I don't understand 'adjectives ending in -ing/ed?' The 'ing' ending is used when you nominalize verbs or are forming the present continuous tense (amongst other things). The 'ed' is obviously when you conjugate a verb to form the past tense. I don't see how adjectives come into play?

As for preparing your powerpoint, whichever level it's for don't worry about covering every nuance of the grammar rule, just focus on it's most general usage and make sure that you explain it simply. An in depth exposition of every usage will lose your students and be a waste of your time. Simplicity and brevity are the way forward.

Thank you for that advice. What I mean is ...the difference between  "interesting/interested" "boring/bored" ...thought it might be a common lesson with already some worksheets or power points made.

Well "ing" adjectives like interesting/boring talk about characteristics whereas "ed" adjectives like interesting bored talk about feelings or emotions. The students are bored because the teacher is boring. It is a characteristic of the teacher (now or permanently it is unclear) to be boring and the students feel bored.

It's a very common mistake among ESL learners world wide. They always say stuff like, "My weekend was tired." I'd mention it in class and do a few examples but I'm not sure I'd do a lesson on it. However, for as long as you do adjectives you should definitely ask them whether to use an "ed" adjective or an "ing" adjective if the root verb offers it. And ask them why.

flasyb: maybe I'm incorrect but when I read your example of bored/boring, I would have thought they were used as adverbs.

"The students are bored because the teacher is boring. It is a characteristic of the teacher (now or permanently it is unclear) to be boring and the students feel bored"

I understand adj and adv can be the same, but not at the same time right? Please correct me if I am wrong.  ^above, bored is modifying the verb 'are' and boring is modifying the verb 'is'. As an adj I would say, A boring teacher makes bored students. <--- now modifying the noun.

I think you are incorrect because following your line of thinking, sentences like, "She is happy" or "My teachers are stupid" would mean that both happy and stupid were adverbs. They are clearly adjectives. Stupid describes the teacher and happy describes whoever "she" is.

It's as the previous poster almost certainly had it right but that's a little complicated to explain to /show the kids. A sentence like, "I am bored" can be seen as passive voice (Imagine "I am bored by the class"). The original sentence might be "The class bores me." We remove the subject and make the object (me) the subject of our new passive voice sentence. Introduce the verb to be and switch the main verb to past participle (as is usual with the passive). So, as said above by the other poster, bored is technically a past participle. However, its function is exactly like that or an adjective. Imagine, "She is bored" vs "She is stupid". To that effect I would teach them as "ing" (characteristic) adjectives vs "ed" (feeling) adjectives unless I were teaching a fairly advanced grammar class.

Quote from: Juno106 on March 28, 2011, 02:28:34 PM

Thank you for that advice. What I mean is ...the difference between  "interesting/interested" "boring/bored" ...thought it might be a common lesson with already some worksheets or power points made.

Others have already posted the linguistic reasons for using one over the other.  I personally just teach cause-and-effect definitions

BORING -- causes boredom
BORED -- experiences boredom (feeling)

INTERESTING -- causes interest
INTERESTED -- experiences interest (feeling)

SCARY -- causes fear
SCARED -- experiences fear (feeling)


"Fun" and "funny" don't belong in this category, since "fun" and "funny" are both causes of feelings, not feelings themselves (except for "feeling funny," but then "funny" means "strange," so I don't bring it up, ever).

That's exactly how I teach it.  Cause and effect.  It's one of those things that I never imagined would be a problem for non-native speakers until I had to teach English, but there it is.  Just teach cause and effect and give loads of examples until they get it.  It's like explaining answers to negative questions.  But that's for a different thread...