Supplementing students study materials with teacher self prepared materials.

I notice that at times I need to supplement the materials my students need to master English. These are, sometimes, concepts that are not taught in textbooks and hence at their schools and I had to visit websites in search of information about them as well as use other textbooks. Even I had to search for concepts and tutorials in websites and grammar textbooks to supplement the lack or absence of knowledge of topics in English grammar I needed to learn about and use. When I do this searching for additional knowledge to augment or to reinforce my present knowledge, I also give this information to my students depending on their level of proficiency (let’s leave out the word competency, it is demeaning). It is a useful thing to do and aids the student by supplementing or reinforcing what they have already learnt or will learn and give them pride in possessing a comprehensive knowledge of English grammar.

I have noticed that many of my students, who are Malaysians, are not able to use the singular and plural well. As well as that in which tense should they use, which auxiliary verb to be used with what kind of singular or plural. I decided to produce a set of teacher self prepared handouts and accompanying worksheets on the use of the singular and plural, replete with tables and a tutorial on the types of sentences, including subject, verb, question word and object placement. I also included a worksheet that had the three kinds of questions that are always posed; affirmative (positive), negative and question (both affirmative and negative). In this way my students were be able to understand the singular and plural and how to use them in the simple past and simple present tense. This was done to raise their confidence and their ability to produce excellent English, be it in writing, speaking, reading or listening.

Let me tell you of my personal experience. When I was studying for my TESOL diploma I needed to find out more about sentence structure and what were the subject, verb and object in a sentence. I needed to find out more on the placement of the subject, verb and the object in various types of sentences. The textbook which my trainer was using was lacking. It only gave me a brief and cursory description of the subject. Due to teacher hegemony, my classmates and I had no choice but to use that book. The knowledge it gave us on what were the subject, verb and object and their placement in declarative and question sentences was insufficient to create confidence in our knowledge. Also, where was the subject in imperative and exclamatory sentences? I found out about these from a website based in Britain which had content authored by academics. I also found some useful practice files which reinforced understanding through rigorous practice from some American websites with content written by academics.

The other example was when I needed to understand subject verb agreement and its companion, pronoun verb agreement. The textbook I mentioned earlier was devoid of any knowledge on this topic. Our trainer provided content from other books. So I perused the Internet and found content authored by academics on this subject replete with tutorials and practice files. There were also topics that I unaware of such as fused sentences, fragments and demonstratives..

Now as a teacher, as an educator, if I find things that my students lacked fuller knowledge of or had never been aware of until a particular time, am I not duty bound to tell my students about it? Does it not fall upon me to educate my students about it when I know they have no knowledge of it? Certainly, I am duty bound to do so. I can find out what my students lack from their essays where fused sentences and dangling modifiers occur and need correction. I can glean for information of what they lack from their syllabus. I can examine the textbooks they use at their schools to see what is lacking or is absent. I can casually posit questions to dredge out information on anything they lack knowledge of. The errors my students make in their written work and speaking can reveal much of the concepts that they do not know about.