First-Time English Teacher

As a secondary project, I've been teaching English to two young men whose father I work with. I use an English manual that was developed by former Peace Corps Volunteers in Macedonia, but I'm always looking for opportunities for us to interact. It's like a breath of fresh air when we can get our noses out of the books.

On Monday, we reviewed the names of various foods using a slide show on the computer. I played the slide show and they called out "cake," "apple," or "chicken"! After the slideshow, we reviewed the verb "to like" and its negative form but-- oops! -- I only practiced first person singular with them! I realized that today as I was planning our next lesson. Does the negative form of "he likes" strike anyone else as odd? Here's a comparison:

“To Like”			Negative Form of “To Like”
Singular	Plural		Singular	Plural
1.I like			1.I do not like	We do not like
2.You like	You like		2.You do not like	You do not like
3.He likes	They like		3.He does not like	They do not like
She likes			She does not like
It likes			It does not like

When forming the negative form of to like for the third person tenses, instead of just adding a negator (e.g. not or do not) you also have to change the form of like! Natural to us, but could be tricky to someone new to English.

Anyway, so today I'll bring flashcards that will help us practice these forms. The flashcards look like this:

MIKE
:)		:(
Carrots		Beef
Peppers		Wine
Cake		Bread
Coffee		Apples

sorry- the smiley and frowny symbols didn't transfer into blogger

... and my students will tell me "Mike likes" and "Mike does not like" items listed. Ultimately, "does not _____" is a helpful equation that will allow these students to say a lot more, so I hope I can teach it well.

After that, we'll probably play Go Fish to review numbers, and then I'll teach countable and uncountable nouns out of the book. Better get back to work on that!

-Margaret