This is a great table. My feedback is that I associate the word few to mean 3 or 4. The word couple means 2, few 3 or 4, and the word some is 5 or more.
Another example to list would be “I’ll have a few” as in 3-4 of an item or a small portion and “I’ll have some” meaning 5 or more or a medium to large portion size.
But perhaps others have different feedback.
Hey, some teacher made a chart for the few. 🙂
Just kidding.
It’s clear but I would add some illustrations or other graphics to make it more intuitive.
It’s good. I would change the example sentences a bit to make them more of a guided discovery so that the students are more likely to remember the difference between “few” and “a few” though.
I also have no idea what the %s are supposed to mean. If I (native speaker) don’t get it, the students probably won’t. If other natives understand it, great, but if one (me) doesn’t then that should set off some red flags in regards to student understanding.
Also nitpicky but you don’t need “2. few vs some” since the chart is clearly comparing “Few” and “some”. I’d keep the number 2 there though so you can more easily point it out (ex: “Look at chart #2”)
I never really thought about how a single “a” changes the meaning of “few” so drastically haha
I am Japanese and I wish I had this table as a student!! Great work!
There is a few milk in the fridge
The examples make sense to a native speaker, but for students it might help to make these examples into context sentences. You can have your student circle the context clues that give them the bolded word’s meaning.
Few is 3
>. <. Japanese don’t use plural like in English. I guess you’d have to explain why it’s hard to count a drop of milk versus the whole carton visually. +. – also better to convey meaning versus words
I think you should consider teaching by simple examples and by recycling rather than giving students complicated grammar tables. This looks like something they can find in a grammar book. If they wanted, they could look this up for reference after the lesson.
Also, they will take this quite literally as a hard and fast rule, and then get confused if someone refers to “a few apples” when there are six. This is prescriptive grammar, not descriptive, and you need to be careful there.
You also might want to consider contextualizing the grammar you teach as well as not basing the lesson on teaching a single discrete grammar point. Of course, I’m just assuming that is what you’re doing with a worksheet like this. You haven’t shown us a lesson plan that would include context to show how this will be used in the lesson, but it’s typical for new teachers to teach in this way. I also don’t know what has come before or will come after this, so it might be worth pointing out that this particular grammar is hard because there aren’t plurals or countable/non-countable nouns in Japanese. That’s a point which takes ages and ages for them to grasp, and is one of the sticking points for many Japanese English learners. You shouldn’t be surprised if it takes learners quite a while for them to grasp this concept, then another long interval before they can apply it, and even longer to automatize it (if they ever do). In other words, they’re going to continue to make mistakes with this for a long time so you should not see that as a failure to understand requiring even more explanations. Rather, they need more examples, input, and recycling.
Always remember that when you teach grammar by giving students tables and long complicated explanations, you’re going to intimidate your students into thinking grammar is far more complicated than it actually is.
Think you might have forgotten ‘Quite a few’ which challenges your idea about what percentage few refers to.
It’s tempting to ascribe percentages, and lots of Japanese students ask about it, but there are just too many exceptions to make it worthwhile.
I think you should have “Few” as 3-5. Otherwise you might get people saying few when describing a couple or a pair of people.
You need exercises to have the student try out these words.
Also, what are you going to teach them to say when there are 5 things? I could see students really interested in English going crazy with this point when they encounter five things.
Everything is good, I also didn’t get the %’s Everything else looks good
13 comments
This is a great table. My feedback is that I associate the word few to mean 3 or 4. The word couple means 2, few 3 or 4, and the word some is 5 or more.
Another example to list would be “I’ll have a few” as in 3-4 of an item or a small portion and “I’ll have some” meaning 5 or more or a medium to large portion size.
But perhaps others have different feedback.
Hey, some teacher made a chart for the few. 🙂
Just kidding.
It’s clear but I would add some illustrations or other graphics to make it more intuitive.
It’s good. I would change the example sentences a bit to make them more of a guided discovery so that the students are more likely to remember the difference between “few” and “a few” though.
I also have no idea what the %s are supposed to mean. If I (native speaker) don’t get it, the students probably won’t. If other natives understand it, great, but if one (me) doesn’t then that should set off some red flags in regards to student understanding.
Also nitpicky but you don’t need “2. few vs some” since the chart is clearly comparing “Few” and “some”. I’d keep the number 2 there though so you can more easily point it out (ex: “Look at chart #2”)
I never really thought about how a single “a” changes the meaning of “few” so drastically haha
I am Japanese and I wish I had this table as a student!!
Great work!
There is a few milk in the fridge
The examples make sense to a native speaker, but for students it might help to make these examples into context sentences. You can have your student circle the context clues that give them the bolded word’s meaning.
Few is 3
>. <. Japanese don’t use plural like in English. I guess you’d have to explain why it’s hard to count a drop of milk versus the whole carton visually. +. – also better to convey meaning versus words
I think you should consider teaching by simple examples and by recycling rather than giving students complicated grammar tables. This looks like something they can find in a grammar book. If they wanted, they could look this up for reference after the lesson.
Also, they will take this quite literally as a hard and fast rule, and then get confused if someone refers to “a few apples” when there are six. This is prescriptive grammar, not descriptive, and you need to be careful there.
You also might want to consider contextualizing the grammar you teach as well as not basing the lesson on teaching a single discrete grammar point. Of course, I’m just assuming that is what you’re doing with a worksheet like this. You haven’t shown us a lesson plan that would include context to show how this will be used in the lesson, but it’s typical for new teachers to teach in this way. I also don’t know what has come before or will come after this, so it might be worth pointing out that this particular grammar is hard because there aren’t plurals or countable/non-countable nouns in Japanese. That’s a point which takes ages and ages for them to grasp, and is one of the sticking points for many Japanese English learners. You shouldn’t be surprised if it takes learners quite a while for them to grasp this concept, then another long interval before they can apply it, and even longer to automatize it (if they ever do). In other words, they’re going to continue to make mistakes with this for a long time so you should not see that as a failure to understand requiring even more explanations. Rather, they need more examples, input, and recycling.
Always remember that when you teach grammar by giving students tables and long complicated explanations, you’re going to intimidate your students into thinking grammar is far more complicated than it actually is.
Think you might have forgotten ‘Quite a few’ which challenges your idea about what percentage few refers to.
It’s tempting to ascribe percentages, and lots of Japanese students ask about it, but there are just too many exceptions to make it worthwhile.
I think you should have “Few” as 3-5. Otherwise you might get people saying few when describing a couple or a pair of people.
You need exercises to have the student try out these words.
Also, what are you going to teach them to say when there are 5 things? I could see students really interested in English going crazy with this point when they encounter five things.
Everything is good, I also didn’t get the %’s Everything else looks good