Thursday, June 2, 2016

Making Direct & Indirect Object Pronouns Comprehensible

This may not be ground-breaking (pretty sure many of you do it!) but I tried this only the last month of classes with my groups... my level one students showed a remarkable improvement in their writings and through reading with direct and indirect object pronouns. As I read aloud while they followed along, I would make an 'unnatural' pause and point at a student. For example: "El hombre querĂ­a llamarrrLA" emphasizing the "LA" while pointing at a girl in class. Then I would proceed with "pop-up grammar" "What is "la"? What is the "r" in "llamar", so what does "llamarla" mean? And if I wanted to say "he wanted to call ME"? what would I say instead of "LA"? and so on... The pop-up grammar was lightened as we continued the novel. This pause in my reading gave students a second to "digest" and better understand the grammar in the novel, and their writing improved remarkably, making my level one students more capable of applying indirect and direct object pronouns attached and detached to the verb in a much more spontaneous way! I don't know why I didn't do this sooner! Definitely an A-HA moment for me! Do you have any other ideas to help with this topic?