Copyright © 2014 Emma Gore-Lloyd
This is a communicative, personalised activity for introducing defining relative clauses.
Ask your students to write the numbers 1-8 on their paper. Next to no. 1 tell them to write down a place where they like to eat. They should write the name only. You are going to read out 7 similar categories and they should similarly write down just the answer. Here’s the (suggested) list in full:
- a place where you like to eat
- someone who annoys you
- a time when you were surprised
- an activity which you hate doing
- someone whom you love
- a reason why you got up this morning
- something that you can do really well
- a place in which you feel relaxed
Now you can ask the students to look at the first one and say what you said to make them write it down. Hopefully they’ll come up with “A place where you like to eat” and you can board it.
Next, ask students to remember with their partner what you said for the other 7. They should keep their lists hidden from their partners, though. Elicit the phrases and board them.
Pick a student and ask them to tell you one of their answers, without telling you the number. They should precede it with “What is…?” Let’s imagine they say “What is McDonalds?” Ask the rest of the class to guess which it is. For example, “McDonalds is a place where you like to eat.” Bingo! Write the sentence on the board. Now in pairs, the students can do the same and guess what each others answers mean to them. (To make it harder you could rub out the phrases on the board halfway through this task.)
When they’ve finished, you ask them to tell you what grammar they have been practising, and go over the features of defining relative clauses, eg. underline all the relative pronouns in their phrases, notice the punctuation, elicit the function, etc.
I’ve done this with adult Upper Intermediate students and they really enjoyed guessing each others lists.
A Hive of Activities 
thanks, really helpful.
You are most welcome!
Emma thank you very much, you are a legend. Le Mercredi 9 avril 2014 10h11, A Hive of Activities a écrit : WordPress.com Emma GL posted: ” This is a communicative, personalised activity for introducing defining relative clauses. Ask your students to write the numbers 1-8 on their paper. Next to no. 1 tell them to write down a place where they like to eat. They should write the name on”
Why, thank you very much! You are always welcome!
Reblogged this on broadyesl.
Dear Emma, I like the sound of your activity, My Italian students often have problems with realtive clauses, they tend to use ‘that’ and nothing else, Ill try this out and see if it helps
thanks
Claudia
Great! Let me know how it goes!
Great
great work but i think you should put spot on the difference between who,that
brilliant! I am going to try it out!
useful tips to teach .Many thanks
Reblogged this on Tim's Free English Lesson Plans and commented:
Great communicative introduction to defining relative clauses.
Reblogged this on TEFLvml.
“Now you can ask the students to look at the first one and say what you said to make them write it down. Hopefully they’ll come up with “A place where you like to eat” and you can board it.
Next, ask students to remember with their partner what you said for the other 7. They should keep their lists hidden from their partners, though. Elicit the phrases and board them.”- these two paragraphs are terribly badly written. I can guess what you sort of mean for the first one and the second one much less so.
Thanks so much your feedback. You might remember that people who write teaching blogs are usually doing it solo, for no compensation, and in their own time. Feel free to ask if you don’t understand something. If you ask nicely, I might even attempt to explain it better. 🙂