Keywords: Grammar, usage, instruction, language, English, teaching, practice

One sticky usage topic I’ve encountered in teaching my students English is the difference between ITS and IT’S. The only way I found to impress the difference is to have them practice examples. This computer program, isitITSorIT’S will make this task easy and fun.

No installation is required for this program. Simply copy it to your Windows PC or Mac OS X (respective versions), double click and you are ready to go. Just make sure the ITS.txt file is in the same directory as the main program, or you will get an error.

There are over 45 examples in the program (included in the ITS.txt file – which you can add to if you like) and they continue to rotate as the program progresses. Student read the sentence placed on screen and decided if the correct usage is its or it’s. Some classroom preparation should be done to introduce the difference to your students before using the program.

If the student guesses at the answer and is wrong, he will be told so. Along with the response will be an explanation of the correct usage. If the students keep practicing these examples under teacher supervision, the correct usage will eventually sink in.

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