Pancakes and Grammar

After the disappointment yesterday, I did not get my hopes up for breakfast this morning. But I needn’t have worried. We had pancakes, as promised, covered in butter with banana and honey and caramel sauce to smother them with. It was great. It was the best start to the day.

In my G.11 class today I decided to do a grammar lesson, which for anyone who knows what my essays are like, is laughable. But after much research and trying to make my lesson plan as fool-proof as possible I managed to give a lesson explaining the rules of adjective order in phrases and sentences. I drew a table on the board and wrote the order of adjective phrases (which is article, ordinal, cardinal, quality, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material and noun). I then explained each category using examples. The students struggled a little with quality as it has a more general meaning in Thai than in English. After Aum pointed this out – I really don’t know what I’ll do when he goes back to university – I wrote more examples for quality and material as well. I asked the students to create their own phrases using two or more adjectives. This was simple enough for them, but many students had not written them when I asked them to read their sentences out. As annoying as it is, I think because I do not understand Thai, I don’t know whether the students are talking about work or not. To overcome this I think I will ask make sure to go round all the class when picking people to take part in lessons. The students who did participate were really good though.