Intonation in Question Tags and Debate on Teenager's Concerns

Thursday 21^st May

Hello guys! The course is finishing and you still don’t do homework!

Paco and Pilar got 3 points for handing in homework on verb patterns and Pilar also got 3 more points for homework on ‘would rather / would prefer’. The rest of you don’t get any points for homework.

We started the class with a role-play to practise the use of question tags in conversation.A was a police inspector and B was the suspect. The suspect had to answer the questions made by the inspector. The officer took notes. When the interrogation finished, the inspector checked the information he had recorded by making question tags.

This is how the intonation influences question tags:

Falling intonation

This is not a real question. It means, ‘Agree with me, talk to me’. (We know the intonation falls because we stress the auxiliary verb)

It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?

The film was great, wasn’t it?

Rising intonation

We really want to know something because we aren’t sure about the answer. (We know the intonation rises because we stress the pronoun)

You didn’t say that to him, did you?

They won’t take my car away, will they?

We went on checking intonation watching some videos. It’s a bit difficult but after a while I could see that you got the gist (the main point) of it!

We listened to an interview with a member of ‘Take That’. Again, this served as to practise question tags.

 

Then, we continued talking about verb patterns. I posted several lists on the previous blog. We also did some exercises in class.

The only way of getting accustomed to using these verbs is reading a lot and doing as many exercises as you can. You can always memorize a list before the exam but…what’s the point doing that? You’ll forget which verb to use after the test!

And we finished the class with the topic of ‘Bullying’. We finished t
he exercises on the article ‘Bullied kids at higher risk of mental health problems’.

After that we role played a debate where each one of you had a set of instructions. The interesting point was that you had to follow your lines and sometimes you didn’t agree with the part that you had to play. For A, the biggest thing that kids have to worry about is bullying. For B, exams; for C, parents and for D, money. You should state three reasons to support your argument.

It was quite interesting listening to you!

And that was all!

WARNING: next Thursday we have ‘Flipped class.’ The topic is summer holidays and summer time. Prepare something to teach in your class. No crosswords on word searches allowed!!!!

Some ideas: teach them how to write a postcard and have them exchanging postcards from the places where they are on holiday. Tell them or show them a video about Midsummer’s Night, teach them vocabulary related to different kinds of holidays or play a board game based on holidays…

         

         

  GAME 6

Player 1	4
Player 2	8
Player 3	---
Player 4	6
Player 5	3
Player 6	9
Player 7	---

                      

See you on Thursday.

Cheers!