Subject Negative (‘Can’t’) Verb Sentences

Description

Many people who are learning English as a second language and/or who have developmental language delays have difficulties with correct word order in sentences. In this series, we provide simple scaffolds to help people to understand and to speak in grammatically correct sentences correctly.

This is the fifth in our series of sentence builders, focusing on Subject-Negative (“can’t”)-Verb constructions, e.g. “The boy can’t sing.”. Typically developing children usually acquire this sentence structure at around the age of 2-2 1/2 years of age, although people who are learning English as a second language and/or have a communication disorder may struggle to grasp the pattern. This no-preparation pack is designed to help support people who need help with these sentences, and features high frequency, present tense verbs to help stimulate oral language development.

This pack can be used for drill-play activities, with reinforcement given for correct productions. Alternatively, laminate and cut up the cards for sentence construction sorting games.