Home » Word structure » Inflection

Topic: Inflection

These resources cover how words change their form (typically by adding different endings) in different grammatical contexts. For example, the verb hop has the forms hop, hops, hopped and hopping.

Baby Sentences

Goals

  • Use implicit grammatical knowledge to translate examples of infant speech into complete sentences.
  • (For older students) use explicit grammatical knowledge to identify the types of changes that have been made in translating from the original examples.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will look at some real examples of English spoken by infants, and translate it into adult speech.

»

Baby Sentences: Activity

Daddy go work

Mummy read

Daddy bike

What that

Where blanket

Sock off

Teddy fall

Sammy tired

Collective Nouns (Stein)

Plan

Activity 1

Ask learners to think of some nouns and make them singular and plural. Then, ask if they can think of any nouns which you cannot make plural. Show them the examples in the next slide and see if they can guess the words. 

Activity 2

Ask the learners to look at the table of collective nouns and organise them into two categories. Use the 'hint' button to help if your learners are stuck.

»

Collective Nouns (Stein)

Lesson

Objective

To understand diffferent types of collective nouns.

Usually, nouns can be singular or plural, like book or books.

What other examples can you think of? 

There are some nouns which only appear in the singular. Can you think of any? 

Some nouns always mean 'more than one' and therefore they have no plural form. Can you guess the nouns from the description?

»

Contractions

Words like I'm, don't, and should've, which involve two words being joined together, are often called contractions. This lesson explores the many different types of words in this category, and the similarities and differences between them.

Goals

  • Describe examples of contractions.
  • Categorise a set of contractions.
  • Identify the differences between categories of contractions.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will study contractions.

»

Gender in Nouns (Stein)

Plan

Activity 1

Explain to the learners that nouns can refer to male or female people. In language, this difference is called gender. 

Ask learners to copy down the list and add the nouns of the oppsite gender. Show them the solutions and ask them what patterns they notice. Answer: some are completely different words while others use a suffix to change the meaning. 

»

Gender in Nouns (Stein)

Lesson

Objective

To explore the meaning of gender in nouns.

Activity 1

What's the difference between the words mother and father?

Nouns for people can refer to a man or a male such as father or to a woman or female such as mother .

In language, we call this difference gender.

For each noun, write the word that expresses the opposite gender: 

»

Genre of Argument and Discussion 2

Lesson Plan

Goals:

  • Identify and analsye how nominalisations are used in essays
  • Identify and analsye how the passiv voice is used in essays
  • Apply these features in a writing task

Lesson Plan

This is Part 2 of the lesson on Argument and Discussion. 

Make sure you have the handout from Part 1. 

»

Genre of Argument and Discussion 2

Activities

This is Part 2 of the lesson on Argument and Discussion. 

Make sure you have the handout from Part 1. 

In the first lesson, you looked at how information is organised through discourse structure. In this lesson, you will examine choices of language and register.  

Activity 1

Re-read paragraph 3. Can you find an example of the same word being used in different grammatical roles?

»

Morphology - an introduction

In this lesson, students explore word morphology. Morphology is an area of language study concerned with how words are formed. While syntax is about the larger structures formed when words are put together, morphology is about the structure within words.

»

Subject-Verb Agreement

In this lesson, students select the correct verb to compose an acceptable sentence.

Goals

  • Practise composing sentences with appropriate Subject-Verb agreement.
  • Identify acceptable patterns in Standard English.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will select the correct verb on the smart board, to construct acceptable sentences.

»

Subject-Verb Agreement: 'Be' verbs

Telephones
are
is
am
really weird.

»

Y6 GPaS Test: Forms of 'be'

Select the correct form of be:

»

Y6 GPaS Test: Forms of 'be': Advanced

Select the correct form of be:

»

Y6 GPaS Test: Present or past tense?

In each of the following examples, indicate whether the highlighted verb is in present or past tense:

»

Y6 GPaS Test: Select the pronouns

In each of the following examples, select the pair of pronouns that correctly fills the blanks:

»

Y6 GPaS Test: Select the verb form

Select the correct verb form for each example.

»

Y6 GPaS Test: Spelling plurals

Select the correct plural form:

»

Martian grammar

This is a unit about the grammar of an invented language, ‘Martian’. It uses students’ (often subconscious) understanding of morphology to help them uncover the ‘rules’ of a made-up language. To ‘crack’ the language, they will need to break down the words into meaningful parts.

»

Martian grammar: Activity 1

Aliens have landed on Earth, but don’t worry: they come in peace. Or at least, we think they do, but we can’t quite understand what they’re talking about.

Their language is not familiar and even highly trained experts are struggling to work out what they are saying. Your job is to work with the Martian examples that they have translated and work out some of the rules of their language. In doing so, you might even learn something about your own language.

»

Martian grammar: Activity 2

Aliens have landed on Earth, but don’t worry: they come in peace. Or at least, we think they do, but we can’t quite understand what they’re talking about.

Their language is not familiar and even highly trained experts are struggling to work out what they are saying. Your job is to work with the Martian examples that they have translated and work out some of the rules of their language. In doing so, you might even learn something about your own language.

»

Martian grammar: teacher feedback

Once you have worked through the Martian grammar activities, you can look at some of the things you have discovered.

Let’s look at some elements of grammar that we have identified in the Martian grammar exercise:

»
»

Englicious contains many resources for English language in schools, but the vast majority of them require you to register and log in first. For more information, see What is Englicious?

Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies