Teaching compound nouns

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moonlike

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Hi
I wonder if you know an easier way to help the students know the difference between compound nouns and just simply a noun phrase. You know, I started teaching it today but I found it a bit difficult for them to make compound nouns as I asked them to provide some examples. They gave me examples like 'cold day, formal clothes'. I wrote two sentences with 'green house' as a compound noun and as a noun phrase and I also I told them about white house, with a difference in stress. However, it wasn't very good enough. I'm looking for a better way, some tips or whatever to help them more.

Thanks a million.
 

Mr_Ben

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Have you tried awareness-raising? It's possible students just don't realise how common they are. You should find a good number of them in newspaper articles. You could also try asking them to describe different things with nouns... What kind of boxes can you think of? Shoe box, tool box, toy box, jewellery box, lunch box, etc. What are the different tools in the kitchen? Cheese grater, apple corer, food processor, dishwasher, can opener, etc.
 

moonlike

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Mar 26, 2012
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English Teacher
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Persian
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Iran
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Iran
Thanks Mr-Ben, it was a good idea. They got confused when it came to adj+noun as a compound noun. As I mentioned earlier they made examples like 'formal clothes'. Honestly I myself got confused about some of them like 'part time job', I wasn't sure if it's a compound or just a phrase.

I remember here in the forum I learned something fabulous and nice about question tags that if you're unsure the intonation goes up (when you want to write 'U' at the end your pen goes up) and when you're sure, it goes down (when you write 'S' the pen moves downward). That was a nice tip that was easy to remember and I always tell my students about it and they enjoy.
I was also looking for some hints ot techniques about compound nouns. I went through some grammar books but I couldn't find more than what we have in the book.

Thanks a lot
 
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