Why Being An English Teacher Matters

The PMR results have been announced yesterday. I totally forgot about it, until I received this SMS from my student. I have tutored her especially for PMR, and she is actually from another school. "Thank you teacher, I've got 9A's for my PMR. You have helped me a lot". I was smiling all over. This year marked my 10 years into teaching. Teaching English precisely. God knows, how happy I was receiving that SMS from her, knowing that she thanked and appreciated me. Then, I've got this message through FB, a former student reflecting his 3rd former's days of me being strict with him not finishing his English essays and now gladly understanding my motives. He's now 22 years old. Yes, teachers forgot but students remembered. Those two messages touched me in a discreet way, not knowing that in those 10 years I have actually made a difference to different individuals. Thank you too, dear students for remembering me. The best Teacher's Day presents for this year...

Sentence Patterns

In learning the English language, it is important for students to write good sentences, especially in writing essays. A good essay contains various types of sentence patterns. There are three types of sentence patterns. - Simple Sentence, Compound Sentence and Complex Sentence.

Now, let's look at Simple Sentence.

1) A simple sentence contains one subject and one finite verb.

Subject means ~ The thing we are talking about.
Verb means ~ Action taking place.

For example:

1) Subject Verb
I wrote a letter

2) Subject Verb
She loves her cat

It is crucial that students are able to master simple sentence structures without making any errors or mistakes.

Below, is an exercise to test students' capability in mastering the simple sentence structures.

Sample of exercise:

Rearrange these words into complete sentences. Then, rewrite them. Remember your capital letters.

1) like/ they/ play/ football /to

2) i/ ice-cream/ love

3) she / watching/ is / television /the

4) rita / baking/ cakes/ is

5) driving/ the / timothy/ is /car

If you are able to answer this exercise, you are on the right track.

Until we meet again... adieu

Why English Matters

Daffodils- the subject of many poems such as "Daffodils"

by William Wordsworth

English is an important subject. So today, marks the birth of my long overdue blog on things pertaining to the English language. Call it like a gift to the society, as a pay back to the community. I hope that this blog would serve as a reference stop on English matters. Happy birthday, dear blog!