DESCRIBI G FAMILY RELATIO SHIPS GOALS By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to (a) recognize and perform verbal descriptions of family relationships and (b) recognize and perform verbal differentiation of people based on their family relationships to other people. Learner's will be able to do this by naming the people (e.g., Mary Smith) or by referring to a person or to people generically (e.g., "her", "their", etc.). I PUT (BRIEFI G / DEMO STRATIO ) STAGE To the teacher: What family relationship terms really are It is important to understand that descriptions of family relationships are sometimes static, but other times not. For example, we might say, "Mary Smith is a mother"; in so doing, we are actually assigning a property of motherhood to Mary, much as we are assigning an age property to her when we say "Mary Smith is an adult". When we say, "Mary Smith is a mother", we are describing a family relationship only implicitly: in order to be a mother, Mary Smith must have one or more children. At other times, we explicitly describe a relationship between two (or more) people, as when we say, " is Mary Smith's daughter". Note that such descriptions are rarely reciprocal: If is Mary Smith's daughter, then Mary Smith is ' mother. The description depends on the choice of one person (or sometimes more) as a point of reference. The above is presented for you, so that you will better understand how to go about your task of conducting the lesson; do not try to explain it to the learners. Recognizing and identifying family relationships Be sure to reproduce the illustrations in color. The portrait(s) of the person (or people) being used as the focal point for a relationship are marked with a beveled red border, while others are marked with a plain black border. Also, portraits of individuals who have no conventionally named relationship to a person, but who may generally fall into the broad category of "in-laws" are shown in grayscale rather than in color (see cards 4 and 6). You can start with the most basic relationships of the nuclear family, using card 1, below. Start by identifying Mary Smith, shown in the full-length illustration. Say, "This is Mary Smith." Then you can put one finger on the face portrait of Mary Smith in the first set of portraits (just to the right of the standing figure). Repeat "This is Mary Smith." Keeping that finger on the portrait of Mary Smith, place the index finger of your other hand on the portrait of John Smith and say, "This is John Smith". Then tap his picture lightly and say, "John Smith is Mary Smith's husband". Move the finger of the second hand down to the portrait of and say, is Mary Smith's daughter". Move the same finger to the portrait of Robert Smith and say, " is Mary Smith's son". Repeat a parallel procedure with the lower-left set, which focus on John Smith.
Repeat the procedure with the third set, which focuses on. Now introduce the generic ("pronominal") references. Go back to the first set. With the finger of one hand, point at while saying "She..." and move your finger from there, while saying "is..." until your finger is resting on Mary Smith, by which point you finish saying, "her..." and with a finger of your other hand, tap on the text that reads "daughter" while you say "daughter" out loud. Repeat this with at least a few examples, several if the learners seem to be having any trouble understanding. Now introduce an alternative way to describe the relationship. Go back to the first set. Point at while saying " is..." slide your finger down to the text "daughter" while saying "daughter..." and then slide it onto the picture of Mary Smith while saying "...Mary Smith". Repeat something like this, with each set, sometimes starting with "She"..." or "He...". Be careful not to start repeating mindlessly: you might end up saying something like "She is the daughter of her", which is not something anyone is likely to say. " is the {relation} of " will almost always end with someone's name. ACTIVITIES STAGE Activity 1: Getting started At this point, the activities stage begins, but more input will be presented as it proceeds. Use card 8 for this activity. If learners are very basic, and knew nothing of what you are doing when you started, try simple questions like "Who is Mary Smith's daughter?", "Who is Mary Jones father?", "Who is the brother of?", etc. Allow learners to point if they have trouble saying the names. If learners can do this, try questions like the following. "I know Mary Smith, but who is that?" Tap your forehead when you say "know" and show a properly questioning gesture while you point at. Answer the first one or two questions yourself, e.g., "She's, her daughter". Vary between answers like this one and ones like "She's her daughter, Mary Jones". Allow learners to do the same freely, once you start asking them the questions. Now move on to the first set on card 2. Note that the relationships expressed are identical to those on the very first set. Use it to recap and to introduce three new characters Alan, Elaine, and Roger Jones. You should not have to give new input here except to pronounce the names. Then use this set for more questions. Activity 2: Talking about two people at once Next move on to the second set on card 2, which has just Elizabeth and. Use this to introduce descriptions like "Elizabeth and are sister and brother", "Alan and are brother and sister", or "They are brother and sister". You can now use card 9 to extend this to several other sets of mother and father, sister and brother, and son and daughter. Be careful no to say "children", "parents", or "siblings" yet (you probably won't be too tempted to say the last, of course)... and don't stray yet beyond the relationships you have already introduced (husband, wife, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son). Note that you can slip in, e.g., "John and Mary Smith are husband and wife", "Mary Smith and are mother and daughter", and so on. Point while you are saying,
for example, "John [pointing at John with one hand] and Mary Smith [pointing at Mary with the other hand] are husband [tapping on John] and wife [tapping on Mary]". If your learners seem ready, mix in a number of examples like "They are mother and daughter", etc. With one hand, point with two fingers at once (using a "V" gesture"), then with the other hand, tap on the appropriate person's picture when saying "mother" and "daughter". Now get ready to the learners more actively involved. Ask, "Are John Smith and Robert Smith related?" If no learner is already able to answer, answer yourself, saying, "Yes. They are father and son." Include at least one pair like the following. Question: "Are John Smith and Mary Smith related?" Answer" "They're married." [At his point, start mixing in "they're" and "he's" / "she's".] Use card 9 to repeat this type of question-and-answer until you think learners are getting comfortable with it. Activity 3: The family across generations Use the third set on card 2 and the two large diagrams on cards 5 and 6 to introduce the terms for relationships across multiple generations. You have introduced a number of ways to talk about relationships already; try to avoid introducing others at this point, unless you find all your learners are relatively advanced for this lesson (test their understanding, don't ask whether they understand). Activity 4: Inviting the in-laws (it always makes things difficult) Use the third set on card 2 and the sets on cards 3 and 4 to introduce terms about one's inlaws. Note that when you get to the second set on card 4, you will see some portraits grayed out. This is to indicate that there is no term for the relationship to the person who is the focus. For example, on card 4, you will have to say at some point, "Mary Smith is not [shaking your head] ' mother-in-law. She is the mother-in-law of Elizabeth's brother, Alan." Test understanding by checking on Elizabeth's relationship to John Smith. Then try the reciprocal relationship; ask if is John Smith's daughter-in-law, etc. Use card 6 for some challenging question-and-answer along these lines. Then make up your own using card 9, the general-purpose (unmarked) card. Activity 4: Death, divorce, and remarriage Use the four sets on card 8 to illustrate "ex-husband", "step-son", and "step-father". Use an extra copy of card 9 and a red marker to make divorce rampant throughout our little community so that you can illustrate step-daughter. For this purpose, the characters on card 10 can be cut out and used on card 9 to show remarriages. The "R.I.P." markers can be used to show that someone has died, to demonstrate the distinction between "ex-husband / wife" and "late husband / wife". Activity 5: A "Twenty-Questions" game of who's who The following is simply a variation of the old game Twenty Questions, except that the goal is not guess a specific thing, but to learn as many family relationships as you can using only twenty questions. The list of names on card 11 (or a similar list you make yourself) and the
diagram on card 12 (or a corresponding diagram you make) are used by the guesser. The teacher will need to fill in one of the names on the guesser's sheet at the start of the game. The guesser is not allowed to show his/her card to the answerer and point to it in order to get information; arrange seating if necessary to prevent this. Card 13 or another sheet like it that you make yourself is used by the answerer. The guesser's goal is to fill in as many names on his/her sheet as possible. You must act as a referee to insure that only questions that can be answered "yes" or "no" are asked and to insure that the answerer gives factually accurate responses. (If you have few learners, you can act as the answerer and let the learners take turns being the guesser.) Players are not permitted to ask, for example, "Who is James Johnson's son?" If the learners are able enough, it will be possible for you to pair them off and even have them compete against other pairs, say, for a time goal for completion rather than by limiting the number of questions. DEBRIEFI G (CO SOLIDATIO ) STAGE At this point, the teacher can provide learners with paper copies of the Summary Sheet (see below). It is important at this point not to "go over" the sheet in the sense of treating it as something needing to be to explained. If learners still do not understand its contents, it means that the demonstration phase was been too brief or incomplete. It is also important that the teacher not thwart the communicative process by introducing the Summary Sheet before the demonstration phase, under the (false) assumption that learners need to have its contents explained before they can understand the demonstration. If the demonstration correctly shows what everything means, no prior explanation is required; it would be, in fact, a distraction from learning how to communicate. It must be kept in mind that a major purpose of the debriefing phase is to consolidate learning and to make it clear to learners (by presentation of the Summary Sheet) what and how much they have actually learned. Thus, the teacher should present the Summary Sheet and use it as the basis for discussing (or, if the learners are too limited in English proficiency, for showing) how to get things done in terms of the content of this lesson and to discuss (or show) what worked and what did not for each learner.
SUMMARY SHEET John Smith is Mary Smith's husband. He is her husband. John Smith is the husband of Mary Smith. He is the husband of Mary Smith. He / she is married. Who is he / she? Is Mary Smith John Smith's wife? / Is Mary Smith the wife of John Smith? / Is John Smith her husband? / Is she John Smith's wife? / Is he her husband? and are brother and sister. They are brother and sister. They are mother and daughter. John and are father and son. They are husband and wife. aunt brother brother-in-law cousin daughter daughterin-law ex-husband ex-wife father father-in-law granddaughter grandfather grandmother grandson greatgrandfather great-grandmother great-granddaughter great-grandson late mother mother-in-law nephew niece second_cousin sister sister-in-law son son-in-law step-daughter step-father step-mother step-son uncle
1 Mary Smith's Family Mary Smith John Smith (husband) (daughter) (son) Mary Smith (wife) John Smith Mary Smith (mother) John Smith (father) (daughter) (son) (brother)
2 (husband) (sister) (brother) Elaine Jones (daughter) Roger Jones (son) Mary Smith John Smith (son-in-law) (daughter) (son) Elaine Jones (granddaughter) Roger Jones (grandson)
3 Mary Smith (mother-in-law) John Smith (father-in-law) (wife) (brother-in-law (brother-in-law) (sister) Elaine Jones (niece) Roger Jones (nephew)
4 (sister-in-law) (husband) Mary Smith John Smith (brother) (sister-in-law) Elaine Jones (niece) Roger Jones (nephew)
5 Gertrude Brown (great-grandmother) Alfred Brown (great-grandfather) Lydia Jones (great-grandmother) Jacob Jones (great-grandfather) Catherine Jones (grandmother) William Jones (grandfather) Mary Smith (grandmother) John Smith (grandfather) (aunt) (father) (mother) (uncle) Anne Smith (aunt) Elaine Jones Roger Jones
6 Gertrude Brown Alfred Brown Lydia Jones Jacob Jones Catherine Jones William Jones Mary Smith (daughter) John Smith (son-in-law) (granddaughter) (grandson) Anne Smith Elaine Jones (great-granddaughter) Roger Jones (great-grandson)
7 X Martin Ray (uncle) (aunt) (uncle) (aunt) (father) Anne Smith (mother) Michael Ray (second cousin) Elaine Jones (cousin) Roger Jones (cousin) Sandra Smith
8 X X Martin Ray (wife) George Anson Martin Ray (ex-husband) George Anson husband Michael Ray (step-son) Michael Ray (son) X X Martin Ray (ex-wife) George Anson Martin Ray (father) (mother) George Anson (step-father) Michael Ray (son) Michael Ray
9 Gertrude Brown Alfred Brown Lydia Jones Jacob Jones Catherine Jones William Jones Mary Smith John Smith X Michael Ray Elaine Jones Roger Jones
10 Phyllis DeVayne Angela ova Phyllis DeVayne Angela ova Martin Ray Oscar Fortuna Martin Ray Oscar Fortuna R.I.P. R.I.P. X X
12 Natalie Andrews Alice Brown William Brown Alice Carson George Carson Mackenzie Carson Natalie Carson Nathan Carson Phillip Carson Robert Carson Sandra Carson William Carson Sabrina Jones Anna Kwiatkowski Michael Kwiatkowski Angela Martinez Juan Martinez Maria Martinez Robert Martinez Sara Martinez Mary Martinez-Carson
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13 Juan Martinez Maria Martinez Michael Kwiatkowski Anna Kwiatkowski William Brown Alice Brown Angela Martinez Robert Martinez Sara Martinez Sandra Carson George Carson Sabrina Jones Michael Martinez Mary Martinez- Carson Robert Carson William Carson Letoya Martinez Natalie Andrews Nathan Carson Alice Carson Mackenzie Carson Natalie Carson Phillip Carson