EDUB 1650 Teaching ESL Grammar Adrian Deakin
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The World of Sports
Introduction to the Passive Voice
This lesson is written for a class of 16 young adults who are enrolled in Grammar for Writing 250B as part of the University of Manitoba’s Intensive English Program. The students range in age from 18 to their late 20s and they are operating at a high intermediate stage. The class is in session for one month, after which students write a mid-term exam. However, students wishing to advance to the next proficiency level must complete another four weeks of study and then write a final exam. Grammar for
Writing 250B is taught Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. from July 9 to August 1, 2013.
Currently, students are in their third week of study. The first and second weeks included the study of gerunds and infinitives, and verb tenses, respectively. Students reviewed the simple past, past progressive, present perfect, and past perfect tenses early in the second week. Then they learned future progressive, future perfect, and present perfect progressive tenses. This week they will be working with the passive voice, using by + the agent in the passive, contrasting active and passive voices, differentiating between transitive and intransitive verbs, and using the stative passive.
The following lesson represents the beginning of the third week of study and the introduction to the passive voice.
Students will be able to:

1.
identify sentences written in the passive voice;
2.
use the passive voice orally in scripted and non-scripted conversations.
whiteboard
 index cards
 markers

Projector and screen

July 20, 2013 Winnipeg Free Press Article

The Passive Voice in Simple Present &
Simple Past note frame handout

The Passive Voice: Sports Trivia Smart
Notebook handout

Computer with
Internet access

Copy of Participle-Preposition Practice Activity from grammar-quizzes.com

Introductory Task: Sports Trivia Activities A and B from Van Zante et al. (2005) p.312.

Baseball Uniforms I & II Grammar Practice Activities from Van Zante, et al. (2005). pp.315—317.
 one uncut set of 7 Sports Trivia Cards
EDUB 1650 Teaching ESL Grammar Adrian Deakin
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National Anthems Listening and Discussion Activity
Learning Modalities: Receptive & Productive
Tell students that you are going to play the first ten seconds from a short selection of pieces of music from a site on the internet and their job is to listen quietly to each one. After listening to each selection, pair students and ask them to discuss the following questions.
1.
What kind of music was played?
Skills Targeted: Listening & Speaking
1.
2.
Where and when do you hear this music?
3.
How do you feel when you hear it?
After students have shared in pairs, discuss their responses as a class. Listen to see if any students use the passive voice in any of their comments.
Use the national anthem discussion to introduce the sports theme and as a segway into a discussion about transportation to the new Investor’s Field stadium.
Learning Modality: Receptive Skills Targeted: Listening
Prereading (2 minute timed scanning)
Hand out a copy of the Winnipeg Free Press article to each student. Ask students to scan the article paying special attention to all of the highlighted words. Ask students to look for things that are common in all examples.
Read the article while students follow along.
After the reading, ask students what part of speech each underlined group represented. Ask what they noticed about the helping verb and the main verb in each example.
Form Rule
Have students develop the general rule and then write it on the board. Hand out a form rule note frame sheet to each student and have them follow along and complete the sheet as you expand on the rule for the affirmative, negative, yes/no questions, and wh- questions.
Meaning/Use
Ask students where the article was obtained and for what purpose it was written. After students state that it is a news article, then ask them the following questions in order to get them to discover that who is doing the action in the passive voice is either unknown or not important.
1.
The transit corridor will be started by who? (line 3 of article). The answer is unknown.
2.
The corridor will be completed by who? (line 5). The answer is unknown.
EDUB 1650 Teaching ESL Grammar Adrian Deakin
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3.
Who owns the Southwood lands? (line 8). Notice the by statement.
4.
Who made the decision to make the stadium? (line 20) The answer is unknown.
Summarize the students’ obervations by having them record that the passive is mainly used in writing news articles, in academic, and scientific writing, and who is doing the action is either unimportant, unknown, or included with a by statement, called a prepositional phrase.
Activity #1: Online Participle-Preposition Practice
Learning Modality: Receptive Skill Targeted: Reading
Explain that a disrespectful term used for photographers who follow celebrities and sports stars is
paparazzi. Project the web quiz on the screen for all students to read and click on the available prepositions in the drop down boxes.
Lead the class through each of the statements with the students checking the answers as you go.
Correct errors right away and note common mistakes students are making in their selection of prepositions as they arise.
Activity #2: Sports Trivia (Van Zante, et al. (2005), p.312)
Learning Modalities: Receptive & Productive Skill Targeted: Reading & Speaking
Explain to students that sports trivia is a term that describes a fact about a sport that happened in the past. For example, in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics ice hockey finals the game winning goal was scored by Sidney Crosby.
Display the sports images on the projection screen from the Smart Notebook slide entitled The Passive
Voice: Sports Trivia and give a brief description of each sport.
Instruct students to read the sports trivia statements on p.312 of their text and match the sport with the correct statement.
Circulate as students are completing the activity to make corrections as required and to be accessible should they have questions.
Take up answers as a class again referring to the Smart Notebook sports images.
Pair students and instruct them to take turns asking and answering the questions listed in part B on p.312. of their grammar text. Tell them they should use the sports from part A to answer the questions.
Circulate to clarify instructions, listen to and correct students’ mistakes, and to be accessible in case students have questions or concerns.
EDUB 1650 Teaching ESL Grammar Adrian Deakin
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Activity #3: Grammar Practice (Van Zante, et al. (2005), pp.315-317)
Learning Modality: Productive Skill Targeted: Writing
Assign half of the students to complete grammar practice exercise Baseball Uniforms I for passive sentences in the simple present on p. 315 of the text and the other half to complete grammar practice exercise Baseball Uniforms II for passive sentences in the simple past on pp.316-317.
Circulate to provide correction to individual students, to be accessible to answer questions, and to make certain that all students have correctly completed the first three numbers for their respective activity.
Pair students after they have had sufficient time to complete their assigned activity. Instruct them to explain the rule of form for their particular tense to their partner, using their answers to the first three questions as examples. Encourage students to refer back to their completed form, meaning, and use note frame handout.
Go over the answers to the first three numbers for each question and go over the rule of form once more so that students understand it.
Now ask students to return to their seats and complete the second activity, either Baseball Uniforms I or
Baseball Uniforms II.
Circulate to listen to students and correct mistakes, and to be accessible for questions or concerns.
After students have completed the activity, project the answers on the screen and answer any questions they may have.
Activity #4: Passive Voice Verb Cards
Learning Modality: Productive Skill(s) Targeted: Writing/Speaking
Tell students that they are going to first write down, then share a sports trivia fact with a group of students in the class.
Show students two or three of the sports trivia cards from the Smart Notebook document to give them an idea of how their completed cards should look.
Hand out the remaining partially completed sports trivia cards to students and ask them to conjugate the existing sports trivia statement into either the simple present or the simple past, depending on which tense is already written. Each completed sports trivia card should have two statements written in the passive—one in simple present, and one in simple past.
Repeat the instructions and have a student repeat them back orally to ensure students understand the task. Give students a number of minutes to do this.
Circulate to provide further instructions or corrections.
When cards are ready, separate students into groups of four and inform them that each person must take turns reading their sports trivia script to the other people in the group.
EDUB 1650 Teaching ESL Grammar Adrian Deakin
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Learning Modality: Productive Skill(s) Targeted: Writing/Speaking
Brainstorm a list of sports with students, writing the name of each sport and the appropriate passive verb structure on the white board.
Hand out an index card to each student. Have each student adopt a sport they are interested in or already know something about from the list and get them to write the sport name on one side of their index card.
Give students time to recall or reseach some information about their sport, careful that they do not write it down. This activity is for fluency and should not be scripted.
When students are ready, again separate them into groups of four and have each student in the group take turns speaking about their sport, trying to use the passive voice. Have students give each other a signal as positive reinforcement if they notice their group members using the passive voice.
Circulate while students are completing the activity. Do not correct any errors students make while speaking. Attend to students’ concerns only as they refer to the procedure and flow of the activity.
Write down errors students make and respond to them either in a future lesson or by responding to students individually after the activity is completed.
Kives, B. (2013, 06 20). Dedicated stadium line at least two years away. Winnipeg free press. Retrieved from http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/dedicated-stadium-line-at-least-two-years-away-
212281871.html?device=mobile
Sevastopoulos, J. (2013, 06 16). Participle-preposition practice. Retrieved from http://www.grammarquizzes.com/passiveex1.html
Van Zante, J., Daisse, D., Norloff, C., Falk, R. (2005). Grammar Links 3: A Theme-Based Course for
Reference and Practice. Heinle: Boston.
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