Possessive Pronouns and Possessive Adjectives

One of the greatest difficulties we find when dealing with Basic I students is teaching the difference between the POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS and the POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES. Since that, the most basic way to explain the meaning of both is telling students that a pronoun is a term used to replace of a noun: I, He, She, It = Marcus, Pedro, Suzane, and our imaginary dog, Rex. (slight examples of people and things I´m used to envolving in these interactions in class), her, his, its, my, your; and that adjectives are qualities we give to nouns. The same will happen with the adjectives pronouns - they don´t replace, but modify the noun: Beautiful woman. Funny man / My woman, My man (it´s important to raise these rudimentary adjectives, since they are in the context of the lessons) So, they should be told that the possessive pronouns will appear after the verb be.

This type of initial distinction must be put on board, for them to realize it better. In these cases, we use the following chart, which have as its goal to clear up the position of each pronoun in a sentence:

Rex is my dog. (my = a beautiful)

No, Rex is his dog. (his = a funny)

No, It´s hers!

In these cases, my and his are in place to give quality, modify the noun cat, exactly like beautiful and funny.

Obviously, a chart like this will be always modified. The contexts must be clear to them and the teacher should attempt always to vary the amount of people and things involved in the situation in order to let all of the students play their part in the game, show them the plural forms and provide a proper interaction. Besides that, they must be presented using many gestures, eye contact, pointing the finger (in)directly to the persons involved as well, and mime.

After that, it´s necessary to raise questions to check their understanding, such as:

Suzane, is this/Rex your dog? Expected answer: Yes, it (most of times they use “the dog” or “Rex”) is mine.

Pedro, is this/Rex your dog? Expected answer: No, it (most of times they use “the dog” or “Rex”) is hers.

In these cases, if they don´t use the Subjective Pronouns I try not to raise it – in fact, they never difficulties on mastering them.