Units

Units A-Z

Units are sets of Resources on the same theme.

Noun phrases in descriptive writing Goals To explore the role of noun phrases in descriptive writing. To consider how noun phrases can have ‘descriptive weight’. For students to apply this in their own writing. Begin by asking your asks students to discuss what ‘things’ are in this description: In my room, there is an enormous swimming pool, and underneath one of the big windows there is an ice-cream machine. » Read more	Passives with 'get' Goals Identify the difference between a get-passive and a standard passive. Describe some of the differences between get-passives and standard passives in terms of grammar, semantics, and pragmatics. Lesson Plan The teacher explains that today, we will look at passives. First, let's briefly review our understanding of actives, and of passives and get-passives. » Read more
Nouns In terms of meaning, nouns are sometimes described as ‘naming words’ – words for people, animals and things. The noun class does include many words of this kind: brother, baby, rabbit, horse, handbag, chair. These all refer to physical beings or objects – they are concrete nouns. But there are also many abstract nouns – nouns with abstract (non-material) meanings, like pleasure, sight, kindness. » Read more	Past participles in composition This activity involves working with nonfinite clauses to do some sentence-splitting and sentence-joining. The purpose is to develop your awareness of the different kinds of structures that are available to you as a writer. » Read more
Nouns and only nouns Students are asked to communicate using a bank of nouns - and nothing else. Goals Communicate with a partner using only nouns. Discuss what can and can't be easily expressed using only nouns. Determine which other types of words are useful for expressing complex ideas. Lesson Plan The teacher explains that this activity will involve you trying to express progressively more complicated concepts and actions to a partner using only these words, your own body language and imagination. » Read more	Phonetics and phonology - Introduction A series of activities and content for exploring the sounds of English Goals Understand the difference between phonetics and phonology Explore the ways that we can write sounds down, using the phonetic alphabet Apply this knowledge to a text and consider some of the stylistic effects of sound choices Lesson Plan This lesson plan is split into sections, and includes enough material for around 3 hours of teaching: (1) a starter activity (group discussion); (2) an explanation of phonetics and phonology; (3) vowels; (4) consonants; (5) a transcripti » Read more
Orientating a scene: prepositions in travel guides Goals To understand how prepositions construct meaning in a non-fiction text. For students to apply this to their own writing. What and how do prepositions mean? Begin by showing your class a list of prepositions (or - even better - ask them to generate the list themselves). Display the list on the board, and ask: what do prepositions do and how do they do it? The discussion should arrive at the following conclusions: » Read more	Phrasal verbs What is a phrasal verb? Phrasal verbs consist of a combination of a verb and another word, which we’ll call a preposition. Some examples are come over, look (something) up. The first word in a verb-preposition combination can be just about any verb. The verbs that most commonly appear in such combinations are listed below: » Read more
Passives in use Investigating the effect of using passives The slides in the Activity page in the right hand menu contain examples of passives from real writing. Have students do the following: » Read more	Phrases A phrase consists of one or more words that belong together. It takes one of the major word class elements (noun, adjective, etc.) as its Head. » Read more

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