How to teach word order in English to young children

 Word Order or Syntax 

How to teach it to young children

Rachael Orbach

Syntax is word order.  This essay will help teachers to teach the proper word order to their students.

The difference between  Hebrew speakers as compared to  English speakers shows up very early in the language learning of English.

Because language is structure dependant, the student must understand where each part of speech appears in each language. 

In Hebrew, the adjective appears after a noun, whereas in English the adjective goes before the noun in a sentence. In the following sentence:  I have a green pencil, the adjective green is before the noun pencil.   In Hebrew, יש לי עיפרון ירוק  , the adjective is ירוק   appears after the noun עיפרון .  

The difference between Hebrew and English in adjective, noun placement causes many Hebrew speakers problems.  One of these might be that students might not even know the parts of speech.  The students speaks and says the native language without being aware of why what he is saying is correct.   The students might not know the native grammar before they are being taught a new language with a different grammar.

1. Ask the students the words for everyday objects:

Pen, sweater, desk, backpack

2. A person, place or thing is called a noun.

3. Ask the students to say something about the pen, sweater or the backpack.

4. Green pen, red sweater, small desk, large backpack

5. These words that tell something about the nouns are adjectives.

6. Ask the students to put the two words together.

7.  this explaining word is an adjective and it goes before the noun, whereas in Hebrew the adjective goes after the noun.

 One way to reinforce this idea is to read a book to the class, I have chosen, is Mary Wore Her Red Dress, by James Cross Giblin.   Each page has a different noun and a different adjective.  The students then can add different adjectives, instead of colors, small, short, long, big, little can be used and sung in the song.