focus more on finding mistakes without explaining why the sentence should be changed. There aren’t enough clear examples or guidance.
Overall, this is honestly the weakest lesson I’ve ever used from ESL Brains.
Thanks for your feedback! We’re sorry the lesson was frustrating. The unusual sentences were intentional to mirror Duolingo, but we’ve updated the lesson to include clear grammar rules and examples to make word order easier for A2 students.