ENGLISH FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS ~ English For Excellence

ENGLISH FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

At elementary level students enjoy learning in a play-way method. Parents and teachers are supposed to encourage kids to learn in such a way that they enjoy learning. Children need to do a lot of practice of what they learn at school. Some tests will help them recapitulate their learning.

Be-Forms: Using be-forms (be, is, am, are, was, were, been, being) properly in the sentences adds to the knowledge of English. Children need to identify which helping verb is used with which subject.

Here is a test to test yourself.

                    II. Plurals: Singular nouns are made plurals by suffixing them with s, es, or ies. 
A. “s” is added at the end of a regular noun.

Examples: bat - bats
chair - chairs
plate - plates

B. “es” is added at the end of a noun if it ends in -s, -ss, -sh, -ch, -x, -z, or o.

Examples: bus - buses
bush - bushes
church - churches
tax - taxes
mango - mangoes

C. The nouns ending in -f, fe are made plurals by changing -f, fe into -ve and adding -s at the end.

Examples: knife - knives
wolf - wolves

Exceptions: cliff - cliffs
proof - proofs
chief - chiefs

D. “-ies” is added at the end of the noun which ends in consonant and y.

Examples: army - armies
city - cities

Here is a test to test yourself.

III. Prepositions: Prepositions are short words used before nouns. They show the relation of the nouns with some other words in the sentences. Though there is a lot to learn about prepositions, the beginners can begin with on, in, at, etc.

The following excerpt from the textbook of class VII explains the concept of prepositions well.

Raman was born on November 7, 1888.
Raman passed away in 1970 on November 21.
Raman did his M.A. course at Presidency College in Madras.
In December, on a fine evening in 1927, there was much excitement.

Explanation: ‘on’, ‘in’ and ‘at’ are prepositions of time and place. In sentence 1 & 2 ‘on’ is used before a date. In sentence 2, 3 & 4 ‘in’ is used before a year (in 1970), before the name of a big city (in Madras) and before the name of a month (In December). In sentence 3 ‘at’ is used before the name of a small place / area.

Here is a test to test yourself.

IV. Verb Forms: The main part of an English sentence is the verb. In the sentence, "She has written a story.", main verb written plays an important role in conveying the meaning. To form sentences in English we need to know verb forms. Basically main verbs have 3 forms, namely, present (V1), past (V2) and past participle (V3). V1+ing is considered V4.

Let’s have a look at them.

V1	V2	V3	V4(V1+ing)
call	called	called	calling
praise	praised	praise	praising
walk	walked	walked	walking

eat	ate	eaten	eating
see	saw	seen	seeing
take	took	taken	taking

read	read	read	reading
cut	cut	cut	cutting
put	put	put	putting

Here is a test to test yourself.

V. Degrees of Comparison: An adjective qualifies a noun/pronoun. An adverb qualifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb.Adjectives and adverbs have three forms (degrees of comparison) - Positive, Comparative and Superlative.