Tag: Comparatives and superlatives

In his latest video Fluency MC teaches comparatives and superlatives. He uses about forty different adjectives and raps them in the comparative and superlative form. The song is catchy and the grammar very important. Jason was kind enough to allow me to write some teaching materials to go with the song. In this post you will find the song, an infographic explaining the grammar, and a classroom activity.

<!– wp:more –>

ADVERT:
[showmyads]

Fluency MC and I have already produced a lot of material together. For example, there are four posts on irregular verbs and two posts on collocations with HAVE. You can find a list of all the posts at the end of this text.

Students can get a free copy of the Fluency MC YouTube lyrics book and a free sample of his online course here: http://fluencymc.com/starter-course/ Teachers can get a free copy of the the first unit of his song and video activity book here: http://fluencymc.com/teacher-activity-book-and-media-pack/

Play the song at the beginning of the lesson. You could ask your students to write all the adjectives they hear. Students write only the basic forms.

Hand out the following worksheet and ask the students to check their answers. All the adjectives from the song are in the worksheet, in the order in which they are heard.

Adjectives Worksheet Explain that Jason uses only the short adjectives in his songs. These adjectives have just one syllable and thus the following rules apply:

You can download the pdf file here:
Comparatives and superlatives – pdf file

Explain the rules, and then ask the students to take the list of adjectives they wrote during the song and write their comparative and superlative forms. Once they finish they can check their answers using the worksheet they received at the beginning of the lesson.

Explain the meaning of the superlative and comparative forms. We use the comparative if we compare two things. If we compare three or more things and want to say which one comes at the top, we use the superlative.

Once the students understand the meaning, play the following video. In this video, students look at the pictures and then answer the questions.

Check to see who was the best FBI agent.

1. Irregular verbs 1
2. Irregular verbs 2
3. Irregular verbs 3
4. Irregular verbs 4
5. Collocations with HAVE 1
6. Collocations with HAVE 2
7. Phrasal verbs
8. Phrases with GET 1
9. Phrases with GET 2

It is quite easy to form comparatives and superlatives in English. However, without much practice students will make a lot of mistakes.

To provide enough practice for my students I have created the following exercises. There are three gap-fill exercises where students will practise the grammar in context.

<!– wp:more –>
ADVERT:
[showmyads] In this post, there are three interactive exercises and a word file with the same exercises to practise the grammar.

The following infographic first appeared at Comparatives and Superlatives post here.

Show it to your students and explain that students first have to decide if the adjective is long or short. If the adjective is just 1 syllable, it is short. If it ends with -y, it is short. Otherwise, it is long.

Once they know whether the adjective is long or short, they can form the superlatives and comparatives correctly. With short adjectives, they add the suffixes -er or -est. With long adjectives, they add more or most in front of the adjective.

You can find the pdf version of the infographic here:
Comparatives and superlatives infographic – pdf

The following quizzes are not for beginners who just need to practise this grammar. They are for students who can understand the text and decide which form is correct in the given context.

There are three quizzes:

Quiz 1 ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] Quiz 2 Quiz 3

You can print two of the quizzes and use them in the classroom:
Comparatives and superlatives

You can find more activities to practise comparatives and superlatives here:
Comparatives and superlatives activities
Comparatives and superlatives speaking activities
Moreover, there are very interesting activities to use in your classroom at British Council site.
I hope you will find this post useful and that your students will practise a lot.

The vast majority of people consider comparatives and superlatives in English easy. They usually have no problems with their formation and as there are very few exceptions, they master this grammar point pretty quickly.

However, it is still a good idea to have a few interesting activities up your sleeve to teach this well. You can find the basic explanation and infographic in my previous post about comparatives and superlatives.

In this post, I am going to offer three activities that worked very well in my classes. The first one is a simple pair speaking activity to practise the comparatives. The second one is called Hidden picture and your task is to colour the correct sentences and find the hidden picture. The third activity is a video quiz with a writing activity. I hope you will like the activities and use them in your classes too.

For the first activity, you will need the following worksheet.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] Comparatives and superlatives – speaking

Print it and ask your students to work in pairs. Give each student one quarter of the worksheet. Make sure to give different worksheet to each student in a pair.

Students should fill in the gaps using the correct form of the adjective in the brackets. Check their answers. Even though the questions are different, the answers are the same and therefore, they are easy to check.

Then students work in pairs and read the questions to their partners and answer them in English.

For the Hidden picture activity, you need to print the following table for each student.

Ask the students to colour the squares that contain a correct sentence. If they do it correctly a picture will appear (in this case the letter N should appear).
Then go through the sentences with your students and elicit the mistakes and their corrections.
Before you play the video, ask the students to take a piece of paper and something to write with. Play the video and the students write down the correct answers to the questions. At the end of the quiz, they check their answers. Award the student with most correct answers.

As a follow-up activity, it is a good idea to ask your students to write a similar quiz.