Pedagogical Grammar Prof. Penny Ur RELATIVE CLAUSES Irit Poria and Tamara Bourdan June 15 th, 2011

Task – Based Instruction: A.Task: Communicative Activity I like people who are loyal. Please tell me about the people that you like: I like people who… Now, let’s talk about some other “likes” and “dislikes”: I dislike people who … I like days when … I dislike places where … I dislike films which …

B. Eliciting (implicit) knowledge from pupils, and presenting the new grammatical topic (explicit instruction): What do all the sentences have in common? (Possible answer: All sentences have “wh words”)

The “wh words” in the sentences are called Relative Pronouns (who, which, whose, whom that), or Relative Adverbs (where, when, why). They refer back to nouns/noun phrases: Who(m) and whose refer back to human- beings. Which refers back to animals, plants and things. That can refer back to both living and non-living things. Where refers back to places, when- to times and why usually explains a reason of something.

What comes after the Relative Pronoun/ Adverb? (Possible answer: Some information about the noun comes before the pronoun.) The Relative Pronoun/ Adverb and the information that follows it are called a Relative Clause. Sometimes the Relative Clause presents some additional information about the noun it describes. Example: John Lennon, who(m) I admire, was assassinated by a psychopath.

Sometimes the information in the Relative Clause is crucial to the understanding of the sentence, because it defines the head noun. Therefore, this type is more common. Example: I am wearing the necklace which my husband bought me. The underlined R.C. describes/defines the head noun and is necessary in order to understand the sentence. Without the relative clause nobody knows which necklace the speaker is talking about. We will focus on this type of R.C.

C. Practice: a. Traditional (controlled, mechanical) practice: Procedure: Pupils fill in suitable Relative Pronouns/ Adverbs: 1.The man ___________ you told me about flew to Rome. 2.The city __________ I live is very beautiful. 3.The present ___________ you gave me was amazing. 4.All the people _________ watched the play loved it. 5.The reason __________ I like Dan is his pleasant behavior. 6.The child _________ toy you broke is crying. 7.I will never forget the day _________ we first met. 8.The monster _________ we saw in the movie frightened us.

b. Less controlled practice: Procedure: Pupils combine the pairs of sentences into one sentence using Relative Pronouns/Adverbs: 1.The movie was about the holocaust. It made Ann cry. 2.The man is very talented. He is my hair stylist. 3.I would like to read a book. The critics praised it. 4.The woman is so elegant. Her dress is blue and white. 5.I love to swim in places. It is not too crowded there. 6.Do you remember the time? The program starts then. 7.The car was driven by Jim. It won the race. 8.Everybody loves the teacher. She is talking to the principal.

D. Production: using relative clauses in a communicative activity. 1.Procedure: There is a list of nouns on the board, and students in pairs or groups (for interaction) suggest definitions for each of them, using Relative Pronouns. In the end, the teacher asks them to read their “products” – their definitions. Example: A doctor is someone who treats patients. List: dolphin, teacher, table, pupil, nurse, home, friend, dog, lion, 7 in the morning, book, tea, homework, night, Tel-Aviv, pen, mother, school.

2. (Optional) Write a quiz / questionnaire for your classmates: Procedure: Students have to write definitions to ten items, using Relative Clauses. Beside each definition they will leave a dotted line where an answer will be filled in. Example, A person whose main job is to bake cakes: ………….. The teacher collects their “products”- quizzes, to check and correct. Then, in the next lesson the students do them, either in writing, or orally. Obviously, no one gets the quiz he composed.

The Underlying Theory Our underlying theory was Task-Based Instruction (Skehan): Our learners were given a communicative task, with the focus on meaning, which was supposed to lead to acquisition. We used implicit teaching. But, that is not enough. In order to achieve complete acquisition, we added explicit instruction, which was followed by practice. After practicing, students were required to apply the new knowledge in communicative tasks- production.

To sum up, our underlying theory was Task- Based Instruction. It was followed by PPP, because implicit instruction is not enough. Practice is needed to progress from declarative knowledge to production and automaticity.

Bibliography: Crystal, D. (2004). Making sense of grammar. Pearson-Longman Skehan, P. (1997). A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ur, P. (1988). Grammar Practice Activities. Cambridge University Press