This document describes a new teaching strategy called "Handmade English" for teaching English tenses. It takes a different approach than traditional methods by focusing first on how auxiliaries work with tenses before teaching the tenses themselves. The strategy can teach students the most common tenses - present, past, future, and conditional - in just 20 lessons. It uses a simple one-page rule about auxiliaries swapping or dropping to help students understand how English works. This method aims to help students communicate more quickly and easily by optimizing what they learn in a short time.

1. “HANDMADE ENGLISH”
Just swap or drop!
A new teaching strategy
by Anna Piermattei and Paola Reggio
ESOL Teachers
October 2010

2. graficol1.xls
How to use and tackle different tenses – present,
past, future, conditional - in questions, sentences,
negative forms with an absolutely new and
innovative approach.
•global system
•a rule that is just one page long though it covers
80% most common mistakes
•short time – 20 LESSONS
Students will be ready to use their communicative
skills much sooner than with any other method.

4. LESS
GRAMMAR
LOGICAL
MORE
SPEAKING AND WRITING
SOONER

5. GRAFICO TRIENNIO.xls
Focus is completely different from
traditional methods.
They introduce tenses one by one (3
years)
LIMIT IN COMMUNICATION
LIMIT IN PRACTICE
•miss the chance to optimize what
students are learning
•miss the opportunity to easily re-
apply it to other tenses

6. 1a media (tot. 90 ore)
Handmade English (20 h.)
present/past/future/conditional
dict verbs
(5 h) conversation + listening/speaking/writing/reading (65 h.) (thanks-greeting-introducing myself or others - meet new friends - likes and
dislikes - suggest, refuse, accept and arrange something together)
2a media (tot. 90 ore)
Handmade English (10
h.)
present/past/future/con
ditional
dictionary and conversation (80 h) + listening/speaking/writing/reading
(describing people/places, daily routine, weather, shopping, at the table, travelling, talking (ask and answer about present, past, future)
film/songs
3a media (tot. 90 ore)
Handmade English (10
h.)
present/past/future/con
ditional
dictionary and conversation (80 h) + listening/speaking/writing/reading (test ket/pet)
(conversation games and cards)
more grammar rules (comp/superl, if
clause, reported speech, etc.
film/songs
GRAFICO TRIENNIO

7. We do the opposite:
Focus is first on the way auxiliaries work,
and then on the tense they are made for.
EASY TO LEARN
4cartellone orizzontale_Layout 1.pdf

8. Main concept – English auxiliaries just swap or drop.
Which are the auxiliaries that “swap”?
(be+ing, have+participle, will+verb, would +verb)
Which are the ones that “drop”?
(do, does, did)
(DVD lesson 2- 10 minutes)
Learning strategy - “TPR – Total Physical Response”
Render more visible and fun the grammar rule by
representing the rule with the hands and fingers. This
enables teachers to make their lessons more fun and
interesting and students to love learning.
(DVD Are you kidding?- 6 minutes)

9. Objectives:
To highly fasten and secure the learning process of English, so as to
prepare the groundwork for simple conversation about what has been
done or what will be done or what is happening at the moment.
To synthesize in one page all main grammar rules, so that all students
will learn more easily and much more time can be devoted to
communicative activities.
To let students understand the basic mechanisms of the English
language, which apparently no school/method seems to have yet
realized or pointed out to students. They change their way of thinking,
not only their dictionary or language sounds, into something completely
different from the Italian, French or Spanish language. Most of the
students who tested this project said at the end ...
“Now I understand how English works!!!”
“I’ve got it! And guess what, I can speak!”

10. Benefits
Very few lessons allow those students who have best mathematical-logical-
musical skills to perfectly use all tenses, so they can sooner get to more
challenging language activities.
Those who need more time, often complain with other teaching methods
because of getting bad marks and think they do not understand or like
foreign languages. With this method they get great satisfaction in
overcoming different obstacles, so that they feel they know some steps and
are slowly going on through others. They feel they are making progress
whilst “getting to next level”. TUTOR1.pdf With short specific projects (max. 10
hours) to be carried out at any time of their learning path, they will be able
to revise a lot and attain to same skill level of the rest of the class.
Finally, the teacher knows exactly what each student knows and still
doesn’t know or remember, so he can work more efficiently to solve
individual problems.

11. TUTOR

12. Main Steps of the project
1st
hour class:
to be – to have – will – would
(in order of sequence, forwards and backwards, and then
“haphazardly ”)
2nd
hour class
Handmade English – The super grammar rule
Just….swap or drop!
3rd
hour
Hand practice

13. 4th
to 9th
hour
Choose the tense and the auxiliary
First written exercise in class with teacher support
WHICH AUXILIARY
MODELLO ESER.BREAK
Other exercises by themselves with score and register
REGISTRO
statistiche ausiliari
10th
hour class and following ones
Oral practice for 0+0 students
TO EAT
TO HAVE
TO LEAVE

14. WHICH AUXILIARY

15. MODELLO ESER.BREAK

16. REGISTRO

17. statistiche ausiliari

18. TO EAT

19. TO HAVE

20. TO LEAVE

21. “HANDMADE ENGLISH”
(DVD achievements 1 -5 minutes)
Register
(DVD It works!- 3 minutes)
(DVD class ativity- 5 minutes)
(DVD achievements2 – 15 minutes)