Fun Activity for Learning Tag Questions

People use tag questions all the time to confirm information and check their understanding. In a job interview, you might say something like: “You said that the position will start during the second week of September, right?” or if you’re in a situation where someone is giving you complicated directions, you might repeat those directions and add “right?” on the end to signal that you want them to confirm you really understood. It’s particularly helpful for ESL students and people with learning disabilities to understand how to use this kind of question. For ESL students, using tag questions effectively is a major step toward fluency and a more refined use of language.

A tag question is not really a true question; it’s what we do when we want to confirm that what we think is true is actually true. If I meet someone at a party and later, I think that I remember that his name was Phil, but I’m not sure, I might go up to him and say “Your name is Phil, right?” instead of asking him “What’s your name?” all over again. The tag question is made from a statement ( Your name is Phil) and a tag ending (right?). The statement you think is true is unchanged, you just add a little tag on the end to make it a question. Just about any statement can be made into a question by adding “right?” on the end, but there are other tags too.

• For statements that use a form of the verb “to be,” make the end ending by taking the verb, making it negative (if the verb in the statement is positive or vice versa), and adding it to the end with the subject. For example: “You are from Thailand, aren’t you?” or “He isn’t coming to class, is he?” or “The book is very old, isn’t it?”

• For statements that have a single verb that is not a form of “to be,” make the ending by using “do” or “does” for the present tense and “did” for the past tense. For example: “Jennie went to the store yesterday, didn’t she?” or “You like cake, don’t you?” or “You don’t like cake, do you?” or “He works on Thursdays, doesn’t he?”

• For statements with two verbs (a main verb and a helping verb like “can”, “may”, “have”, “will”), make the tag ending with the first verb. For example, “You can speak English, can’t you?” or “She can’t come to the movie, can she?” or “You will mail me that letter, won’t you?” or “You have been to the library, haven’t you?”

I found a fun activity for introducing and practicing this concept in this book (which happens be to part of the Literacy Source resource library!): “Grammar Games: Cognitive, Affective, and Drama Activities for EFL Students” by Mario Rinvolucri. Using the book’s instructions, I adapted the activity for my class’s needs. Here’s my version:

SNAP Game

Students get into pairs first. Each pair creates a playing board by drawing a line down the middle of a blank sheet of paper and writing “statement” at the top on the left side of the line and “tag” on the right side. Then each pair receives an envelope with 32 cards. Each card contains either a statement or a tag ending, so that there are 16 pairs in all forming 16 complete tag questions. (For example, one card might say: “They are from China,” and another card will have to say “aren’t they?”). The student divide up the cards so that each has 16 cards (a mixture of both statements and tags), holding them face down. They play by turns each flipping one of their cards face up and placing it on the appropriate side of the paper. Once there is a card on both sides, the students decide if they match. If they don’t match, the person whose turn is next flips over one of the cards in his/her pile and replaces the appropriate card that’s already on the board, putting the old card on the bottom of his/her stack (if the next card is a statement that student puts it on the statement side of the paper and picks up the statement that was already there). There should only be two cards on the board at the same time. With the new piece the students decide if a correct question has been formed. When they identify a match, they yell “SNAP!” and set the matching pieces aside. The object is to be the first pair to complete all the sentence (or the most sentences that time allows).

The SNAP game helps students to work on recognizing correct tag questions. Once they get comfortable with that then they can move on to actually producing tag questions. Here’s how:

Extra Activity

One student gets all 16 tag ending cards; his/her partner get all the statements. The student with the statements holds one of them up so his/her partner can see it. Then the partner has to choose which of the tag endings will make a complete, correct question. Play like this for three rounds and then the students switch roles for three rounds.

Rain in a Dry Land (My Time at Literacy Source, Part III)

I admit my updates do not have the steadiness of a reliable columnist. It has been about two weeks since my last entry, and I’m finishing up my tenure very shortly. The library is getting cleaned up, and it seems that many of my students are getting more comfortable on their computers, and with their writing and speaking. So things have been rolling along quite nicely.

My schedule here is usually pretty set– but last night there was an interruption in the Talk Time routine. Instead the class (as well as other volunteers, students, and members of the community) viewed Rain in a Dry Land (Thanks AmeriCorps folks!), a documentary that covers the experiences of Somali refugees coming to the States. Before I talk about some of the issues that came up for me and others in our discussion of the film, it’s important to note that I missed the last fifteen minutes or so of the film. I am not totally sure what final note it ended on. That said, I really enjoyed what I saw.

The film was shot in a really basic way, with straightforward interviews and lots of interesting details. I think the most striking part of it for me was when one of the mothers went to the grocery store with two of her sons, and was looking for chicken. Her sons ended up choosing a frozen chicken microwavable meal, and she was confused– asking them “How [they] knew that it was chicken.” This scene pretty obviously speaks to what we take for granted- how we walk into a store and know what we’re buying. Though I haven’t traveled to any countries drastically different than the US, I can relate to the experience- I, too, have gone to supermarkets in other countries and quizzically held up food as if it came from a different planet. But I have also done so as an American leaving my country by choice, for “fun,” when paying for food is not something I have to worry about. I do not know too much about Somali culture, customs and lifestyle other than what I gathered from the documentary. But I imagine the transition is beyond difficult, as many people live rural lifestyles and are transplanted to urban or suburban areas and need to learn a brand new set of skills– not to mention confronting a new language, new customs, and a culture which seems to be less and less friendly to immigrants, or anyone who can somehow be qualified as an “outsider.”

But I think we as Literacy Source volunteers have already realized that, or are trying to understand that more. It must be unimaginably hard to arrive in a brand new place with your family and attempt to make a life. Rain in a Dry Land shows that to us in practically every scene, but it also shows how bizarre American culture is. Just think of the outlandishness that is frozen microwavable chicken It does not resemble a chicken (and who knows what chicken meat is supposed to taste like anymore, for that matter). We cannot trace its roots (at least not without a ton of research). The metamorphosis it has undergone from the living animal to the cold white meat in a red box is unknowable. It has simply appeared to us in the present state. There is no “Story of the Chicken” that we can follow. Remember that, and consider all the paperwork which we sort through in our lives. Paperwork which often tells us something meaningful (anything from a bill to a birth certificate) but can be notoriously unclear. Like the chicken simply becoming a “meal-in-a-box,” bills and notifications sometimes float to us from what seems like an invisible source. We don’t always understand why they exist, and our part in the process seems absent. How did last week’s garbage and waste bill get so high? The American bureaucracy of paperwork is a burden for anyone, but to come to this country and deal with it for the first time -especially as a refugee, where the pile must be sky-high- seems baffling. Rain in a Dry Land asks where all of these things- from chicken to bills- actually come from, and why anyone has such little say in the matter. These questions aren’t new, but it’s easy to forget how instantaneous American culture can be and how so many of us sit back and watch it unfold. (On a slightly different note, Don DeLillo’s White Noise addresses this issue as well- one of the main characters looks at a TV and realizes she has no idea where it came from– she could never put an item like that together herself, yet there it is in her living room). What do we gain by knowing the origin of all this clutter, and how much of our lives do we spend sifting through it?

Govt’ offers Incentives to Hire Formerly Incarcerated Adults

The increasing cost of incarcerating adults coupled with growing numbers of inmates has urged local and national governments to support job training and support programs. A recent online article discussed the trend of hiring formerly incarcerated adults.

And when it comes to ex-cons, it’s paid off. “Of all the groups we targeted, ex-offenders turned out to be the best employees, in part because they usually have a desire to create a better life for themselves,” she says. “They are often highly motivated and many have usable job skills that are desirable for an employer. They come to work every day and do not engage in the type of behaviors that will land them back in the penal system.”

While many people may disregard the issue of jobs for ex-felons as something they don’t have to worry about, we may all be forced to confront the issue sooner or later given the growing ranks of parolees.

“The number of ex-felons in the United States is at the highest level in our history,” says Chris Uggen, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, who estimates there are about 12 million former felons living among us today. With an impending job shortage as baby boomers age, employers may be forced to start considering former prison inmates whether they like it or not, he surmises.

“Work is not a panacea, but a stable job and a good home situation really improves the odds that people will get out of criminal activity,” he says, adding that a job does help keep ex-offenders out of jail, especially among older parolees.

Literacy Source provides tutor support for the Educations Program at the King County Correctional Facility, as well as sponsoring a Transitions class for inmates about to be released. The center also matches tutors with individuals who are sanctioned for one to two months of program participation through the Department of Corrections. Adult learners in these programs are achieving their GEDs and accessing the community resources to create a more stable life on the outside.

My Time at Literacy Source, Part II

I can’t believe it’s July already. We say things like this all the time, and usually believe it, too. Things like This week went by so quickly. But seriously, I can’t believe it’s July- these past few months have been so chilly that summer even occurring felt like an impossibility. But here we are, finally, braced with flip-flops and bare arms.  Thank goodness.

These last few weeks at Literacy Source have sped by almost as suddenly. I am surprised at how comfortable I am here. I usually take a few weeks to “feel my way around,” so to speak, and I suppose I’m still doing that, but I already feel quite integrated within the organization. This isn’t because I’m hosting staff meetings at my house or filing paperwork after dark, but because of the friendliness of the staff, fellow volunteers, and students. I have wound my way into so many conversations– conversations almost always about our pasts, about what we did over the weekend, about who we were years ago. In other words, stories. And I really love those.

It’s true that I’m in a new place, discovering new people, so there’s no sign of me really getting jaded anytime soon. I’m probably bound to find Literacy Source as somewhere either romantic and magical or boring and mechanical (it comes nowhere near the latter, obviously). But I don’t think I’m even close to being deluded: just look how organized the storage closet is! Literacy Source is a place of stories, but it is also a place that makes accessing these stories easy. If you need help, you can get it. If you have a question, someone has an answer.  If you want a biography of Clara Barton, you can find it in our Resource Library (you can hopefully find it a bit more smoothly by the time I’m out of here).

So yes, things have been going well. I have been working away at our bookshelves,  tutoring diligently, and greatly enjoying the summer weather.

Making It Stick: Creating Lessons that Engage Students and Encourage Retention

We all can probably point to times when we’ve wondered if the material we’re presenting if really being retained by the student. Sometimes finding ways to present the material in a way that’s memorable is difficult. It takes a lot of creativity and flexibility to come up with interesting ideas that are also practical. So here are some tips from a recent Volunteer Lesson Planning workshop to help jump start the creative process as we volunteers are diving into the summer quarter of classes and tutoring. First of all though, I should say hats off to all of you for stepping up to this amazing challenge and for committing so much energy and effort into your sessions with your students!

Some Useful Strategies

o Repetition: This doesn’t have to be boring anymore. It’s all about finding as many different ways as possible to present and engage the material. Options include short dialogs, games, class mixer activities, and

o The 85% mastery rule: Strive to make your student 80 to 90% successful. If your student consistently achieves 100%, the work is too easy, adjust by going faster, changing books, adding harder questions, skipping easy sections, or raising your standards. If your student is achieving 70%, the work is too difficult. Adjust by slowing down, changing books, asking easy questions, skipping sections, supplying more help, or ignoring minor errors.

o It’s all in the timing: Break the lesson up into 20 minute chunks and then switch gears. Attention spans are likely to run out if the same information is presented the same way for the whole lesson.

o Language Experience Approach: Use the learner’s own words as a place to start to get a feel for the learner’s background knowledge and to assess where they’re at with being able to communicate on a certain topic.

o Abandon Perfection: Even if you meet your student for two hours a week for a year, you have only 100 hours (50×2), the equivalent of two and a half work weeks (40+40+20). That’s not much time. Which is more important: understanding apostrophes or understanding a sign that says “high voltage?” Skip the frills. Ignore minor errors.

o Learning Styles: Use your knowledge of the student’s preferred styles of learning and your observations of past behavior to adapt lessons. Also, think about the whole spectrum of styles when trying to come up with different ways to present the material (visually, kinesthetically, etc.)

o Build Those Bridges!: Try to tie the new information to old information that the student is already familiar with. Giving them a little “jumping off” place can really help them to find a place to put the new information and make the feel successful from the start.

Also, here are some powerful computer resources to help implement some of these strategies in your lessons. I have found the first one especially helpful with a beginning ESL student that I tutored. And I never realized how clear the words are in Coldplay songs until I looked up Talk on the eslvideo.com site.

1. www.starfall.com

Starfall.com was developed to provide free online materials for students just beginning to read. The lessons and activities on the website focus on phonetic awareness and are great for working with preliterate learners. Since this website was developed for children, I recommend looking over all materials and activities before using them with your student.

2. www.do2learn.com

If you are looking for printouts for beginning learner, look no further. Do 2 Learn features many different printouts intended to help develop basic literacy skills.

3. www.eslvideo.com

This is a great website that uses videos available for free on Youtube as an engaging learning tool for English language learners. You can watch videos and answer language comprehension quizzes, or make your own quiz and share it with the ESL community.