Comparative and Superlatives: Monsters competition

Monsters, Inc.

For my classes of 2nd of ESO, I ask my students to draw a monster, each of them, at home and to write a small description of how they are; not only physically, but also how they behave and so on, using adjectives of all sorts, such as soft, aggressive, tall, thin, shy, brave...


We start by making sure that they know when we need a comparative (we compare two items or two sets) or a superlative (we compare an item or set with a group of items or sets). Then, we divide adjectives into short (one syllable -strong-  or two syllable ending in -y -pretty) and long adjectives (two syllables -narrow- or more - interesting) and explain them that short adjectives take a suffix to make comparatives and superlatives; whereas long adjectives use a periphrasis. To say the set that we are comparing with, we use the preposition in (in the class, in the school...).

	short	long
comparative	adjective +er than (taller than)	more adjective than (more difficult than)
superlative	the adjective +est (the tallest)	the most adjective (the most difficult)

 Finally, we point out the irregular form of the adjectives good, bad, far and old (for families use mainly):

	comparative form	superlative form
good	better than	the best
bad	worse than	the worst
far	farther than/ further than	the farthest/ the furthest
old	elder than	the eldest

 To end up, we make lots of exercises comparing the pictures the students have made. We may also use activities from the net such as the ones in English-zone.com1 and English-zone.com2, or we may play with the IWB this fantastic game by marks-english-school.com or this one by Kids ESL Games.


We can start comparing the monsters in the image above. Do you remember their names?
Leave your comparisons in the form of comments!!!