Day 4: What’s Your Name? Tell Me About You

Hi, I’m Teacher Rosalind from Fun Language Learning. This is the fourth article of the 14 Closely Guarded Cloze Tips series brought to you by LearnSuperMart and Fun Language Learning.

As a bilingual specialist, I help Primary and Secondary school students achieve their desired grades in English and Chinese by guiding them to develop effective language learning strategies and skills.

1. Now that you know the two types of clues—Language and Background Clues—let’s delve into the details of Language Clues.

One huge aspect of Language Clues is ‘Parts of Speech’. Understanding how a word fits in a sentence helps you select the most suitable word choice. 

From the title, can you guess the two parts of speech we are covering today?

 

2. Did you guess Nouns and Adjectives?

The boy is happy.

Boy → Noun                   Happy → Adjective

 

3. How do you identify that a common noun is required?

Nouns are names of people, places and things.

 

Clue: There are words like ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ in front of a countable noun.

a + noun starting with a consonant sound   (sounds other than a, e, i, o, u)

• a boy            
• a cat
• a dream 
• a quarrel
• a swarm of bees
• a family

 

an + noun starting with a vowel sound  (sounds of a, e, i, o, u)

• an apple    
• an elephant
• an ice cube
• an orange 
• an umbrella
• an appeal
• an experience
• an idea
• an operation
• an understanding
• an hour (pronounced as ‘our’)
• an heir (pronounced as ‘air’)

 

4. How do you identify that an adjective is required?

Adjectives are words that describe a noun.

 

Clue 1: The blank is before or after a noun

• a strong woman            
• a woman who is strong
• a feeble old man         
• an annual meeting

 

Clue 2: There are words like ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was’, ‘were’, ‘seem’ and ‘grow’ after a noun.

• The boat is stable.           
• The woman was strong.
• The future looks bright.
• The class had grown tired by then.

 

Clue 3: There are words like ‘between’, ‘among’, ‘of’, ‘the more’, ‘the most’, that indicate comparison.

• the taller of the twins 
• the tallest (among everyone) in class
• the faster between the two athletes
• the more beautiful flower
• the most beautiful flower

 

5. Do you know?

a) Nouns can be used as adjectives (words in bold).

• a Facebook account
• an FB account (pronounced as ‘Air-f B’ so it starts with a vowel sound)
• a shoe store
• table manners

 

b) Adjectives can be used as nouns (words in bold).

One person:

• the accused
• the deceased

A group:

• the employed
• the underpriviledged

 

6. Try these:

i) There was a ____________. And then there was silence.

ii) There was an ____________. And then peace reigned again.

iii) The __________ operation lasted for 12 hours.

 

 

Visit fllacademy.com or like Fun Language Learning Facebook Page for more language learning resources.

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