ABSTRACT
When and for what purpose do we compare things, people or experiences? One answer to this is when we have to make a choice. There are numerous occasions in daily life when we want ‘the bigger one’ or ‘the cheaper one’ or when something ‘a little lighter/ cooler/cheaper’ is required. Little imagination is required to create classroom activities which can be used to teach and practise such comparisons in contexts where the students have to link the appropriate form of the adjective to a choice from an array of alternative objects whose only differentiating characteristic is their size, weight, cost etc. And such practice need not even involve the use of than, whose presence can initially cause students to think that comparison is marked by than rather than by the form of the adjective.
