'Adjectives' tutor notes

The aim of the adjectives topic area is to remind learners what adjectives are and to encourage them to use adjectives to make their sentences more interesting. This area also reminds learners that adjectives can be used to make texts positive or negative.

How does this tie in with the curriculums?

• England
  Rs/L1.1 - Use implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge along with own knowledge and experience to predict meaning, try out plausible meanings, and to read and check for sense.
  Rw/L1.2 - Recognise and understand the vocabulary associated with different types of text.
  Wt/L1.4, - Use language suitable for purpose and audience.
• Wales
  As England.
• Northern Ireland
  As England.
• Scotland
  See www.aloscotland.com for details of the Scottish curriculum.

In the Skillswise module you'll find:

Adjectives game
The learner is advised that they've got a new job on a newspaper. The training programme has three levels - lonely hearts, classifieds and late news editor. The learner has to make the ads more interesting by picking the best adjective from a selection. Not every adjective will work everywhere. Sometimes a word will be refused because it doesn't make sense, sometimes it won't work grammatically in the sentence (eg: where it would need 'an' and not 'a' before it).
Don't try and get the student to do all 3 levels at once, this is meant to be a game that people can come back to and play again and again.
In the 'Lonely hearts' section look out for the secret 'bonus' bit, only available when the student has amended the adverts of all the people.
The last section, 'Late news editor', specifically practises positive and negative adjectives.

TOP TIP! To see the game completely full screen, press the F11 key on the keyboard. This takes away the distraction of the top browser bar. To bring the browser bar back, just press F11 again!

Adjectives quiz
The learner can choose their level. Level A asks learners to choose the best adjective for the job, level B deals with identifying the adjective and level C asks learners to identify positive and negative adjectives.
We have now put in place a system that will allow the student to print out a certificate if they score 50% or more in the quiz. This will appear as a link on the results page - click on the link and the certificate will appear in a new window. Students can write their name in once the certificate is printed.

Adjectives factsheet
The facts about adjectives, with examples, on one 'print-out-and-keep' sheet.

Adjectives worksheet
Once a student has tried the game, maybe they'd like to write their own personal advert? Or each member of the class could write an advert for someone else - then the students have to work out who everyone is. This worksheet provides a template, plus some suggested adjectives.

Technical help:

To get the most out of this topic area you need the following 'plug-ins':

• Flash
  The game in this topic section uses Flash. This is free to download and should only take a few minutes. You can follow the BBC WebWise instructions to download it to your machine.
  Find out more.

If you don't have Flash the same learning points are covered in the quiz and in the worksheets and factsheets.
If you are new to the web, why not try the BBC WebWise online course, Becoming WebWise? It's free, you can do it in your own time from any computer and it will take you through everything you need to know to use the web successfully in your teaching.
Get WebWise.

You can find out more about the technical requirements for Skillswise in our Help - Technical Information section.

Taking it further:

With Skillswise:
Don't forget to check out the Skillswise Lesson plans and Teaching inspirations areas for more ideas about teaching adjectives.

On the web:
Here's a few suggestions of other places on the web that you might find useful resources that you can adapt for teaching adjectives.

• UK Adult Basic Skills Resource Centre
  A complete, FREE, follow-on lesson plan (complete with great printable resources) from this excellent basic skills resources site. Sent in by a tutor everything is mapped to the curriculum, there are links to other resources such as adjectives games and suggestions for further activities. It would seem that this is the home of the now renowned lemon sherbet game!
• The science of adjectives
  Did you know that the adjectives you choose to include in your lonely heart advert reveal an awful lot about you and that in lonely hearts 'the veneer of civilisation is stripped away and men and women are slaves to their most basic instincts'. Professor Robin Dunbar of Liverpool University has spent a lot of time studying lonely hearts adverts and this is his conclusion. On the BBC Science site you can fill in your own advert and get the benefit of his insight.
  The font is small and the language is quite complicated, but it would be a lovely exercise to adapt.
• EastEnders
  Get your students to write a personal ad for their favourite EastEnders character. Do they think Pauline needs help with her love life? Visit the characters page to print out summaries of each character.
• Loot
  The website for the famous classified ads magazine will let you hunt for cars, homes and even musical instruments. Choose your category and then browse by 'classification' to find real small ads for use in class. Or if you're feeling adventurous, set the class a set of criteria and let them search!

Please note that the BBC is not responsible for the content of other websites.