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Topic: Pronoun

Pronouns are common words like it, you, she, someone and who, which may stand in for nouns or noun phrases.

An Introduction to Genre

Lesson Plan

Goals:

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An Introduction to Genre

Activities

Activity 1

Writing is an activity by which we achieve different goals. There are so many different types of text, we give the different types their own names. The names we give to different texts are called genres.

What kind of written or spoken text would you find the following sentences and phrases in? Give an answer for each one.

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Genre of Advertisements

Lesson Plan

Goals: 

  • Identify common discourse and register features of advertisements
  • Analyse how these features are used to achieve the desired effects 
  • Plan, write and evaluate an advert using the same features 

Lesson Plan

Before this lesson, you may want to complete the lesson An Introduction to Genre, so that learners are familiar with the key terms discourse structure and register

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Genre of Advertisements

Activities

Warmer 

Discuss with a partner: 

  • What adverts did you see on the way to school today? What made them memorable?
  • What advert have you seen recently that stuck in your mind? Why? 
  • What kind of writing and information do we normally see in adverts? 

Activity 1 

In pairs or small groups, read Adverts A and B. Take turns describing each text, and then discuss with your partner: 

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Playing with person

In this exercise, students make changes to pronouns in texts, and evaluate the effects of those changes.

Goals

  • Identify first, second, and third person pronouns, and practise switching from one to another.
  • Evaluate the effects of writing using different personal pronouns.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will make changes to existing texts by changing the personal pronouns in those texts.

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Playing with person: Activity

I’m sitting here looking out of the window. Nothing’s happening; it never does. I sit here every day for hours on end, just looking. Looking for what? I don’t know. They never told me what I should be looking for. And I’ve never found out.

I once thought I’d found something, but I couldn’t be sure. It might just have been a trick of the light. How was I to tell?

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The second-person pronoun and textual effects

Exploring the use of you in different texts

In this lesson, students explore the potential readerly 'effects' of the second-person pronoun you.

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Identify the pronoun type

Identify the type of pronoun highlighted in each example below:

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Identify the pronouns

Click on the words that you think are pronouns to select or deselect them.

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Y6 GPaS Test: I or me?

In each of the following examples, indicate whether the space should be filled with I or me:

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Y6 GPaS Test: Identify the relative pronoun

Find the relative pronoun in a range of examples

Identify the relative pronouns in each of the following examples. Click on the word (or words) to select or deselect them.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Noun or pronoun?

Work out whether the highlighted word is a noun or a pronoun

In each of the following examples, indicate whether the highlighted word is a noun or a pronoun:

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Y6 GPaS Test: Pronoun or preposition?

In each of the following examples, indicate whether the highlighted word is a pronoun or a preposition:

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Y6 GPaS Test: Select the pronouns

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

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Pronouns

Pronouns are one of the eight word classes in the National Curriculum. Some linguists would treat pronouns as a subclass of nouns, and there are some good reasons for that, but we adhere to the National Currciulum specifications.

Pronouns can sometimes replace a noun in a sentence:

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Pronouns: Advanced

Pronouns behave in some ways like nouns and can sometimes replace them in a sentence. For this reason, pronouns are often treated as a subclass of nouns and there are some good reasons for doing this, but they are – in some important ways – different from nouns.

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Pronouns, Subjects and Objects

In this film Professor Bas Aarts introduces the ideas behind three more grammatical categories: pronouns, Subjects and Objects. 

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