Where -- Past, Present, & Future v. 2.0
I created this unit with a few specific goals in mind: fluency, advancing the national interest in tourism, and promoting the student's everyday conversational abilities. (Download links are at the end of this entry.)
The most important, as a teacher, was to create opportunities for speaking with students. If a teacher sees a student walking around, a very natural question is "Where are you going?" I found that most Thai students, even after spending a week with just this single question, are unable to answer without prompts, and many are unable to answer at all.
This is where fluency comes in. Students get typical assignments that have them repeat dialogues, memorize paragraphs, or just know some basic vocabulary. However, these assignments are so isolated that they cannot put any of the words they know together to create any meaningful speech. This worksheet is designed to give students practice adding one piece of grammar and vocabulary at a time to create real sentences. The teacher can follow up with this by asking students where they are going when they meet students outside of class. I use these everyday interactions to give my students lots of praise. Even if I have to walk them through making the sentence, I praise them for making the effort.
Also, I focus this worksheet on the 4 most commonly used tenses with "where." My hope is that this will help the students make more sense of their grammar classes without overwhelming them too much.
Finally, the country where I'm currently teaching, Thailand, gets a lot of tourism. "Where" questions are very natural for tourists -- either being asked where they want to go, or them asking where they are. I use this unit as preparation for a unit on giving directions, both of which are good for helping tourists.
How to Use This Worksheet
Of course, you should use this worksheet however you believe will benefit your students the most. The way I use it goes really deep, and you can extend this out over 4 - 8 weeks. That means spending less time searching for more worksheets and not having 10,000 varied surplus sheets at the end of the term.
I start out the unit by asking students what the three parts of an English sentence are -- Subject, Verb, and Object (S-V-O) -- and give prompts to help them answer if necessary. I write them (S-V-O) on the board. Above that, I write "Where are you going?", and below, I write an answer that the students help write. (Usually "I am going to English class.") We then identify S-V-O for both the question and answer.
[Bridging the language. One of the ways I help get students to answer is by using my limited Thai. I see that students often get overwhelmed when instantly immersed into a foreign language. There is just way too much for them to comprehend, so I throw them a life line with a little Thai. I tell students that, for "where" questions, I will use 3 questions in Thai to help them. The questions are Krai (who?), Tam arai (do what?), and Tee nai (where?), and I use them to prompt for the subject, verb, and object of the answer sentence. These prompts help enough so that even low-skilled students can answer a question. On top of that, the students love to know that us foreigners take an interest in their language and lives too. This builds relationships with students, and that helps with both classroom control and language learning.
Another way is to do frequent comprehension checks. Ask simple questions to the students to make sure that they comprehend the words being used. There are 3 main ways to get a response. First, they can translate the English to Thai. That indicates that they probably know, but we cannot be certain. When I do comprehension checks, I tell my students to either give me a simple English answer, or act out the meaning if they don't know. Since they tend to be shy, I always begin the school year being silly and acting out possible answers. Once they see that we are having fun, they will start to play along.]
In the first lesson, I will write only "Where are you going?" on the board with model answer (and a blank that they can fill in.) After going over the S-V-O, there is usually only enough time to do a few questions with this one tense.
During the first four or five lessons, I usually don't give students the worksheet. Instead, I write the questions we are using on the board with model answers (and a blank that they can fill in.) I also write the sample class schedule on the board so they have answers to choose from. For a large class, I usually add one verb tense per class session. Also, I use 4 different colors of markers with one color each for S-V-O and another for the "before" and "after" phrases. (On the worksheet, I use bold, italics, underline, and a highlight.)
At some point, just giving the students the class schedule is too limiting, both for the teacher making questions and the students answering them. When you begin to see a little boredom, that's the time to add a list of local places for students to choose from as well. I have the students help to make the list since I don't know all of the local places to go. I am intentionally using places that they know to help make a connection between the student and the material.
I always play this unit by ear. I don't add another piece until students show a little fluency with the pieces we are currently working with.
[Prepositions. This is a very weak area for most Thai students. For most of these sentences, "in," "at," and "to" will suffice, which are in the grammar char below. I include the chart above because it's a really nice reference. If I have the time, I will play a preposition game for one class period. If you don't have the time, then just use the suggested common prepositions in the top line of the chart, below.
To begin the game, I demonstrate the different prepositions with one of the foam balls that I frequently use in class.
Have students break into 3 teams, and each team sends a competitor to the front. Give the students objects so that they can demonstrate the preposition physically. There are a few ways to let competitors earn points.
- Just speak a preposition and give a point to whichever competitor demonstrates first. This is good for the early rounds.
- Demonstrate a preposition and give a point to the first competitor to raise their hand and answer which preposition it is.
- Speak a sentence with a preposition. The competitor must identify the preposition and then demonstrate it to get a point.
- Demonstrate a preposition, and give a point to the first competitor who can make a sentence with the correct preposition.]
Now, we are getting ready to add different people, but this also means adding different verb forms. For a few classes before I introduce the rest of the pronouns and accompanying verb tenses, I write just the "I" line of the chart above (on pg 3) with the 2 lines above it. (I'm introducing the students to the form of the chart before they get the whole thing this way.) I write most common prepositions too so I can point and walk a student through the chart to make an answer. Then, in a later class, I will add only the "you" line. (Of course, if your class is really skilled, maybe you can add all the the remaining pronouns at once.) Usually, after they have seen the first two, then the remaining pronouns can be added in a single class.
[You all. When I put this chart on the board these days, I add another line: You all. Spanish (and I think other Latin languages) have a separate plural you. We normally think of "you" in the singular, but that's not quite sufficient. I use the "you all" phrase (with hand gestures) to indicate to students that I am asking about multiple people. They should answer these questions with "we" instead of "I".
Several times, after a series of questions about multiple people, I've had a student answer a "you" question with "we" instead of "I". I am surprised because it's different that what I expect, but it also sounds very natural. The students continue the notion of multiple people in their mind, and makes the appropriate change by going to "we". This shows that they are really beginning to feel and think in the language.
As an added bonus, introducing them to this ambiguity can be very good for the teacher when grading. In Thailand, they expect all children to score very high. This ambiguity has allowed me to give multiple correct answers on my tests. Higher score means you're a better teacher! (Or so the theory goes.)]
As far as the questions here, I don't use these a lot. In my first two years of teaching in Thailand, I have found that it's easier to find a hen's teeth than a Thai student's English homework assignment. I tell the students that this is for them to practice for the test. (That's why I give them sample answers.) I also tell them that the test will have questions very, very, very similar to these. (I have just copied and pasted these questions to make a test before. For students who practice and study, it's a pleasant surprise and makes the test that much easier. For the students who don't, well . . .)
If they need a break. Lastly, sometimes I find that the students are getting bored with the Q&A, even though they aren't really fluent yet. If I sense that they need a break, I switch into having students build a story. I let the students pick the name of a person (real or fake) and we make a story that I write on the board.
I will have them use all 4 tenses of the "where" question from this sheet as they tell me a story of someone. I always try to get the students to make the story outrageous and funny. After making the story, I will ask several questions about the story. I design the questions so that the students can simply read one of the sentences to answer the question, or answer with just a single word. I can usually do a story in 10 - 15 minutes.
I don't know how to really explain all the ways I use to help students make their stories. However, everything I do in the story making is in the TPRS teaching method. Even if you don't implement full-blown TPRS, it's a great skill set to have, and has made my life as a teacher much easier.
Thanks for taking a look at this. I hope it helps.
Copyright: feel free to use this lesson, and make changes to it if you want. All I ask is that you keep my name on it. I believe that all the graphics are royalty free, if you want to copy/paste them.
PDF version. Choose this if you don't want to make any changes to the document.
Document version. Made with LibreOffice Writer* and saved in .odt format. It should open in MS Word just fine, but sometimes the formatting gets messed up in Word.
Docx version. This is the original that I made with MS Word. I have no idea if the formatting is messed up or not. It should be fine with MS Word, and it was fine with LibreOffice Writer the last time I used it.
*If you want a good office productivity suite, LibreOffice is a great program. It has a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation program, and a couple others. Did I mention that it's free? You can get it here:
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