Unpack yours
Read out the noun phrase you found. The class works out, word by word, what each part is doing to the head noun.
Find the head noun first. It is usually the last word before the phrase stops.
Six versions of the same noun phrase, each one word longer. Put them in the order they were built.
Two ways to say the same thing
Version one
There is a scheme. It is for parking. The council made it. It is new. It is in the north of the city. Nobody asked for it. It cost four million.
Version two
The new council parking scheme in the north of the city, which nobody asked for, cost four million.
Four questions about the two versions.
1. Version two is one sentence. Where is its main verb?
2. What sits before the head noun, and what sits after it?
3. council parking scheme — council and parking are nouns. What are they doing?
4. Why is it parking and not parkings?
The slots, in order
What goes where
| Slot | Contains | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Determiner | a, the, this, my, three | the |
| 2 · Opinion adjective | What you think of it | badly designed |
| 3 · Fact adjectives | Size, age, shape, colour, origin, material | new |
| 4 · Noun modifiers | Nouns doing an adjective’s job, always singular | council parking |
| 5 · HEAD NOUN | The thing itself | scheme |
| 6 · Prepositional phrase | Where, of what, for whom | in the north of the city |
| 7 · Relative clause | The longest thing, and it goes last | which nobody asked for |
The principle underneath the table. English puts light material in front of the noun and heavy material behind it.
So the nobody-asked-for scheme is impossible, and the scheme nobody asked for is ordinary. If a modifier is more than about three words long, it goes after the noun.
This is where translated English gives itself away. Putting a long modifier in front of the noun, or a single adjective after it, is grammatical nowhere and sounds wrong everywhere.
Eight modifiers of the noun report. Match each to the slot it belongs in.
One to five words per gap. Build up one noun phrase across the paragraph.
I want to talk about report housing eighteen months to write. It is thirty pages long, of which twenty-six describe process . The four pages are at the back, after the appendices.
Packing and unpacking
Eight noun phrases. Fix each and say which slot rule it broke.
1. a two-hours meeting
2. the scheme new council parking
3. the nobody-asked-for scheme
4. a report interesting about housing
5. the five-minutes walk from the station
6. the report that took eighteen months on housing
7. a badly designed thirty-page government report
8. the students all of them who failed
Four noun phrases have been removed from this paragraph. Put each back where it fits.
The argument keeps coming back to [1], which nobody has been able to produce.
It was apparently agreed by [2], three of whom have since left the organisation.
The only person who remembers the meeting is [3], and she was not taking the minutes.
Everything else rests on [4], which is not a document at all.
One dense noun phrase, unpacked into short sentences. One to four words per gap.
The badly designed thirty-page government report on housing that nobody has read. There is a report. It the government. It is long. It is about . Somebody it badly. And read it.
Six into one
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 4 minutes each
Your partner gives you six short facts about one thing. You return them as a single noun phrase and one verb.
Six rounds each, three seconds of thinking time per round.
- Partner: six facts. There is a bus route. It is new. The council runs it. It goes to the hospital. It was cut last year. Nobody uses it.
- You: one sentence. Short things in front, long things behind.
- At least one round must produce a non-defining clause, said with the pitch drop.
- Then swap. Anything you cannot fit in front of the noun goes behind it.
Then reverse it, once each. Your partner gives you a dense noun phrase and you unpack it into short sentences, out loud, at speed.
Unpacking is the reading skill. Every dense sentence you meet at B2 will need it.
From the packing
Four sentences from the task. Fix each.
1. The new bus route of the council to the hospital is cut.
2. A three-hours delay is not acceptable.
3. The nobody-uses-it route was cut last year.
4. A report government about housing.
Light in front, heavy behind
Three questions.
1. Where does a modifier longer than about three words go?
2. Which is right?
3. In what order do the two post-modifiers come?
Before next lesson. Choose one current issue you have an actual opinion about. Write down the position you disagree with, in one sentence, in its own terms.
Its own terms, not yours. Next lesson you argue against it for four minutes, and describing precisely what you are objecting to is most of the work.