After the lessons on action and linking verbs it is good to test how students apply what they have learned through sentence construction. This activity will not be simple sentence construction. Rather, the students will be provided with a pool of words from which they will choose to make up their own sentences.
There will be two levels: easy and hard. The easy level would include simple constructed sentence with only one subject and one predicate. The hard level would be compound sentences that may have two or more verbs. It will be more interesting if this activity is done on the blackboard in order to facilitate dynamics within the classroom. The class may be divided into teams whose members will take turns in filling up each sentence. Prepare ten sentences for each level. Each sentence would be missing an action verb or a linking verb.
Prepare the missing action verbs and linking verbs for each sentence in sheets of paper that the students can post into the blank space. Ensure that there are many verb choices to make the activity more interesting. The students can even play with their imagination in answering the questions. For the above example, the action verb could be goes, walks, runs, bikes, etc. In order to increase difficulty it is good to also include other conjugations of the verbs (go, went; walk, walked; run, ran; biking) in the word pool. Activity 2
Sentence Level Semantic Classification Of Online Product Reviews
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In order to gauge the individual retention of students on the action and linking verb lesson, another activity would be essay writing. This will not be usual essay writing because this will enable instructors to look into the ability of the student to be aware of how verbs are used in a sentence and at the same time increase their capability to pinpoint action and linking verbs in paragraphs. This activity will even increase the writing skills of students especially when done at a regular interval.
Ask students to write two 250 word essays on any topic they like. The first essay would be descriptive of something or someone and the other essay would be a narration of an event or a description of an action or procedure. This will enable the instructor to assess how the students use linking verbs (especially in the descriptive essay) and action verbs (in the narration essay).
After the students have finished constructing the essays, they will be instructed to identify the action verbs and linking verbs they have used in the essays.
They will be asked to identify ALL verbs used. Another option for the instructor is to make students exchange essays and identify the action verbs and linking verbs used by their classmate in the essays. This will enable them to look into other’s works and know the different styles of using verbs in sentences. Ensure that their answers distinguish the action from the linking verb. In this way, they will also be aware of the instances wherein action and linking verbs are used together in sentences. They can also point out mistakes in the usage of verbs as seen in the essays.
