Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Use of comparatives
Its tempting with comparatives to focus merely on the form. After all, the rules arent that difficult to
explain. But be careful not to oversimplify the use. For example, we often assume that comparatives are
used only to compare two things.
We can also use the comparative without stating the other thing if its understood.
Maybe it is best to draw students attention to these uses of comparatives if they come up in texts or
class work.
2. Superlatives
Dont forget that in many languages there is no equivalent of the superlative. So something that seems
completely normal to you as a proficient user of English may be in fact very alien to an English language
learner. Be prepared for mistakes like He is the more intelligent. The film has the bigger budget in
history.
Even though we say use THE with superlatives, remember that there are occasions when we dont (see
explanation above). So this rule of thumb does have its limitations.
has been learning English long; gets up early; goes to bed late
Set a time limit. Then ask students to read out some of their sentences. E.g. Marta lives closer to the
school than Juan and Pablo.
4. Activity: My family
With lower level students, you can combine superlatives with a revision of family vocabulary into a
speaking activity. Ask students to secretly choose five of the following categories and write a name for
each one on a piece of paper.
This works well in classes where the students have/know about their extended families.
You can set this up as a role play. Ask students to work in pairs, A and B. The As live in the capital of
their country and think its far superior to life outside the capital. The Bs think the opposite. Give them
time to prepare several reasons and then tell them to compare. Who has the most convincing
arguments? You can then develop this into a whole class discussion.
Once theyve done that, ask students to make comparisons of the mobile phones. Set a target of, for
example, eight sentences comparing the different phones. For example:
Of course this activity works best if several people have mobile phones!
7. Activity: The coldest place Ive been to
The superlative can regularly go with the present perfect (as in The best film Ive ever seen was). You
could use this sentence stem to make a questionnaire. Make a worksheet with several examples. Here
are some based around the theme of weather.
Emotional experiences
You could either decide on the winners yourself or put the awards to a secret vote. Make sure that
everybody gets an award for something (meaning that if you have 20 plus students you might have to
have more than one recipient for an award). Make the awards on little stars. Hold a ceremony in which
you distribute them to great fanfare. This activity works best at the end of the year, or the end of
a Anchor Point:bottomterm.