Dana CO#2

      I observed Dr. Derrick Pollock's grammar class today at 10:00 a.m. in room 302.  He had written the agenda on the white board.  Music was playing as students entered the classroom.  The lesson was about gerunds, infinitive activity, past perfect tense.
       He asked me to introduce myself.  I told the class I was a student in TEFL and an attorney from Los Angeles.  He asked the students to introduce themselves and tell me something interesting about themselves.  They spoke in turn around the table, some trying to be funny-and some were.  One Asian female student told me that she practices Kung Fu.  I responded in animated fashion that I use to work for the actor David Carradine who was Grasshopper in the TV series Kung Fu.  Some laughed, but I'm sure all the students know who that was.
     Dr. Pollock started with a beautiful mistake. "She forgets to pay rent."  He explained that the infinitive "to" is used with the past participle to describe an action in the past "She forgot to pay the rent." He explained that "pay the rent" is what she still needs to do.  He explained that infinitives are used when subject needs to do something. Dr. Pollock sometimes music to segway from one activity to the next, or signal the end of an activity.
      Dr. Pollock asked each student to pick a word (verb) from the stack of words and make three sentences using the verb word adding a gerund "ing".   Dr. Pollock asked the students to develop 3 sentences using the word.  Two of the sentences had to be false statements and I had to be true.  Classmates were to decide which was true and which were false.  He then worked his way around the table getting down to student level and listened to the students work.  A few examples I heard were:
Dread: I dread going to dark places. I dread riding horses. I am dreading taking a shower.
Enjoy: I enjoy to come to class on time.  I enjoy to go to the theater.   He corrected these beautiful mistakes:  I enjoy coming to class on time.  I enjoy going to the theater. 
     The there was a discussion about the correct spelling of theater.  I concurred with him that theatre is used for live performance and theater is used in reference to cinema and watching movies.
     Dr. Pollock discussed using the past perfect and simple past tense. He explained that simple past tense expresses the act is finished or done.  He explained that the past perfect tense is used to relate more than one past event, and which one of the past events occurred first. He explained that in order to use the past perfect form students need to use "had" + past participle together in the sentence.  A couple of examples he gave was " I had never gone skiing before I moved to Minnesota."  "I had ever gone bowling before I moved to the US".
     Dr. Pollock gave me a class handout worksheet for past perfect tense and he advised me that Teachthis.com is a website he finds very useful as a teaching tool. In this exercise the student is asked to read the sentence and use the past perfect tense to express something that is fact and something that is false or fiction.  The class didn't have time to go over it.
He asked to students to select  one dependable student to collect the worksheets and would bring them the next day.  I meant to ask him why he does that, but it'll have to wait til I see him again.