While information gaps are typically designed for pairs and small groups, this week’s mingle activity uses a whole-class interaction format.  Mingles enable all students to have brief unscripted discussions with several classmates while they gather missing information needed to complete activity.  During some mingle activities, students may take notes or use graphic organizers to record details as they interact with classmates.

The interaction flow during mingles can be spontaneous (students chat for a bit; when they are finished exchanging information, they walk around freely and find someone new to talk to) or managed (students switch partners on a timed basis or in a certain manner as directed by the teacher).  This week’s mingle information gap, “What am I? / Who am I? / Where am I?” uses a spontaneous interaction flow. 

Mingles are excellent student-centered, communicative options for applying or reviewing recently taught language or content information.  For additional information on how to conduct a variety of mingle information gap activities, read Mingles in the Foreign Language Classroom by Elena Borzova (English Teaching Forum, 2014).

Level

Intermediate and above

Language focus

Speaking:  asking and answering questions
Content:  recalling details
Vocabulary:  varies depending on thematic content; this activity uses an animal theme

Goals

During this activity, students will:

• Orally ask about and share information related to the target item posted on their backs
• Review and practice vocabulary and/or content knowledge related to the target information

Materials

• Teacher:
• Whiteboard, chalkboard, or large pieces of paper posted on the wall
• Markers or chalk
• A timing device (clock, watch, or timer)

• Students:
• Pencils or pens and paper           
• Cards with target information (“animals” in this example)
• Safety pins or strong tape to attach the cards to students’ backs

Preparation

• Create a list of related target items that answer one of these questions: “What am I?”  “Who am I?” or “Where am I?”  The list can include recently taught vocabulary or content items such as animals, items in the classroom, occupations, characters from stories the class has read during the term, world cities, places in a school, etc.  You’ll need one target item per student in the class.  (Note: If you have a large class of 80 students, and your list contains only 20 target items, you can establish 4 groups that will simultaneously conduct separate mingles using the same content in different parts of the classroom.) 
• The procedures below use an animal theme, so the target list might include the following items, answering the question “What am I?”

>

Tiger	Lion	Monkey
Zebra	Dolphin	Octopus
Whale	Eagle	Fish
Alligator	Rhinoceros	Shark
Snake	Mosquito	Spider

• Create a stack of cards, each containing one item from the target list.  Students will attach these cards to their backs during the mingle activity. 
• Make sure you have enough safety pins or tape on hand so students can attach the cards to their backs.

Procedures

1. Tell students they are going to participate in a mingle activity that will require them to ask each other questions and recall information from recently covered units.  Explain that each student will receive a mystery animal.  Tell students a classmate will attach a card with the name of the mystery animal to their back so they won’t be able to see the information.   Explain that everyone must talk to their classmates to figure out which animal is attached to their back.
• Elicit questions that students might need to ask to find out about their animal.  Write the questions on the board.  Questions might include:
• What does my animal eat?
• What is my animal’s habitat?
• Is my animal a predator or prey?
• Does my animal swim/fly/crawl/etc.?
• What color is my animal?
• Does my animal have legs? How many?
• Is my animal a mammal/fish/bird/insect/reptile/etc.?
• Does my animal live in this country?               In which continent/country does this animal live?         
2. Explain the mingle procedures:
• Everyone will receive a card; they should not show the card to anyone.  They will pin or tape this card to a neighbor’s back, making sure the neighbor cannot see the card.
• Everyone will stand up and bring along a pencil/pen and paper to make notes.
• The mingle period will last 7 minutes (or other amount of time you think is appropriate for your students, depending on their language level).
• During the mingle period, each student must talk to at least 5 different people, asking each person one question about their animal and answering a question about the other person’s animal.  Once information has been exchanged, students should find a new person to talk to.  If someone doesn’t know the answer to a question, students can ask that question to another person.  Students should make notes about the responses they receive from their classmates.  
• At no time during the mingle period should a student ask, “Is my animal a/an [name of a specific animal]? “  Students responding to questions should be careful not to include the animal’s name in their responses.
• When the mingle period is over, students will count off to form groups of 4-5.
• In these groups, students must report the 5 (or more) pieces of information they collected and what they think their animal is.  If they are incorrect, they must ask their group mates a few additional questions until they can guess correctly.  Students should keep their notes; they will need them for the homework activity (See the Extension section below).
3. Ask student volunteers to pass out the cards and safety pins or tape.  After students have attached their card to a neighbor’s back, remind students to speak only English during the mingle and to stay focused on the task because they only have a limited amount of time to collect the information they need.
4. Start the timer and monitor student progress.  As needed, remind students of the mingle procedures, make sure they stay on task, and provide support.  The classroom will likely get very noisy.  This is great because it means students are getting in a lot of talking time!  Ask students to use inside voices or whisper if the volume gets to be overwhelming.   
5. Once the mingle period is over, facilitate the formation of small groups so students can report the data they collected and check their guesses. 
6. Explain the homework assignment.  Remind students that they will use the notes and information they collected during the mingle to complete the assignment.

Extension activity 

Direct students to write a short report (2-3 paragraphs) on their animal for homework.  As part of the homework, they should verify the information provided by their classmates during the mingle before including it in the report.  They can find information about their animals using their textbooks, information in the library, or internet sources.

Information Gap Tip of the Week – Keeping Students on Task   

Students have opportunities to talk freely during information gap activities.  As such, some teachers worry that students will not stay on task.  Teacher concerns may include students talking about off-topic things, using their L1 instead of English, and “cheating” by showing each other or orally giving away the missing information in the activity.   Here are a few ways to address these concerns:

• Actively monitor student progress during information gaps and remind students of the activity guidelines, such as using English, as needed.
• Establish a clear purpose for the activity to encourage students to stay on task.  This approach may include highlighting that the activity will help them review for an upcoming test or that students will need to use activity information in a follow-up assignment, such as the homework report mentioned above.
• Set timelines that challenge students, creating a sense of urgency for them to complete the activity in the given amount of time.  You can always adjust activity timelines if students are actively working and need more time or if students finish quickly and seem to be getting off task.
• To prevent students sharing written or visual information gap prompts, have students sit back-to-back while completing the activity so it is difficult for them to slyly show each other the missing information.
• Make the activities fun, interesting, and relevant!  As discussed in this month’s Teacher’s Corner “Background” section, information gap activities can be motivating since they vary the interaction patterns in a lesson, give students time to talk, and include a puzzle or problem that must be solved.  As you’ve seen, information gaps can be designed to cover many types of content and can take many forms.  Test out a few information gap activity styles to determine which ones your students respond to enthusiastically.

 

This week’s information gap activity, “20 Questions with Picture Cards,” asks pairs to use visual prompts as the basis for orally exchanging information.  Some other examples of this type of information gap activity include:

• Navigation activities:  students ask for and give directions to different locations on a map
• “Spot the difference” tasks:  students ask each other questions to try and identify a certain number of differences between two similar images  
• “Partial image” activities:  students have similar images that are missing certain details, which they must discuss to create a complete set of information (images of partial shopping receipts with some items, prices, and store names missing; incomplete movie advertisement posters, etc.)

As with most information gaps, students can’t show each other their visual prompts during these activities, which requires them to speak to each other to achieve the activity’s goal.  Teachers can design the visual prompts to review recently covered vocabulary, thematic content, or curriculum-based material.  After reviewing this example activity, be sure to consider how you might use visual prompts to create information gap activities related to your curriculum content.

Level

Upper beginner and above

Language focus

Speaking and Grammar:  asking yes/no questions
Vocabulary:  varies depending on picture card content

Goals

During this activity, students will:

• Orally ask about and share clues about the target image using yes/no questions
• Review and practice vocabulary and/or content knowledge related to the picture card set

Materials

• Teacher:
• Whiteboard, chalkboard, or large pieces of paper posted on the wall
• Markers or chalk
• A timing device (clock, watch, or timer)
• Students:
• Pencils or pens and paper           
• Sets of picture card prompts, such the “Picture This!” cards from Activate: Games for Learning American English

Preparation

• Copy, print out, or create sets of picture card prompts.  Each student pair should have a set of at least 10 images.
• The picture card content will determine the activity’s level of difficulty in terms of the required vocabulary and content knowledge: 
• Picture cards can relate to groups of recently learned vocabulary items (nouns).  Teachers can create cards with basic line drawings, download images from the internet, or use pictures from print resources.  This activity uses pre-made “Picture This!” cards.  
• Teachers can also use internet images or pictures in print resources to create card sets around themes from the non-language curriculum, for example: 
• History:  images of famous people or events
• Science:  images of endangered animals, images related to environmental problems (an oil spill, the greenhouse effect, flooding), images related to a process (stages of a butterfly’s lifecycle development)
• Literature:  images of characters or scenes from a story, book, play, or poem
• Art or Art History:  images of famous paintings or photographs    

Procedures

• Explain that students are going to work in pairs to play the game “20 Questions” using picture cards.  In each pair of students, Player 1 will silently select a “secret image” from a card containing six images.  Player 2 will ask up to 20 yes/no questions to figure out what the secret item is.  If Player 2 guesses correctly, he or she gets a point.  If Player 2 can’t guess the item within 20 questions, Player 1 gets a point.  (Note: for lower levels or to speed up game play, you can modify the game to be “10 questions”).
• Review yes/no question format, if needed, by giving/eliciting example questions, such as:
• Does the secret item….?Example:  Does the secret item have four legs?
• Is the secret item bigger/smaller [or other comparative adjective] than….?Example:  Is the secret item bigger than a city bus?
• Can the secret item….?Example:  Can the secret item fly?
• Is the secret item….?Example:  Is the secret item a duck?
• Demonstrate game play with a student volunteer.  Take on the role of Player 1:
• Player 1 chooses a card and doesn’t show it to Player 2.  Player 1 silently chooses one of the images on the card (from the side with pictures) and then reads the card’s title, which describes a thematic topic, out loud.
• Player 2 asks yes/no questions to guess the item Player 1 chose.  Player 1 answers “yes” or “no” and keeps track of the number of questions Player 1 asks.
• Each time Player 1 answers, Player 2 can guess what the item is or ask another question.  Guesses count as one of Player 2’s allotted number of yes/no questions.  If the guess is correct, Player 2 gets a point, and the players switch roles with Player 2 drawing a new card and Player 1 asking questions.

Example
Player 1:  The topic is “Time for School”  [has silently picked “chalkboard”]
Player 2:  Can you write on the secret item?
Player 1:  Yes.  [Player 1 counts the question]
Player 2:  Is the secret item white?
Player 1:  No. [Player 1 counts the question]
Player 2:  Is the secret item bigger than a desk?
Player 1:  Yes.  [Player 1 counts the question]
Player 2:  Do teachers use the secret item?
Player 1:  Yes.  [Player 1 counts the question]
Player 2:  Is the secret item a chalkboard?
Player 1:  Yes. [Player 2 gets a point – only 4 questions asked] 

• Once everyone understands the rules, put students in pairs.  Give each pair 5–10 Picture This! cards.  Ask students to put the cards in a pile with the pictures facing down.  Have pairs count off “1, 2, 1, 2…” or let pairs decide which player will be Player 1. 
• Tell pairs that cards may be used more than once if time allows, but a new picture should be chosen each time a card is reused.
• Set a time limit for game play (~7-15 minutes); share the time limit with the class.  Tell the students that the player in each pair with the most points when time is up wins.
• Direct students to begin playing.  Remind students that all questions must be in yes/no format.  Monitor their progress, watch the time, and provide assistance, as needed. 
• If desired, when game play is finished, briefly recognize the winners in each pair with a round of applause.  Ask students to share any vocabulary items or card content that they found challenging.  Be sure to record these items to recycle in subsequent activities or lessons.
  

Variation

For a group-based variation of this information gap activity, see Questions, Questions from Activate: Games for Learning American English

Information Gap Tip of the Week –
Managing Uneven numbers of students 

What can you do if you have designed an information gap activity for pairs, but you have an odd number of students?  As the teacher, it can be tempting to offer to pair off with the remaining student, but this approach would prevent you from monitoring and supporting the rest of the class during the activity.  Depending on how information is exchanged in the activity, the easiest way to manage the situation is to create one group of three and slightly modify how information is viewed and communicated.  You will have two students in this group work cooperatively to share one set of information. 

For example, for a group of three students in “20 Questions with Picture Cards,” have Students A and B share the role of Player 1 while Student C asks questions as Player 2.  Students A and B can silently select the secret item together (pointing at items on the card and using non-verbal cues like nodding in agreement or giving a thumbs up to decide on the secret item) and take turns speaking:  Student A announces the topic, Student B answers the first question, Student A answers the second question, and so on.  If Student C can’t guess the secret item within in the 20-question limit, both Students A and B get one point.  When it is time to switch roles, Players B and C take on the role of Player 1 while Student A guesses as Player 2.  At the next switch, Players C and A act as Player 1 and Student B acts as Player 2.

Provide extra support to the group of three to make sure they understand how to share information and swap roles.  If you regularly have an odd number of students, be sure that the same people are not always put in the special group of three students.

Angela Huanca Barrantes is a highly respected teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the La Pampa neighborhood in the city of Ilo, and she has a strong impact on the lives of students at the Admirante Miguel Grau secondary school and at Centro Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, one of four binational centers in southern Peru.

Yet Ms. Huanca did not always like English. In fact, she admits that at one time she disliked it because she did not understand it. Her feelings changed when, as an undergraduate student majoring in tourism at the National University of Saint Agustine, she enrolled in an English class taught by Rosa Sifuentes, who inspired Ms. Huanca to not only open her mind and heart to the English language, but also to one day share this newfound love. According to Ms. Huanca, “Teachers like Ms. Sifuentes inspire you to always continue learning, and I am still learning.” During her fourth year of university studies, Ms. Huanca worked at the university’s Language Center, and she realized then that as a teacher she could have a positive and important impact on others.

After graduating, she received a scholarship from the U.S. embassy in Lima to take a course at Georgetown University designed for EFL teachers. She, along with 17 other Peruvian EFL public school teachers, participated in the Rising Star program, which, she said, “changed my life.” Through the program, Ms. Huanca also attended training at the Centro Espiral Mana in Costa Rica, which she described as life-altering due to the holistic approach to education that the center promotes. “The center’s philosophy is based on what you as the teacher can do to serve your students so that they have the best learning experience possible,” she said, “and that really resonated with me. Being there was a healing experience.”

“My life as a teacher changed the day I became a Rising Star,” Ms. Huanca said. “It opened many doors and helped me channel my interests and to be able to share with others and learn from others, too. The embassy planted a seed in many teachers when they committed to the Rising Star program, and I am one of those seeds because I am able to share what I have learned with others. It has a multiplying effect. We need to keep training more English teachers.”

Originally inspired by her teacher, Ms. Huanca now gets inspiration from her students. She is proud of the strong relationships she has with them—relationships built on mutual respect and trust. She believes a good teacher not only imparts knowledge and a love for learning, but also listens to students and is empathetic to their struggles. She has learned that she should never make assumptions about her students, as that will inhibit her from truly being able to connect with them and help them learn.

She tells people how proud she is of her students and how honored she is to be their teacher. Ms. Huanca’s family, like those of her students, is from the highlands of Peru. She and her students are second-generation immigrants from the highlands, and their grandparents learned Spanish as a second language; their native languages are Quechua and Aymara.

Ms. Huanca is aware that learning English is a challenge for some of her students, especially when their parents are not involved in their learning because their top priority is making sure the students’ basic needs are met. Still, she chose to work at the Admirante Miguel Grau school because she knows how crucial it is that her students feel that they are special, take pride in how rich their culture is, are proud of who they are and where they come from, and believe that anything is possible.

“The problem is not the students,” Ms. Huanca said, “it is the people who judge them and underestimate them. My students are fantastic. Every day I strive to figure out what else I can do to make them shine. My students know that I care, I love them, and I think that they appreciate me. I listen to them.”

Ms. Huanca, along with her colleague María Nuñez, recently completed a six-week course on methodology at Arizona State University on a scholarship from the Peruvian Ministry of Education. Ms. Huanca is pleased that her government is invested in improving the way Peruvians teach and learn English. “Things are changing in a positive way,” she said. “The government realizes how important English is and how it is a way to bridge the gap between the different populations in Peru.”

Ms. Huanca typically spends her mornings and afternoons teaching EFL at the Admirante Miguel Grau public school and her evenings teaching at the binational center. She and Ms. Nuñez were allocated a special room for teaching English, but the school is now under reconstruction, and that room has been turned into storage space. “We do not know when we will get it back,” she said. But that hasn’t deterred Ms. Huanca, and she works diligently to create meaningful lessons for the 12 groups of 40 high school students that she teaches for 90 minutes a week. She said that when she started teaching, she tried to cover as much material as possible, as required by the Ministry of Education, but her data indicated that she was not helping her students become successful in their learning.

Due to the frustration that she saw on her students’ faces and that she felt as well, Ms. Huanca knew it was imperative that she drastically change the way she was teaching. She began by implementing strategies that allowed her students to own the language instead of simply memorizing vocabulary and grammatical structures. She does this by using cooperative learning strategies, such as pair work and jigsaw activities. To capture and maintain her students’ interest in learning, she incorporates visual, auditory, and kinesthetic activities into her daily lessons.

Knowing how important student feedback is, Ms. Huanca uses a variety of formative assessments throughout each class. She does what she calls a “wrap-up” at the end of each activity to find out whether her students have grasped the concept being taught and practiced. She also has her students answer self-assessment questions at the end of every class to see whether she needs to review the material or whether students are ready to move on. These formative assessments are essential to her lesson planning and the success of her students.

Ms. Huanca’s classroom consists of a small blackboard, 40 student desks (some in a state of disrepair), and a small table that serves as her desk. She uses a variety of visual aids, realia, and donated books and materials from the U.S. embassy to enhance her teaching. She and Ms. Nuñez develop their own lessons. “I get inspired by my students, by observing them and seeing what does and doesn’t work, and then I am able to adapt my lessons to better assist them in their learning,” she said.

Ms. Huanca prides herself on being able to provide her students with a variety of activities—especially those designed to develop speaking skills—that make students feel comfortable enough to take risks and speak freely about the topic at hand. “I always think about my students’ needs and what activities will work best with them based on their age,” she said.

In a high school classroom of 40 students, one might expect that chaos, not learning, would prevail. But Ms. Huanca maintains an environment conducive to learning while also allowing students to have fun. Hers is a classroom built on mutual respect, appreciation, and—above all—teaching with an open heart and an open mind.

Her students believe it is important to learn English because it is fundamental to their lives, and many of them would like to travel to the United States and want to be able to speak with Americans. One student said, “Our teacher is interesting, fantastic, motivating, understanding, patient, and wants the best for us.”

It is not easy to win over the hearts and minds of 480 teenagers, but Ms. Huanca certainly has.

As an English as a foreign language instructor, you don’t have to look at too many student writing samples before you see sentences like this:

1.     *The boy he went to the store.

2.     *The first situation, the girl loses her purse.

3.     *That is the boy who I know him.

4.     *That is the boy went to the store.

At first, these sentences seem to represent disparate grammatical problems. The first sentence could be interpreted as a subject issue, the second might be a prepositional phrase problem, and the third and fourth might reflect a lack of mastery of adjective clauses. However, dealing with these issues separately is time-consuming and redundant when they can all be subsumed under an overarching category of noun position. In fact, an understanding of noun positions in sentences can correct many recurring problems in the writing of English language learners. This article outlines an approach for anticipating and preventing these sorts of errors while providing a framework to explain the errors to students. For this approach to be successful, students need to have an understanding of parts of speech, so it works best with low-intermediate to advanced students.

To address this topic, you can start by introducing an analogy, something like this:

Instructor: Yichen, what are you planning to study at university?

Yichen:  Architectural engineering.

Instructor:  And what kind of job do you want?

Yichen: I want to work in my father’s construction company—building bridges.

Continue to question students, always leading them to say that having one job is the ideal situation. After inquiring about the job plans of several students, you circle back to Yichen.

Instructor: Yichen, you want to be an architectural engineer, right?

Yichen:  That’s right.

Instructor:  Do you want to be an architectural engineer and a teacher?

Yichen: No. Just an engineer.

Instructor:  So you only want one job?

Yichen:  Yes, just one job.

Instructor: So, are you saying that one job is enough and that two jobs are too many?

Yichen:  Yes!

Sum up by saying, “Nouns are like people—they only want one job. But nouns can’t just be whatever they want to be. There are a limited number of jobs that a noun can fill.”

From here, students need to be introduced to the “job possibilities” for nouns. Look at nouns as subjects, objects of verbs, objects of prepositions, and complements and the corresponding positions they can take in sentences (see Table 1). A little simplification makes the information accessible to students with a wide range of English proficiencies. For example, possessives are omitted, indirect and direct objects are grouped together under the term “Object of Verb,” and only subject complements, and not object complements, are addressed. Depending on the students’ level, Table 1 can be expanded to include these other noun roles.

When you present Table 1, leave the second and third columns blank so you can elicit this information from students. It’s best to use the same noun for all the examples, allowing students to focus on how the noun moves around the sentence in various positions. In Table 1, the students have used pizza in all the examples.

 

Job of the Noun	Position in the Sentence	Example
Subject	before the verb	Pizza is popular in this country.
Object of Verb	after the verb	I ate the pizza.
Object of Preposition	after the preposition	There’s pepperoni on the pizza.
Complement	after a linking verb	It’s a pizza!

Table 1. Noun jobs and corresponding sentence positions

Students need to know what linking verbs are and to understand that there may be intervening words between the noun and the other part of speech used as a point of reference in the position column. In addition, if you are using (and students are writing) multi-clause sentences, they will need to understand that each clause will have its own subject and verb, minimally.

After you work through the table, provide students with sentences in which they need to identify the job of the noun. To scaffold this activity, begin with sentences, like the examples in Table 1, that focus on the same noun.

1. Subject (S):  That book is boring! 
2. Object of Verb (OoV): I didn’t read the book until I was in college.
3. Object of Preposition (OoP): In the book, you’ll find discussion questions.
4. Complement (C): There are ten new books on the shelf.
5. Complement (C): My essay for this class is becoming a book!

Students need practice like this periodically to keep them thinking about the jobs of nouns in sentences. From here, an open-ended exercise provides students with a greater challenge. Students analyze each sentence by underlining all the nouns and then identifying their jobs. Refer to Table 1 to address any misunderstandings. A final product might look like this:

1.  There is snow on the trees.
                    C               OoP
    

2. She is meeting me at the library after class.
    S                    OoV             OoP          OoP
           

3. On Monday, our first assignment is due.
         OoP                             S                     
    

4. My brother ate breakfast late, so he doesn’t want lunch yet.
             S               OoV                   S                        OoV      
    

5. I can’t talk now because I forgot my homework, 
   S                                    S                    OoV    
   and I’m trying to redo it before class.
        S                          OoV         OoP

This preparatory work enables you to explain errors to students when they begin turning in writing assignments. In fact, even before you deal with student-generated errors, it is useful to spend time going over problematic sentences. The example sentences from the beginning of this article provide fodder for identifying errors.

When students underline the nouns and determine the job of each noun in the first sentence (*“The boy he went to the store”), they discover that one noun is left without a job. Store is happily employed as the object of a preposition, and, if boy is fulfilling the job of subject, then he is left with no job at all. Add humor to the analogy by explaining that students are looking at the bleak case of an unemployed noun. Even worse, they are seeing firsthand a noun trying to steal a job from another noun that is already in the position.

The analysis of the second sentence (*“The first situation, the girl loses her purse”) should identify girl as a subject and purse as an object of the verb. Situation, however, has no job, so, as in the first sentence, we see an unemployed noun. This case differs, though, in that the noun here is not trying to fill a job that has already been taken. We can gainfully employ that noun by adding a preposition to the beginning of the sentence. This allows situation to work as the object of a preposition. Students need to understand that, when they are faced with an unemployed noun, the question must be: Is this noun trying to fill a job that is already taken? In such cases, the nouns will most likely refer to the same entity—for example, he and boy in the first sentence—and one of the nouns can be deleted. If the noun is not trying to take the place of another noun that is already in the coveted position, students should determine whether a job for the noun can logically be created.

The third sentence is more complicated because of the fronting of a relative pronoun in an adjective clause, but, in essence, it parallels the first example. Students might need help, but the analysis reveals the following:

*That is the boy who I know him.

    S               C  OoV S          OoV

 

Here, as in the first sentence, two nouns are vying for the same job. Sometimes this is possible, such as when a sentence has a compound object, but compound objects refer to different entities and are joined by some type of conjunction (e.g., “I know him [OoV] and her [OoV]”). In the third sentence, however, the nouns who and him are referring to the same entity (“boy”). One of them has to go.

An analysis of the fourth sentence (*“That is the boy went to the store”) reveals That as the subject and store as the object of the preposition, but what about boy? Is it a complement to the linking verb is, or is it the subject of went? This overworked noun is struggling to fill two jobs! It needs help. And help can be introduced in the form of a relative pronoun (who) at the front of an adjective clause.

This fourth sentence shows us another way to look at these sentences. The class discussion starts like this:

Instructor:  Luis, what if the accountant at a company left to take another job. Would the company leave the position empty?

Luis: Of course not. They would hire someone.

Instructor:  So, important jobs should not be left empty, right?

Luis: That’s right.

That is the segue into the idea that certain jobs in a sentence must be filled. Verbs need subjects (unless they are “understood,” as with imperatives); transitive verbs need objects, as do prepositions; and linking verbs need complements (although they could be adjectives instead of nouns). Therefore, we can say that nouns need a job (one job—no more and no less), and we can also say that job positions need to be filled. This concept can be viewed from the perspective of the potential employee (the noun) or from the potential job opening (the position that needs to be filled). When checking a sentence, students could begin with the first approach, checking the nouns to make sure that the nouns are adequately employed. Alternatively, students could begin by looking at positions and then making sure a noun is filling each position. If students take this position-oriented approach, the focus must shift to the other parts of speech in the sentence and their characteristics and requirements. The easiest place to start is by finding the verb and then looking for its subject. After checking that the subject position is filled, students need to check whether the verb is transitive and needs an object or whether it is linking and needs a complement. If students identify a preposition, they must make sure that the preposition has an object.

The checklist below can help students through this type of analysis.

Position Check Steps

Verb check 1: Find the verb(s) in the sentence. Check each verb separately.

• Does the verb have a subject?

o   If yes, does it have more than one subject?

-- If yes, do the subjects refer to different entities (e.g., he and she)?

-- If not, delete one of the subjects.

o   If not, write a noun in the subject position (unless the verb is an imperative).

Verb check 2: Look at each verb again.

• Is it transitive? 

o   If yes, does it have an object?

-- If yes, does it have more than one object?

-- If yes, do the objects refer to different entities?

-- If not, delete one of the objects.

-- If not, write a noun in the object of verb position.

• Is it a linking verb?

o   If yes, does it have a complement?

-- If not, write a noun in the complement position.

Preposition check: Find the preposition(s) in the sentence.

• Does it have an object?

o   If not, write a noun in the object of preposition position.

Final check:

• Did you write the same noun for any of the answers above?

o   If yes, this noun is doing two jobs. Add another noun, or delete the extra position.

A “reverse analysis” of the fourth sentence (*“That is the boy went to the store”) would look like this:

Position Check Steps: “*That is the boy went to the store.”

Verb check 1: Find the verb(s) in the sentence. Check each verb separately: is, went

• Does the verb have a subject? Yes: That is; the boy went.

o   If yes, does it have more than one subject? No.

Verb check 2: Look at each verb again.

• Is it transitive? No, neither verb is transitive.
• Is it a linking verb? Yes: is.

o   If yes, does it have a complement? Yes: “boy.”

Preposition check:  Find the preposition(s) in the sentence:  to

• Does it have an object? Yes, “store.”

Final check:

• Did you write the same noun for any of the answers above? Yes: “boy.”

o   If yes, this noun is doing two jobs. Add another noun, or delete the extra position. There is a problem with boy. It is in both the complement position and the subject position.

Neither analysis provides students with the correct answer, but each directs students’ attention to problems. Once students work through enough sample sentences, then common errors, the environments in which they occur, and their solutions will become evident. For instance, when a noun is working as both a complement and a subject, as in the fourth sentence, the solution is to keep the noun in complement position and add a relative pronoun to fill the subject position. This sort of complement/subject mistake frequently occurs when students begin sentences with “there is” or “there are.” It does not matter whether students first run the noun check or first run the position check, but checking in both of these ways is necessary to cover all the noun position issues that can arise.

To sum up the noun check process, we can refer to this checklist:

Noun Check Steps

1. Find all the nouns in the sentence.
2. Identify the job(s) of each noun.
3. If you find a noun that has no job,
   • remove the noun if it is redundant, or
   • create a job for the noun if it is necessary to the sentence.
4. If you find a noun that is working two jobs,

• add a noun to take on one of the jobs, or
• terminate the extra job.

In writing classes, I have found that spending time going over these concepts at the beginning of a semester makes explanations move along more quickly when these issues arise later. Viewing the issues as noun position errors provides a framework that encompasses multiple error types, thus giving the students a powerful tool to carry out of the classroom. Using the employment analogy provides a fun and memorable way to help students relate to this sentence-level grammatical concept. Of course, you can’t anthropomorphize every grammatical concept, but this tactic works well for explaining noun positions to students.

 

BIODATA:

Sandra Tompson Issa holds an MA in Theoretical Linguistics and an MA TESOL, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She works as a Language Specialist at the Applied English Center at the University of Kansas.