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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 3; May 02

Lesson outlines

2. BUILDING HOUSES Past Perfect Upper Secondary, adult
(A personal adaptation)

by Maria Luz Valencia, Galicia, Spain.

I have adapted the "Building Houses" activity from Humanising Your Coursebook, Rinvolucri, ETp Delta 2002, Page 24.

I have taken the following aspects into consideration for my changes:

  • My students (last year of Secondary School, 18 year-olds) have special problems with the use of the Past Simple/Past Perfect tense sequence, as in Galicia, Spain, we do not use compound tenses.
  • At the time I used the activity we were dealing with the Passive, of which there is a different use in Spain, as we have a "pasiva refleja" form which is used in an impersonal sense.
  • The type of vocabulary used (building) may pose problems, as they are not familiar with some of the more technical words.

I followed this procedure:

  1. I gave them a drawing of a house taken from a picture dictionary, where words such as foundation trenches, rafters… are clearly illustrated.
  2. I dictated the sentences, making some changes for purposes of introducing vocabulary I was interested in using.
  3. I asked the Ss to work in pairs putting the sentences in a logical sequence. There was some discussion as to what came before what!
  4. We discussed the appropriacy of changing them to the Passive, as the action in all of them was more important than the agent.
  5. I asked them to pair them up using Simple Past and Present Perfect, eg. When the plans had been drawn by the architect, the ground was cleared

The activity was very productive, the students liked it and were actively involved. We used a full 50 min. session, and some of the Ss took it home to finish 5.

This is the list of sentences I used:

  • The workmen built the walls
  • They cleared the ground
  • They laid the drains
  • They put in the electrics
  • They dug the foundation trenches
  • They put up the rafters
  • They poured cement into the trenches
  • They put the tiles on the roof
  • They painted the inside walls
  • The architect drew the plans
  • They laid the grass round the new house
  • They set up the cranes
  • They set up the scaffolding