Building Better Sentences

When learning a new language, creating sentences with that language can be one of the most difficult tasks. Students can easily respond with a single word, and the more advanced students make simple sentences. While this is great, and an important part of the progression of learning a language, I always want more! Helping students create strong sentences is a challenge in their first language, so can we really expect them to create complicated sentences in a novice level language class? Of course!

To start the sentence expanding process, I created a sentence thermometer for students. I wanted to give them a visual with examples of what I really wanted to see from them. More importantly, students need to see that creating better sentences is absolutely within their reach. The students and I discuss the thermometer and then refer back to it throughout the year. During various activities, I pull a high, middle, and low sample to demonstrate what a level 1 versus a level 4 sentence might look like.

Encouraging students to expand their sentences is one thing, but ensuring they have the vocabulary to do so is another. By the end of the unit, thematic vocabulary is not an issue; students have worked with and studied their vocabulary for weeks. Often times, it is transition words and conjunctions that go by the wayside. These can be difficult to teach on their own, but if they are woven throughout the unit, students pick up on them quickly. Helping the students with these words as they are learning and working with the vocabulary means students pick them up quickly and can use these words with little trouble.

One way to work with transition words is to practice sentence expansion. Starting with a simple sentence related to the vocabulary, students expand the sentence by answering the who, what, when, where, how and why about the sentence. 

For example: Me gusta comer. 

• ¿Qué? la pizza
• ¿Con quién? con mi mamá
• ¿Dónde? en el restaurante
• ¿Cuándo? después de la escuela
• ¿Por qué? porque tengo hambre

Now students put the sentence together: Me gusta comer la pizza con mi mamá en el restaurante después de la escuela porque tengo hambre.

Even if you aren't directly teaching the transition words, students are beginning to use them and understand what they mean and where they go. 

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Once they have the vocabulary, there are many different ways to encourage students to expand their sentences. I find that at an elementary level, my students are more willing to take risks in a group setting, where a mistake does not necessarily fall solely on one person's shoulders. 


One activity I use is what I call Create a Caterpillar. I divide the class into two teams and give each time circles with different vocabulary and transitions words that we have been studying. Students work in their groups to create the longest sentence possible. The only real rule is that the sentence must make sense. Students work together as they insert and remove the different pieces to make multiple combinations. They are always so impressed by their 20 or 25 word sentences. Not only that, but students are working together and negotiating with language.

One of our longest sentences.