Understand spoken language

Example Sentences

Submitted by admin on 19 July 2016

Each word should ideally have at least two example sentences

Each word should ideally have at least two example phrases or short sentence. The example phrase or sentence should ideally be self-documenting about the word, e.g. "the dog bit the postman" or "I have a dog for a pet" are both good, since "dog" is one of the few words which fit the sentence.
 
Very short sentences or phrases are preferable to long ones, e.g. "the big dog", "the hairy black dog" are better than "the dog who I saw walking down the street last week has apparently died".
 
Don't worry if the sample sentence itself has other words we don't have yet; this will gradually be less and less the case. It is not necessary to disappear down the black hole of each word needing a sample sentence and each of those sentences creating new words; just create the words needed for the one sample phrase you are working on, and move on.

Creating good example sentences

Try as far as possible to make the samples specific to the word to which the sample belongs.
 
Examples of poor sample sentences:
  • This is a goat
  • This is a goldfish
  • This is a lamb etc.

These are valid sample sentences (and ultimately the more sample sentences the better), but the sentence "This is a X" could have pretty much any noun in that place, e.g. "This is a pencil/star/bath/bedroom".

Good sample sentences will be more specific to the object

Examples of good example sentences:

  • We get milk from cows
  • The goldfish has a small bowl
  • Mary had a little lamb, it's fleece was white as snow

Notice here that you can actually remove the noun and maybe make a guess at what the missing word is (e.g. "The .... has a small bowl"), and the nouns are also not replaceable by other things, e.g. you could not say "The goat/lamb has a small bowl".

A simple definition of an object, for example, can be an easy sample, "A bird flies", "A goat will eat anything", "We get wool from sheep". It's a bit harder to think of a good sample like this, but worth the effort.

Create short sample sentences, rather than long

  • instead of "dragons are imaginary monsters frequently appearing in medieval stories" make 2 sentences:
    • "dragons are imaginary monsters",
    • "dragons frequently appear in medieval stories"
  • instead of "many birds live in the French countryside and sing happily all year long", make
    • many birds live in the French countryside
    • birds sing happily all year long
  • instead of "a chick is yellow and he is the baby of the hen", make:
    • "a chick is yellow" and
    • "a chick is the baby of the hen"

We can make longer sentences later, but at the moment I want to get many short sentences, as these are the most useful to the 90% of students for whom many words are new and difficult. Also, even advanced students will get plenty of practise from short sentences.

Special extra phrases for nouns

Nouns (see Nouns lesson), should generally also have two other specific phrases, a phrase with the indefinite article, e.g. "un chien" and a phrase with the definite article, e.g. "le chien". This is so that the students will repeatedly be presented with each of these phrases so that they will gradually learn whether a word takes the masculine or feminine article (i.e. "un" or "une", and "le" or "la").
 
Note that these phrases are in addition to the example sentences.

Special extra phrase for plural nouns

In general, plural nouns should also have a phrase with the plural article (e.g. "les animaux", "les balles").
 
This helps students get used to hearing the two words spoken together. For example, when a student hears "les animaux" they would hear the "s" joined on to the second word, but since they will not see the text whilst in a lesson, they may wonder whether this is "les zanmaux" or even "l'ai zanimau". It is through this sort of training that students learn to correctly hear and learn where to separate or join words.
 
Since "les" followed by the plural noun is the simplest two word phrase using the plural noun, we should generally have such a phrase for each plural noun.

Special extra phrase for verb parts

A verb part should always have the minimal verb phrase demonstrating its use.  For example, if the word is "mange" (eat; am eating), then the minimal verb phrase would be "je mange" (I am eating).

Examples

The word "chick" should ideally have at least 5 entries:

  • "chick" (the word on its own)
  • "a chick" (since it is a noun, with an indefinite article)
  • "the chick" (since it is a noun, with a definite article)
  • "a chick is yellow" (example phrase 1)
  • "a chick is the baby of the hen" (example phrase 2)

The plural noun "balls" should ideally have at least 4 entries:

  • "balls" (the word on its own)
  • "the balls" (the word with the definite article)
  • "tennis balls" (example phrase 1, notice how this is a good example since the noun goes well with the word tennis and could not easily be replaced with another noun, e.g. "tennis goldfish", "tennis cars")
  • "he was juggling with five balls" (example phrase 2, notice again how this is a good example and the noun could almost be left out and the person would be able to guess the missing word, e.g. "he was juggling with five [what?]", "he was juggling with five goldfish?!", "he was juggling with five skyscrapers?!" )

The word "eat" should ideally have at least 4 entries:

  • "eat; am eating" (the word on its own)
  • "I am eating" (the minimal verb phrase)
  • "I am eating an apple" (example phrase 1)
  • "I am eating a cheese sandwich" (example phrase 2)