February 28 Overview

We are going to hurry through the grammatical parts of Lesson 4, Unit 2, namely the passive voice.We will then move on to Lesson 5, on business letters.

The "passive voice" tells what happened, but not who did it:

• passive: The car was scratched. active: I scratched the car.
• passive: The homework is posted on line. active: Samantha posted the homework on line.

English forms the passive voice with a form of the word "be" and a past form of the main verb. So

•  Lessons are taught Tuesday through Thursday night.
• Groceries are sold on Mount Pleasant Avenue.
• The chalk was broken.

If you wish to name the person or thing that acted, you can use a clause with by:

• A falling branch scratched my car's paint.
•  My car's paint was scratched by a falling branch.

You can practice forming the passive version of some sentences:

• David assigned some homework.
• Samantha suggested a game.
• That dog growled at me.

Lesson 5 of Unit 2 discusses business letters. We will devote most of the class to this lesson. The letter on page 34 can serve as our model for organization, having from top to bottom the components

• return address
• date
• address (of the recipient)
• salutation
• body
• closing
• signature
• name

You must include in your letter

• who you are
• why you are writing
• an explanation of the problem
• a suggested resolution

The book does not say, but you should know

• do not sound angry
• do not suggest that the recipient has tried to cheat you
• imply that the difficulty can easily be resolved.

We will practice writing letters based on the scenarios on page 35, breaking up into small groups to do so.

Tuesday, February 21

As Samantha's email noted, we reviewed conditions "If I had", "Unless you", "If he weren't", and so on, with a game that had teams try to construct a suitable second clause. This might have worked better with some previous drill, or with other preparation up front. The second half reviewing words related to crime and the courts, went somewhat more smoothly.

I'm inviting all of the Spring ESL 4 teachers to try posting to this blog. What I have in mind is less to let the teachers know what happened in the previous class, for which email will serve well enough, but for us to let the students know, as far in advance as possible, what will be covered in each next class, including

• vocabulary
• grammar
• sample calculations, if the lesson includes them (as some of the Unit 2 lessons do)
• any other suggestions for preparation that might be helpful

This certainly may work better for the Tuesday class, where teachers and students have more time to prepare; yet if we are predictable enough it might work for the other classes also.