Comparative Grammar Project and Annotated Lesson Plan

Summary of Example

• Title of the lesson: Past tense verbs with -ed
• Language comparison, grammar focus of instruction, and establishment of relevance:
• I have chosen to compare the languages English and Nepali. In both languages, simple past tense is a term that is used to describe actions that have happened in the past at a specific time. In English, when changing a root word to show simple past tense, in most cases we simply add -ed to the verb. However, there are some cases in English when we need to change a word to a whole new word (i.e. eat becoming ate). Specifically, if the word ends in a vowel such as -e, we drop the -e and then add -ed (i.e. hope becomes hoped). If the word does not end in a vowel -e but a consonant, we just add -ed (i.e. work becomes worked). If the root word has a vowel then a consonant, we then double the consonant and then add -ed (i.e. stop becomes stopped).
• In Nepali, if the root word ends in a single vowel sound, they remove it. If the root word has more than one syllable and ends in an -a or an -i sound, they remove it as well. Otherwise they skip that step. Then they add the required ending to root word depending on who the root word is referring to (i.e. I, we, you, he, she, they). So, if you were trying to say “I ate the cake”, then you would take the root word “roknu” meaning ate, eliminate the -u to make the word “rok”, then add -em to make the word “rokem”. This means “I ate” in Nepali (Dinesh, 2012).  
• Both languages are similar in the fact that a portion of the word must be eliminated before the ending is added correctly to show simple past tense. The difference is that in Nepali there’s a different way to say it depending on if the meaning is I ate, we ate or you ate. In English, we change the pronoun and don’t change the root word ate at all.
• The potential sources of error for learners from Nepali is that they tend to overgeneralize the grammar rule in English and just add -ed to every word to show past tense instead of understanding that some words have different forms such as eat and ate. In this lesson plan, students will start by learning the basic idea of how to use -ed appropriately. I have witnessed confusion of how to use simple past tense in my classroom. I have one student who is from Nepal who is learning English as a second language and he often overgeneralizes the rule. He says things like “I goed to the library”. I’m challenged by this issue because I don’t often have students that still make these kinds of errors. I teach fifth grade and by the time they come to me, they understand the rules of grammar. However, this year, since this student has only been in our country for about a year, he often makes this mistake. I am now finding myself needing to find ways to help him understand basic grammar rules.
• Introductory Statement of Your Language Task:
• The language task that my students are going to do orally telling and writing down what they did over the weekend.
• The students relate to playing outside, writing, reading. I will have them do the input activity first, then work on their structured practice, and finally work on their output assessment.