Ever walked into your classroom after getting your hair done and had a student greet you with “You cut your hair!”?
You smile because you know what they mean, but there’s a gap there. They’re trying to compliment you, but what they’ve said is that you somehow managed to cut your own hair. (Which, let’s be honest, my hair sometimes looks like I cut it myself depending on who I get at the local beauty college, but still!)
This is the causative verb moment that your students are missing. And if you’re using a standard grammar textbook, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The textbook tosses students into the deep end of causative verbs with zero context. No warm-up. No explanation of why this matters. Just a quick shove from behind and students are expected to perform.
There’s got to be a better way, right?
Causative Verbs: So let them be written. So let them be done.
Causative verbs, or causatives, convey an action that the subject has caused to happen rather than performed themselves.
Take this example: Miguel had reporters called to the scene.
Miguel didn’t call the reporters himself, but it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for him. He made it happen by getting someone else to do it. The causative verb “had” shows that Miguel caused the action without doing it directly.
So how do we introduce this concept in a way that grabs their attention and is unforgettable? Lead with examples that are specific to their lives.
Step #1: Know your students.
Even if you haven’t had a chance to really get to know your students yet, you can make some solid generalizations that will lead straight to the use of causative verbs.
Might some of them be parents? (Parents are ALWAYS making their kids do things.) Do any of them drive? (Car maintenance is a goldmine for causatives.) Is it possible that someone has recently had a haircut? Have they ever nagged someone or been nagged themselves?
Use anything specific that you can (without diving into private information, obviously). Then generalize the rest based on what you know about them and their cultures. If you have students from cultures where extended family is close by, they probably have relatives helping with childcare or home repairs. If you have students who just arrived in the country, they might be having friends translate documents or make phone calls for them.
The point is to think about their actual lives before you walk into that classroom.
Step #2: Create a list of questions that incorporate causative verbs.
You’re not going to mention the term “causative” just yet. First, you need to make your students aware of the pattern without labeling it. (Grammar terms can intimidate students, so you want to ease them into when you can.) When you ask them questions related to their daily lives, they’ll make the connection that this grammar concept is useful and not just something to memorize for a test.
Here are some questions that tend to hit the mark with adult students:
- Do you change the oil in your car?
- Do you cut your own hair?
- Do you pick up your own pizza or have it delivered?
- What about spiders in your house? Do you remove them yourself?
- Do your kids take out the trash?
- Do you paint your house yourself?
- Do you fix your own computer when something goes wrong?
- When you go to a restaurant, do you refill your own drink?
The beauty of these questions is that most adults DON’T do these things themselves. They pay someone, ask someone, or make someone else handle it. That’s the whole point of causatives.
Step #3: Use your questions and their answers to lead the way.
Let’s say you ask Mei-Lin, “Do you change the oil in your car?”
If she says “Yes,” write that sentence on the board: Mei-Lin changes the oil in her car.
Then ask another student until you get someone who answers in the negative. This is where it gets good.
You: Abdul, do you change the oil in your car?
Abdul: No.
You: Who changes it for you?
Abdul: The mechanic.
You: For free? Without being asked?
Abdul: No, I pay him to do it.
You (writing on the board): Abdul has the mechanic change the oil in his car.
Now you have two sentences on the board. One regular action. One causative. Don’t explain anything yet. Just keep going.
Ask about haircuts.
You: Keiko, do you cut your own hair?
Keiko: No way!
You: Who cuts it?
Keiko: My hairstylist.
Write it on the board: Keiko has her hairstylist cut her hair.
Keep building these sentence pairs. Regular action versus causative action. The pattern will start becoming visible to your students even before you point it out.
Here’s what’s critical: Be sure to use the active voice in every sentence. Don’t write “Abdul’s oil gets changed by the mechanic.” Write “Abdul has the mechanic change the oil in his car.” The passive form comes later and including it now would just confuse everyone.
Step #4: Give them some discovery time.
At this point, you should write either “causative” or “causative verb” on the board so your students have a label to use when talking about them. You’ve given them examples. You’ve shown them the pattern without explaining it. Now it’s time to let them figure out the structure.
Don’t be the one to tell them the rule. Let them discover it. It’s linguistic investigation time!
Pair them up or have them work in small groups to compare the structure of the sentence pairs on the board. Give them some guiding questions:
- What do you notice about the verbs in these sentences?
- What’s the difference between “Mei-Lin changes the oil” and “Abdul has the mechanic change the oil”?
- What comes after “has” in the causative sentences?
If all your sentence pairs are in the same verb tense (which they probably are at this point), ask them to try changing the tense. What happens when Abdul had the mechanic change the oil last week? What about when Keiko will have her hairstylist cut her hair next month?
Give them time to play with this. Let them make mistakes and talk it through. The discovery process is what glues this concept in their brains instead of it just floating on the surface.
Step #5: Try switching the voice in sentences containing causative verbs.
Once they’ve got a handle on the active causative structure, it’s time to introduce the passive causative. (They should already be familiar with passive voice.) This is where it gets really useful for them because the passive causative is everywhere in everyday conversation.
Choose one of the causative sentences from the board and rewrite it to make it passive. For example:
Abdul has the mechanic change the oil in his car.
Abdul has the oil in his car changed. (Or: Abdul has the oil in his car changed by the mechanic.)
Ask them what’s different about it. If they can’t answer right away, lead them to it by asking:
- Who is the subject in both sentences?
- Who does the action?
- Which sentence focuses more on the action?
- Which sentence focuses more on who did the action?
This is where the lightbulbs start going off. The passive causative lets them talk about getting things done without always specifying who did it. “I had my taxes done.” “She’s getting her nails done.” “We had the house painted.”
Now have the students transform the other causative sentences into the passive voice. Let them see how much more natural and common this structure is than they probably realized.
Why take all the time that this requires?
I hear you. This process takes a lot of steps. It takes more class time than just telling them “Here’s the rule. Now do exercise 3 on page 87.”
But here’s the thing.
The repetition involved in completing workbooks and worksheets helps students remember, sure. But that only happens if they understand what they’re doing in the first place. When you introduce causatives in a way that shows they have relevance to students’ actual lives and affect the meaning of a message, you get their buy-in from the start.
Yes, it takes more time than jumping directly to written exercises. But because they’ll understand it more fully, they’ll be able to complete those exercises more quickly, with fewer mistakes, and require less review to keep the concept fresh in their minds. You’re investing time upfront to save time (and frustration) later.
Plus, when they get it, they’ll start using causatives in their speaking. And that’s when you know it’s real.
The Bottom Line
After going through this process, you’re far less likely to have students greet you with “You cut your hair!” Instead, they’ll say “You had your hair cut!” or “You got your hair done!”
And you’ll know that they’re not just parroting back grammar rules. They understand how causatives show who caused an action versus who performed it.
That’s it from me. See you in the next post!
Want some ready-to-use materials to reinforce what you’ve taught? The following are available in my TpT store.
grammar guide & worksheets . | | | | | . task cards . | | | | | . activities
I’ve got a free speaking activity sample that gets students using causatives in conversation.
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Read more about teaching grammar in adult ESL classes
Teaching Time Clauses to Adult ESL Students: Make It Fun with Photo Captions
