ECC English HUB

Hello Friends
Before we start with the tenses, a very important concept that children have to have the knowledge about is Personal Pronouns. We all know that a Pronoun is a word that we use in place of a Noun. And it is a characteristic of a Noun or a Pronoun that it is used either as the Subject or as the Object of the Verb. One of the main kinds of Pronouns is Personal Pronoun. We must remember that there are three persons in English - First Person that is the Speaker
Second Person that is the Listener
Third Person that we talk about.
To Put this information in a tabular form, we can make the following table:
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
Person Subject Possessive Object
Ist Person (singular) I My / Mine Me
(Plural) We Our / Ours Us
IInd person You Your / Yours You
IIIrd Person (Singular) He His / His Him
She Her / Hers Her
It Its / Its It
IIIrd Person (Plural) They Their / Theirs Them
As we can see from the above table a Pronoun can be used either as a Subject or an Object to the Verb. In its possessive form while the possessive (My, Our, Your, His, Her, Its and Their) are Possessive Adjectives as they always come with a Noun, the forms (Mine, Ours, Yours, His, Hers, its and Theirs) are Possessive Pronouns because they always replace a Noun. (e.g)
My house is smaller than Yours (Your House)
Your pen does not write so smoothly as mine (My pen.
To be Continued.................

Now when we have discussed in detail about Sentences and their kinds, our next task is to see whether these sentences can be interchanged. There are two ways in which we can change a sentence from the given form to some other form. When children in junior classes are asked to change a sentence from one form to the other, they change it by changing its meaning too. (e.g)
You completed your work last night.
Now if we ask somebody to change this sentence into its negative form, the simple answer will be -
You did Not complete your work last night.
And if you wish to convert it into Interrogative sentence, then the simple answer is -
Did you complete your work last night?
But in senior classes, particularly in ICSE schools, children are supposed to change the form of a sentence without changing its meaning which means they will change a sentence from Positive to Negative or Interrogative but still the meaning of the sentence will remain the same. (e.g)
You always disobey your teachers.
Now it is a Positive Sentence and if we wish to change it into Negative one, we will say
You never obey your teachers.
Though the form of sentence is changed, its meaning remains the same.
Similarly if we take a sentence - You are going to the party. Now we have to, say, change it into Interrogative sentence without changing its meaning, the answer will be - Are you not going to the party?
Where the statement in made in Positive form, its question will be in the Negative form and vice-versa.
Similarly an Exclamatory sentence can also be changed into Assertive sentence without changing its meaning.
(e.g) What a lovely rose it has been!
Now it has been an Exclamatory sentence and if we are asked to change it into an Assertive sentence without changing its meaning, the answer will be - It has been a lovely rose.
On the contrary, we can also change an Assertive Sentence into an Exclamatory sentence. (e.g)
The teacher gave the students a very difficult sum to solve. (Assertive)
What a difficult sum was given by the teacher to the students to solve! (Exclamatory)
The basic thing to learn is how to write different kinds of sentences.
Now as we have completed our first topic - Sentences and their Kinds, our next task will be to discuss about a very important chapter of English Grammar - Tenses and their Kinds.
To be continued.......

Hello Friends
To continue with our discussion about Sentences, now the third kind of sentence that we are going to discuss today is Imperative Sentence. Any sentence which contains some order, request, advise, or suggestion is called Imperative Sentence. As both Assertive and Imperative sentences are followed by a full stop (.), often children get confused and they are not able to recognise each of them. But they should remember the basic difference in the structure of both the sentences.
While an Assertive sentence follows the structure of Subject + Verb + Object, Imperative sentence does not have a subject and the sentence begins either with a Verb or with a Helping Verb (if the sentence is negative). To make it clear, let's take an example.
You must not make a noise in the class.
Now as the sentence begins with 'you' which is the "Subject" of the sentence, it is an assertive sentence and here we can divide it into Subject and Predicate where 'You' is the subject and the rest of the sentence i.e. 'Must not make a noise in the class' is the Predicate. But if the same sentence is written as
Don't Make a noise in the class. it is an Imperative Sentence begins it starts with the word 'Don't' which is a Helping Verb and the subject is missing. In fact, in Imperative Sentence the subject is always 'You' which is the second person or listener but this subject 'You' is not given but it is understood.
So children have to understand this difference to differentiate between an Assertive Sentence and an Imperative One.

Our next kind of Sentence is Exclamatory Sentence which expresses our feelings and where we sometimes, use the feeling words like 'Hurra! Alas! Oh! Ah!' etc. Such words in English come in the category of Interjections. Many a time we make exclamatory sentences without the use of Interjections. (e.g)

What a lovely weather it is today! or How beautiful the picture is!

Now both these sentence show the feelings of joy or surprise of the speaker and hence they are called Imperative Sentences. An Imperative Sentence is always followed by an exclamation sign (!).

And the last type is Optative Sentence which expresses a wish, prayer, or desire. It often uses words like "may," "wish," or "let" and can end with an exclamation sign. (e.g) May you live a long life!
May your dreams come true! Wish you all the best!

Hello Friends! To continue with our question "What is a Sentence"? A sentence is a group of words which make some sense. In other words if we use some words meaningfully together, we frame a sentence.
e.g. The birds fly in the sky.
Now the next question is "How many parts of a sentence are there?"
Well, there are two parts of a sentence: a) SUBJECT b) PREDICATE
Subject means the doer of the action or what we talk about in a sentence while predicate means the action or what is being told about in the sentence. It is really strange that children who have been doing English for many years are many a time not aware about the concept of Subject and Predicate though it is the basic part of a sentence.
Then we have another question concerning the concept of Sentence that is the Kinds of Sentence. How many types of sentences are there?
There are five kinds of sentences. Their names are as follows:
1) Assertive or Affirmative or Declarative
2) Interrogative
3) Imperative
4) Exclamatory
5) Optative
Now we will be discussing these types in detail:
1) Assertive Sentence - An Assertive sentence is a kind of a simple statement that we make to say something based on facts. An Assertive Sentence can further be divided into two parts - Positive or Negative.
e.g. It has been raining very heavily these days (Positive Assertion)
You are not following the command of your boss. (Negative Assertion).
2) Interrogative Sentence - An interrogative Sentence means a question which is followed by a sign of Interrogation (?). Interrogative Sentences are of two kinds:
Some questions begin with a helping verb or what we call Auxiliary Verbs like 'do, does, is, am, are, will, shall' and many such verbs which we use in one or the other tense. Now these questions can be answered in 'Yes' or 'No'. (e.g) Have you finished your work? Now if the person who is asked this question has finished his work, he will answer 'YES' and if he has not finished it, he will say 'No'.
Similarly, there are some questions which are made by using the wh-words like 'what, when, why, how, where' etc. Now such questions cannot be answered in Yes or No and one has to make a proper answer for such questions. For example if a person is asked what his name was, he will have to make a proper reply and tell his name in the answer and he can't simply make a yes or no answer.
Now this information has to be kept in mind when the topic of Direct-In-Direct is introduced to the students, say in class 7 or 8. To Be Continued.......................

Hi Friends
Today I am posting something which may help you and your children to get familiar with English as a language and help them to write and speak it with the same confidence with which they speak Hindi or Punjabi.
English, as we all know, is a language just like any other language and the basic purpose of any language is to communicate, to talk to someone or to express our ideas to others. But why our children are not able to use it as efficiently as they use their mother tongue? The obvious reason is that they are not familiar with the language. What I have seen since I started teaching is that in schools, the children are asked to mug up the rules of grammar rather than practising the grammar concepts and cramming as we all know is short lived. What we learn today is going to be forgotten in a few hours or in a few days. But if we give them the practice and make them learn through their mistakes, they will never forget the concept and then it becomes a part of their experience. They come to know where they are committing a mistake and they try not to repeat their mistakes. As it is said in English - A sensible man does not repeat his mistakes.
In most of the cases, what has been observed is that students have no knowledge of the basics of English. If we ask them a very simple question - 'What is the basic structure of a sentence in English'? In most of the cases, we will not get any reply because they don't know it and that is why when they come to writing sentences, they go wrong. Now the basic structure of a sentence in English is S + V + O (Subject followed by Verb and then the Object) which is quite opposite to the structure in Hindi or Punjabi where we follow the structure (S + O + V) i.e., (Subject followed by Object and then the verb). That means in our language the action words comes in the last after object whereas in English we take the action verb before the object.
Now the next question is "What is a Sentence"?
I will continue with the answer of this question in my next post.