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Great activities for getting to know more about each other!

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Great activities for getting to know more about each other!

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Bloom's Taxonomy - Simplest explanation ever

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The Most Fun English Teaching (ESL) Game -- "Hot Seat"

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A quick 4-minute description of how to play "Hot Seat" and a list of possible phrases to use! This game is great for a one-hour long lesson; it can also be used to teach Spanish and French, for example, to non-native speakers. To be honest it can be used to teach any language.

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Teaching collocations

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Do your students have difficulty deciding which words go together in English? Tim Warre, who won our most recent Teaching English blog award for his Mr Bean video lesson plan, lists his most effective tips for making learning collocations fun.
Students frequently have problems with collocations for a number of reasons; the most common being direct translations from their native tongue. An example I come across regularly while teaching in Spain is problems with do/make collocations due to the fact that, in Spanish, the verb 'hacer' is used for both. However, if you were to ask anyone teaching English as a foreign language, the most common mistake they hear while teaching Spanish speakers, I'd bet my house it'd be this one: 'I have sixteen years old.' Even though use of the verb 'to be' when referring to age is standard English stuff, you'll find students up to proficiency level still have the odd lapse with this particular collocation. But never fear, there is a smorgasbord of fun and memorable ways to learn and revise these types of collocation both in the classroom and at home.
Online flashcard sets
I am an unashamed Quizlet fan boy. Many is the time I have espoused its virtues to all in the staffroom who care to listen. For the uninitiated, Quizlet is a web tool where you can make flashcard sets, which can be used in a variety of ways both in the classroom and by students at home. It's free, easy and will save you valuable classroom and preparation time. Simply go to quizlet.com, open an account, and start creating flashcard sets of whatever collocations you're studying. If you don't have time to make your own sets, simply use the search function to pore over the ever-growing database. Who knows... you might find one of mine or my colleagues', e.g., make/do collocations or catch/make/do/have.

There are several ways you can use these flashcard sets: Quizlet has two games that can be played with any flashcard set: Scatter and Space Race are great for revising vocabulary. The former involves matching corresponding words/definitions in the quickest time possible. Split the class into small groups and have them compete against each other to see who can top the leader board, this is especially fun if you have a digital whiteboard, as it gets very energetic and physical.

Space Race is more difficult as it involves typing. Sentences move horizontally across the screen and students must type the word that completes the sentence before it reaches the far side.

Teachers can create class groups on the site and have students join so that they can study the sets at home. Teachers can then track student's use, checking which sets they've studied and for how long. I find it especially useful for exam groups. Say you want to go over the answers to a mock FCE (First Certificate in English) exam paper. Simply copy in the questions that most students had problems with and easily highlight and revise them as many times as you like.
Collocation Casino
Another great way to introduce specific collocations or go over use of English exercises is betting games. Take a Quizlet set on make/do collocations, put students in pairs and tell them they have €100 each to bet, they can bet €5, €10 or €20 depending on how sure they are. For each correct guess they double their money, the winning team is the one with the most money at the end. Make sure they place their bets using complete sentences 'We bet €10 on....'. You can also teach them nice phrases to express doubt/certainty:I'm absolutely certain it's....

* It's ... . without a shadow of a doubt.
* There's no way it's ...
* I'm torn between ... and ...
* We're going to take a risk.
* There's a slim/strong chance it's ...
* ... rings a bell
Post-it Warmers
These are great, active warmers that require minimal preparation and get students talking, focused and on their feet. All you need is a pack of post-its.
1. Post-it partners
Use this game to revise any type of collocations; I used it most recently for adjective-noun collocations for CAE (Cambridge English: Advanced), e.g., 'a resounding success', 'an abject failure'. Write one half of the collocation (resounding) and the other on another (success). Stick one post-it to the back of one student and one to another. Students are not allowed to look at their post-it, instead they must ask someone, in ridiculously formal English, to tell them what it says. Write the following on the board:

* I was wondering, if it isn't too much trouble, if you could possibly tell me what it says on my back.
* Would it be at all possible if you could let me know what it says on my back?
* I'm awfully sorry, but is there any way you could possibly tell me what it says on my back?

Students must first ask someone to tell them which word they have. They must then find the person with the corresponding noun/adjective, sit down and write a sentence. The first pair to do so wins. Pairs can then work together for the next section of the class.
2. Post-it corners
Say that in the last class you studied collocations with 'catch', 'make', 'have' and 'do'. Stick a post-it with each verb in each corner of the classroom and then stick the nouns to the backs of the students. They must use the formal English phrases to discover which noun they have, then race to their corner and come up with a sentence for each of the collocations their team has. Whichever team finishes first wins. You then have students arranged into teams for the next part of the class.
3. Post-it hunt
Before the class, write the two parts of the collocations on individual post-its and stick them in different parts of the classroom: under tables/chairs, on the door, on your back, on the back of the TV etc. Then, when students enter, put them in pairs and assign them a section of the board each. Students must find as many matching collocations as they can and stick them on their part of the board. Monitor carefully as this can get raucous. Pre-teach some expressions for doing deals:

* We'll swap you your 'have' for our 'do'
* Do you want to trade?
* Let's make a deal.
* Ok, you've got a deal.
* Shake on it.
Collocation Pictionary
Put students into teams of three or four, write a load of collocations on scraps of paper, and give them 90 seconds to draw as many as they can for their team to guess. The team with the most correct guesses wins.
Collocation Articulate
Articulate is a staple Christmas board game in the Warre household. Use the same papers with collocations on them as in the game before, but this time students must describe the action without using the word. This is a great way to practise relative clauses: 'It's an action (that) you do after eating dinner.' (do the washing-up)
Collocation Charades
This is the same as above, but only miming is allowed this time.
Dictogloss
Tell students that you are going to read them a story; while they are listening, they must write down the most important words. You could instruct them to focus on the collocations in the story, or any other language point you may be focusing on. After listening twice, students must reconstruct the story in pairs. Then give students the original story with part of the collocation missing. Below is an example:

I met my ex-husband in 1995; we fell in love at first sight. We had a fantastic relationship for three happy years. Then, on our third anniversary, he proposed and we got married six months later. At first, everything was perfect; we both did the housework together; I did the washing-up and made the beds and he did the cooking and the shopping. He always made a mess when he did the cooking, but I didn't mind because the dinners were always delicious.

Everything changed after a few years when he got a new job in Manchester; we made the decision to move there, so he wouldn't have to take the train to work every day. He started working later and paying less attention to me. He stopped doing the housework, so I had to do everything. He made a lot of promises but then he would break them. He was very stressed and he started to go bald, he got very depressed about this and started getting drunk after work. I was getting very worried about him. He would always come home drunk and make a mess. Then, one day, while I was cleaning his clothes, something caught my attention. It was a lipstick stain on his shirt. I got very angry; he was keeping a secret from me! That night when he came home, I confronted him and he broke the news to me: he had been having an affair. It broke my heart. I kicked him out of the house and we got divorced two weeks later.
Text with gaps:
I met my ex-husband in 1995; we ____ in love at first sight. We ___ a fantastic relationship for three happy years. Then, on our third anniversary, he proposed and we ___ married six months later. At first, everything was perfect; we both ___ the housework together; I ___ the washing-up and ____ the beds and he ___ the cooking and the _______. He always ____ a mess when he ___ the cooking, but I didn't mind because the dinners were always delicious.

Everything changed after a few years when he ___ a new job in Manchester; we ____ the decision to move there, so he wouldn't have to ____ the train to work every day. He started working later and ______ less attention to me. He stopped _____ the housework, so I had to __ everything. He ____ a lot of ______ but then he would _____ them. He was very stressed and he started to ___ bald, he ___ very depressed about this and started ______ drunk after work. I was ______ very worried about him. He would always come home drunk and ____ a mess. Then, one day, while I was cleaning his clothes, something ______ my attention. It was a lipstick stain on his shirt. I ___ very angry; he was _____ a secret from me! That night when he ____ home, I confronted him and he _____ the news to me: he had been ______ an affair. It _____ my heart. I kicked him out of the house and we ___ divorced two weeks later.
Videos
Videos are a fantastic way of teaching and revising verb-noun collocations as they contain natural everyday actions. They are especially good for teaching common phrasal verbs like 'take out', 'pick up', 'put down' etc. Below are a few suggestions for short videos to use for video dictation exercises similar to my Mr Bean activity. Watch one of the videos before class and jot down any specific language to teach before watching. Put students in pairs facing each other with one facing the screen and the other with their back to the screen.
1. Silent comedy
Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton videos can be great for this type of activity, but be aware that their actions come thick and fast, so either pause frequently or only use them for higher levels.

Charlie Chaplin - The Kid
Charlie Chaplin - The Lion's Cage
Charles Chaplin - The Bank
Buster Keaton - Seven Chances
2. Animations
Old animations like Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner can be great for this type of exercise.

Everybody loves him and YouTube is full of short excerpts that can easily be related to units from a course book.

I hope you find these activities useful.
Access Tim's free English lesson plans, join our global Facebook community or visit our award-winning website for teachers of English.

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Do your students have difficulty deciding which words go together in English? Tim Warre, who won our most recent Teaching English blog award for his Mr Bean video lesson plan, lists his most effective tips for making learning collocations fun.

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Brilliant:

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This lesson plan has strong practical and operational features, which can be applied into our teachers' daily classrooms. It came to the cultivation of students' creative thinking and its correlations with the activities for practicing their writing abilities, under certain carefully set background - 'a third person in students' mind when suffering a dark and stormy night'.
This plan picked up my memory about the theoretical explorations of the creative thinking and its reflections from my daily explorations of piano (musical teaching) when I was studying in Newcastle University. Though the 'landing' subjects from education research are different - one is upon the branch of writing in English (language), and mine is upon the branch of musical expressions, the core root of them are same - motivating students' potentials and gifts in innovative self expressions through organizing languages (you knew, music is a common language known all around the worlds) . Therefore, from the theoretical root to the deductive identification and clarification of what meanings behind can be meta-cognitively reflected-out from certain planned behaviors provided in this plan if our teachers try to apply this plan in their classroom, this settlement for comment is what I feel being good at and looking forward to sharing and self-reflexiving some ideas produced through my 'curious and participant-observing' eyes.

1. Here, it is a reference: 'Tsuda, I. (2015) 'Chaotic itinerancy and its roles in cognitive neurodynamics', Neurobiology. [Online] 31, pp. 67-71. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2014.08.011 (accessed: 9th Jan. 2015)'.
In this article, the biological mechanism of creative thinking has been physiological and experimental discussed. Briefly summarizing all and applying some of our theoretical and practical outcomes, then we would get to this point: Chaotic-itinerancy is the description of our brain's situation when creative thinking will be produced. How could our teachers get this situation? Creating scenes with definitive differentials in multiple-subjects, suddenly dropping students into them for creating new nerve 'spaghetti junction's electricity-links' , and frequently shifting students among these scenes in a short and intensive time for enhancing these nerve links. In this case, if good-qualified practices and operations are made, the requirements of searching&describing a person in mind, and the imagery imaginations of 'A dark and stormy night' can all give students the feelings of 'suddenly, surprising, and out of mind', which can associate them build nerve connections

2. Another operation - passing the stories created by one pair each among different pairs in certain order and making them create further sentence by sentence (if teachers can give some expressive and magic language-descriptions) - can make students travel in different mind - channels, participant-observe others' life and mind-patterns unconsciously, and motivate more creative sparks by themselves. Here, teachers need to give some encouragements to students and let them bravely express themselves with freedom. Therefore, we would know teachers' guides are very important.

3. Then, I would like to mention a little bit about 'searching a person in their mind-seas and accounting his (or her) characters'. This point, in psychoanalysis (if we can develop it a little bit further), comes to the explorations of students' deep unconsciousness worlds. (but I don't like the operation would be totally applied the psychoanalysis that teachers just want to search mental problems or disorders for their well-beings' controls. If done so, their developing sustainability and real creativity will be killed. Oppositely, we need to put some elements from humanity and spirituality into our classrooms to encourage students creatively organize the person's 'face' with more detailed memories and constructive imaginations. ) . Here, if we can put some pieces of music from nature and somehow with the functions of hypnosis, it would be better for students' meta-cognitive self-reflexivity.

4.About the finally part - 'Follow up', I think: let students share their stories in front of blackboard is a positive operation for creativity, which can also cultivate students' skills in public performance and speech. However, I didn't agree that ' other students need to tell the errors from rights and correcting them '. If it is real creative thinking, there is no right or wrong. The encouragements provided to students and the 'to be better' suggestions are what our teachers need give to them, which could make their thinking patterns more reasonable and acceptable by all in their future.

All in all, thanks for this teaching materials contributed for us, which I think can be seen as a good accumulation of our own teaching and learning experience if some theoretical supports can be put to category our thinking aspects.

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A creative writing activity: A dark and stormy night

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This lesson plan has strong practical and operational features, which can be applied into our teachers' daily classrooms. It came to the cultivation of students' creative thinking and its correlations with the activities for practicing their writing abilities, under certain carefully set background - 'a third person in students' mind when suffering a dark and stormy night'.

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The spending maze:

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It is based on a 'maze' principle, which gives students different options and a variety of different financial outcomes. There isn't one 'correct' answer, so different groups find themselves spending the money different ways - so you can use the activity several times with the same class. It is an excellent, fun way to practise the 'functional' language of agreement and disagreement, suggestion and negotiation in a genuinely 'communicative' activity.

Download the maze activity cards below.
Procedure

Set the context for your students:
The students have won one million euros and want to spend it in the best possible way. You can set the context by describing the situation, telling an anecdote, showing a picture or posing some discussion questions. I find that students love to talk about their experiences and ambitions - ask them if they have ever won anything and ask them what they would do if they won lots of money.

When the context has been established, put the students in groups of 2 to 5. The activity can be run as a whole class activity with you using one set of cards. The students ask you for the card they have chosen after each discussion. This works best if there aren't too many groups, maybe three or four maximum. You can also run the activity as independent group work, with a set of cards for each group. With both these ways, make sure the cards are put back in the pack once the group has moved to the next card.

Explain the activity. Students listen to or read what is written on the first card. They must then discuss the different options and come to an agreement about what to do. They then read the next card until they reach a conclusion and find out if they spent the money wisely or not. It is absolutely vital that the students really discuss each option and its possible implications; if they don't, they will finish very quickly and will not have had the speaking practice that the activity is intended to provide.

Your role: Walk around and listen to the groups. You may have to help lower levels with the reading. (One of the great things about this activity is that students have a powerful reason to want to understand.) If groups are not really discussing much, ask questions about their reasons for their decisions and prompt them to discuss more. Before you start the activity, think carefully about how to group the students. How can you best encourage speaking?

Vocabulary pre-teaching
Especially at lower levels, it can be a good idea to pre-teach vocabulary which you know the students will need for the activity. The maze gives them the chance to learn the words by using them!

Here is a list of words related to business and finance used in the maze. You could focus on some or all of these.

It can really help the flow of conversation if students are confident in using functional language. In this activity, students will be discussing, negotiating and making decisions. They may also be arguing, disagreeing and changing their minds! Think of the different expressions and structures we use when we do these things; for example:

"I think we should . . ."

"That's a good idea but . . ."

"What about . . ."

"Let's . . ."

"I don't agree with . . . "

"I've changed my mind."

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It is based on a 'maze' principle, which gives students different options and a variety of different financial outcomes. There isn't one 'correct' answer, so different groups find themselves spending the money different ways - so you can use the activity several times with the same class.

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English Teaching Faculty Development Workshop, Shumen, Bulgaria

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English Teaching Faculty Development Workshop, Shumen, Bulgaria

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11 - 20 July 2017

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I think that it is time for a coffee break!

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Just joined hope to come here often and contribute

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Just joined hope to come here often and contribute

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ral English Activities

Resources for Teachers

This site is no longer being actively maintained, but I've received enough grateful emails from teachers over the years to know that it's still being used. I guess pedagogy never grows old, it just gets rediscovered! (The Links page, on the other hand, was hopelessly out of date, but I've just tidied that up too). — March 2012

Categories

Total: 33 activities

Roleplay a telephone call based on a list of used cars.

See also:

Students speak in order to find the differences between two similar pictures.

Relevant content: Dentist Cartoon

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Assess speaking

Ideas and topics for oral english exams.

KEYWORDS: ESL, EFL, TEFL, TESL, China, communicative oral english activities, communicative verbal english activities, communicative spoken english activities, communicative conversational english activities, oral english classes, verbal english classes, spoken english classes, conversational english classes, english conversation classes, oral english lessons, oral english lesson plans, verbal english lessons, verbal english lesson plans, spoken english lessons, spoken english lesson plans, conversational english lessons, conversational english lesson plans

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ral English Activities Resources for Teachers This site is no longer being actively maintained, but I've received enough grateful emails from teachers over the years to know that it's still being used. I guess pedagogy never grows old, it just gets rediscovered!

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Perfect

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Make your ESL Speaking Class Awesome

I'm sure you want your ESL speaking classes to be as awesome as possible. Everybody does! Here are my top 81 tips to help you do that. Ready for great classes in the future? Because that's what you're going to get if you follow these tips!

Ready? Keep on reading for the ESL speaking class awesome.

1.What's your Target Language?

The first way to make your ESL speaking class awesome is to be clear about the aims of your lesson. "Practicing speaking" isn't enough. Something more specific like, "Introduce and practice 5 feeling words," or "Practice using the simple past in conversation" is much better.

It's boring to talk to the same person all the time, in real life, or in an ESL speaking class! Avoid it as much as possible by switching it up. Click on the link above where I talk about a few ways that you can get students talking to different people.

3.Set the Context

Students need to learn new vocabulary or grammar in context, so give them a real-life situation where they could actually use it. It'll make your lesson way more memorable. This way, your students will go out into the world and be ready to use English.

4.Start Class off on the Right Foot

This is something I seriously struggle with. How to get the students' attention in a fun, interesting way. It's most certainly not by diving straight into the lesson. These days, I'm using the Monster Pack Trivia. Trivia, but for students in any country and designed specifically for ESL/EFL students with simple grammar and language. It's excellent for middle schoolers and up.

Or, check out a short article where I talk about a few options for starting class over at My Life! Teaching in a Korean University.

5.Teach Students How to Ask Questions

Take some off the pressure off yourself to always be carrying the conversation. Check out this video: Teaching Students to Ask Questions.

6.Pause Often

Give students ample thinking time. It might take them a while to process and produce something in a language that's not their own. Your students will get frustrated if you often jump in and tell them the answer before they've had a chance to come up with it on their own.

7.Do Task-Based Learning Projects

Task-based learning projects can add a bit of variety to your ESL speaking class. Plus, they give students a chance to explore topics that they're interested in, just in English.

More details about task-based learning in this post.

8.Join this Facebook Group if you Teach Preschool Kids
ESL/EFL Preschool Teachers.
9.Go Student Centered Style

It's better for you and also for the students. Everyone wins! Think about it-who should be doing the hard work in your class, you or your students? If you want your students to improve their English in your ESL speaking class, it should be them of course.

Check out: Making your ESL Classes Student Centered on YouTube.

10.Big Picture First

Give students the big overview before you get into the finer points. I usually write up a quick plan with 4-5 points on the side of the board at the start of class. My students can follow along and it also keeps me on track!

It's perfect for introducing just about any topic and is one of my favourite ESL warm-ups.

12.Use Role-Plays in your ESL Speaking Class

Role plays are fun, student-centered and can help build some confidence in your students. They are perfect for lower-level ESL/EFL students who want to have a conversation, but don't have the skills to free-talk. I talk about using role-plays in this short video.

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ESL Speaking Activities for Kids will help make your classes awesome, guaranteed. Fun, engaging and interested ESL activities and games that your students will love. Help them learn English, the fun way and also save time when planning your lessons. Only solid, useful activities.

14.Review Vocabulary

Reviewing vocabulary will help out your students a lot because you need to hear a word many, many times before you can actively recall and use it. It's a worthwhile use of class time to spend a few minutes doing this every day.

Here's one of my favorite vocab review games.

15.Play a Warm-Up Game
How about Just a Minute?
It's perfect for higher-level students who can speak English. Or, you can adapt it to use with lower-level students by reducing the amount of time they have to talk. This warm-up activity can also be expanded by requiring group members to actively listen and ask follow-up questions.

16.Have a Routine

Perfect for children and useful for adults too! More details about having a routine in this post.

17. The Most Useful Email you'll Get all Week

Get 40+ ESL games and activities, delivered straight to your inbox.

18.Be Patient

I once had a Korean teacher who would only give me about 1/4 second before just answering the question herself. It was so frustrating! Silence is okay. Be patient and wait for students to answer. They'll really appreciate it. Trust me-nobody is feeling awkward about a little silence in your class except perhaps you.

Your students will love it that you're actually helping them get better at English speaking. Whenever I've done surveys, many of my students have listed this as their #1 expectation of my ESL speaking class. Tell your students what they're doing wrong, but in a kind way of course.

20.Use the Textbook

You don't always need to reinvent the wheel. There's likely lots of good stuff in the book that you can use in class. Here are some of my favourite ESL textbook recommendations:
4-Skills ESL Textbooks for Adults 4-Skills ESL Textbooks for Kids
21.Play some Board Games

Board games are one of my favorite things to do in an ESL speaking class. They're guaranteed to get your students engaged, active and having fun in English class. I talk about board games for ESL students in this short video.

22.Use Google Drive

It'll make your life way easier if you can recycle things from year to year. Something like an "introduction survey" activity can be used again, and again, and again. Same with board games. I just quickly adapt the old one I have, instead of spending the time to make a new one.

The other way using Google Drive can really help you is if you teach the same classes from year to year. For example, Touchstone Level 1. Maybe I'm given that textbook to teach from this semester. However, I vaguely remember teaching it years ago. I check Google Drive and...there it is! A whole set of lesson plans for that textbook. I check them out, adapt them and make them better. It saves a whole ton of time.

It's not just for kids! Everyone can do it, even adults. It's a fun way to get your students to be active in your ESL speaking class.

24.Practice Small Talk with Your Students

Small talk is an important, but often overlooked skill. It's hard to practice in a classroom in a way that isn't totally artificial. But, it's possible. Here's my favourite ESL Small Talk Activity.

25.Provide a Demonstration of the Language

Students learn best by seeing and then doing. Instead of just telling them HOW to do something, SHOW them.

26.Review Often

It's better that students know a few things well than a million things not really at all. Review lots and help them out. My goal in an ESL speaking class is to give my students a few things to take away from the class that they're 100% solid in.

For beginners, perhaps knowing the difference between the simple past and the past participle. Or, for more advanced students, it could be knowing when to use the various future verb tenses.

27.Be Serious Sometimes

Your ESL speaking classes don't always need to be fun. Learning English is difficult! It's okay to have some serious times where you focus on a difficult grammar concept. It's okay for your students to do a bit of work with a pen and paper where they dive into the grammar and really figure it out.
Resist the temptation to be an edutainer.
It's not just a drinking game-it's an excellent icebreaker or warm-up activity for your ESL speaking classes too.

29.Join this Facebook Group
Resources for English Teachers.
There is lots of excellent stuff posted there every single day that you can use in your ESL speaking classes.

30.Use Graded Language

Remember to adapt your language in terms of how fast you speak, the vocabulary you use as well as how difficult your grammar is so that the students will be able to understand you.

More details about using graded language in your ESL speaking class here: Graded Language-Use it!
31.Incorporate Public Speaking into your Classes
Public speaking is a useful life skill for everyone, including our ESL/EFL students. Plus, they're fun and a nice way to get the teacher out from in front of the class all the time.

Check out: How to Teach Public Speaking and Presentations.

32.Make Instructions Clear

Use ICQs (instruction checking questions). For example, after you give your spiel about how to do an activity, you could ask some of these ICQs:

"How many people do you need in your group?"

"If you roll a "3," what does that mean?"

"When is the game finished?"

"Should you give a 1-word answer?"

33.Start with an Awesome Lesson Plan

You can check out these two lesson plans for advanced level adult students.

Or, learn everything your need to know about making lesson plans for your ESL speaking class here:
ESL Lesson Plans and How to Make Them
34.Focus on Communication

If students can get their message across and be understood, they've accomplished something. You don't necessarily have to worry about every single grammatical error. This is especially true if it's not something that you're focusing on in that class.

For example, perhaps you're talking about using the simple past to tell a story. If a student is telling their story and using simple past verbs correctly and you can understand the gist of the story, that is probably enough. If they are using some incorrect vocabulary, don't worry about it. That is the focus of another lesson.

35.Get this Book

39 ESL Warm-Ups: For Teenagers and Adults is the book that will help you get your ESL speaking class started off in style.

It's really tough for your students if you jump straight into the nitty-gritty details of your lesson. They've just come from other classes, from home or work, or from hanging out with their friends. It's most likely they haven't been focused on speaking class. Help your students ease into English by using one of these warm-up activities or games.

36.Use CCQ's

CCQ's are concept checking questions. For example, if you are teaching about the simple past, you could ask these CCQs:

"What is the past tense of eat?" Is it a regular, or irregular verb?"

"I gone bungee jumping last weekend. Correct or incorrect? Why?"

37.Don't Correct All Errors

Students will get frustrated and you will too. Instead, focus on those that involve the target language for that lesson.

38.Engage Apathetic Students
My top 5 tips here.
39.Follow me on Twitter
@Bolen_Jackie.
You'll find lots of useful tips for your ESL speaking class.

40.Focus on Fluency as well as Accuracy

Have some activities where the goal is to simply speak quickly and not worry too much about making mistakes.

Check out the warm-up game in #15 for one way to do this. Or, here is an activity to help your students work on writing fluently.

41.Correct Errors as a Class

Instead of singling someone out, you can say at the end of an activity, "I heard someone say XYZ, but it should have been ABC." It's likely that many students made the same mistake.

42.Don't Expect Miracles

Sure, you can help the students but don't beat yourself up if they're not making massive progress especially if you have a big class that you only see for an hour or two a week. People learn languages in small steps, especially adults. Be patient with your students and also with yourself!

43.Use a Great Textbook!

Check out my recommendations for the best ESL textbooks that focus on all four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing):

44.Praise Liberally

Students respond well to positive reinforcement. For example, it's far better to encourage the students who actually are speaking English in your class instead of scolding the ones who are not. Even adults like to be praised.

45.Follow this Board on Pinterest
Teaching ESL.
You'll find lots of useful teaching tips and ESL games and and activities.

46.Use a Discussion Starter

Here are my top 10 list of discussion starters for children, and Top 10 Discussion Starters for Adults.

These discussion starters will help you get your ESL speaking class started off in style.

47.Make a Lesson Plan
Use this ESL lesson planning template.
It should go without saying that having at least a general lesson plan is better than just "winging it." Trust me, I've seen way too many teachers over the years try to do it on the fly and the results are usually terrible.

48.Have your Students do a Presentation

Fun for you, useful for the students. Check out these Presentation Project Ideas.

They are one of the best ways to get your students up out of their seats and talking to their classmates. ESL surveys are also student-centred, focus on all four skills, and perfect for those low-energy, sleep classes.

It's a classic one for a reason! Charades are a fun party class game and an excellent way to review vocabulary, in a sneaky kind of way.

51.Remind Students of Who/What/When/Why/Where/How

They're really useful in conversation! Go over this when you're doing a conversation activity and require students to ask at least one or two follow-up questions to their partner.

52.Get this Book
39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities: For Teenagers and Adults
53.Use Flashcards
Use this fun game!
For kids, flashcards are pure gold in terms of what you can do with them. Check out that previous link for lots of ideas about how I use flashcards in my ESL speaking class for kids.

54.Practice Pronunciation

It never hurts to focus a little bit on pronunciation in your ESL speaking class. Students always appreciate it and find it quite fun.

55.Incorporate Listening and Reading into your ESL Speaking Class

It's all tied together and you can't really become fluent in speaking without a grounding in the other stuff. It's usually best, even if you're teaching "speaking" to mix in a bit of listening, reading and writing.

It'll make that discussion time even better. For example, if my students are learning about telling a story in the past, I'll introduce the verbs they might want to use. Then, I'll give my students 2-3 minutes to think about their story before they have to tell it to a partner. If it's a speaking class, I'll usually make a rule that they can only write down a few words on their paper as notes, but they can't write full sentences.

By giving students a couple of minutes to think about their story, they're able to produce far better ones.

57.Rock-Scissor-Paper

Kids love it and you can also turn it into a fun ESL Speaking Activity.

58.Help Students Get to Know Each Other

Use the "My World" introduction activity.

59.Encourage Respect
ESL Speaking Games, Activities and Resources.
When you're talking, everyone is listening. Same with another student. Don't allow students to talk over you, or another student.

60.Follow this board on Pinterest

61.Encourage Students

It's hard to speak in English! Praise even small efforts.

62.Attend a Conference
Play this guessing game.
Learn a few new tips and tricks from experienced teachers. ESL conferences are also a great way to network. Here are some more professional development tips for ESL teachers.

63.Have some Fun with Can/Can't

64.Do the CELTA

Learn how to teach so you can feel more confident in the classroom. The CELTA is kind of the gold standard in the month-long courses, so don't waste your time doing one of the imitations.

Read about my experience doing the CELTA in Seoul, South Korea.

By Scott Thornbury, it's a classic for those new to teaching ESL. It's the book you'll end up pulling off your bookshelf again and again. You can check it out on Amazon here:

Here's a fun game you can play to practice them.
66.Use Toilet Paper in Your Class

67.Teach your Students about Relative Clauses

68.Be Kind

Never make fun of students for the mistakes they make. This is obvious of course! Another factor is to make sure students don't do this either.

69.Learn a Language Yourself

Remember what it's like to be be in the students' shoes. It's often frustrating, confusing and difficult to learn a language from someone who doesn't speak the same first language as you.

70.Encourage Risk-Taking

You can't learn a language without making plenty of mistakes. Encourage your students to take risks because it's the only way that you can become fluent in a language.

All kinds of ideas for your ESL speaking class here. It's updated every couple of days with a new idea.

72.Maintain a Positive Atmosphere
ESL Speaking for Children.
Don't let students make fun of other students for their poor English ability in your class. Everyone is on a journey and just because someone is at a different place, doesn't mean it's bad.

73.Follow this board on Pinterest

74.Make it Student-Directed

Let your students have a say in the topics you study.

75.Smaller Groups and Pairs is Best

Maximize student talking time by generally avoiding discussions with the entire class. My general rule is that if the class has more than about five students, I'll put them in pairs or groups of three for discussion times. Then, at the end of the talking time, I'll do a quick sum-up of what happened in each group. For example, I'll ask a few students to tell me something they learned about their partner. I try to make it random so it keeps students on their toes!

76.Sing a Song

Using a song in your ESL speaking class make a really fun lesson! One of my favorites is "If I Had a Million Dollars."

The previous link is a lesson plan that I developed to go along with this popular song by the Barenaked Ladies.

77.Teach Formal and Informal Speaking

Students will need to know both, depending on the circumstance so point this out, if relevant. For example, greetings. If your students are meeting someone older than themselves that they don't know, they might say, "Hello, nice to meet you. I'm Jackie."

But, if they're greeting a good friend who is the same age, they might say, "Hey, what's up? What's going on?"

It's a fun way for beginner students to get to know their classmates a little bit better.

79.Don't Interrupt

If students are doing an activity with a small group or partner, just observe but don't get involved in the conversation. If students are making common errors, I'll note this on a piece of paper and then correct errors as a class at the end of the activity.

80.Draw a Picture

Drawing a picture is a classic ESL speaking activity

81.Use Kindness

If students are speaking in their first language, kindly remind them to speak in English and they usually will. If it's a class-wide problem, have a talk with them about their goals and why they're in your class. They usually want to improve their English speaking skills, so gently remind them of this. Getting angry won't help you!

I hope your ESL speaking classes are even more awesome! Please leave your #1 tip for your ESL speaking class down in the comments below.

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81 ways to make your ESL Speaking Class awesome

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Make your ESL Speaking Class Awesome I'm sure you want your ESL speaking classes to be as awesome as possible. Everybody does! Here are my top 81 tips to help you do that. Ready for great classes in the future? Because that's what you're going to get if you follow these tips!

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13 commonly made mistakes in language teaching

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13 commonly made mistakes in language teaching

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1. Too much zooming in not enough zooming out

The acquisition of a phoneme, lexical item, grammar structure or learning strategy is a very long and pain-staking process involving lots of exposure and practice and much trial and error that may last months or even years. Moreover, a big obstacle to long-term retention is the fact that the human brain forgets at a ridiculously high rate; 42 % of what we learn is usually lost within 20 minutes from first memorizing it, 64 % after 9 hours and 80 % after one week without consolidation (see figure 1 below)

Figure 1 - Rate of human forgetting

Hence, medium and long-term planning are more important, in the greater scheme of things, than short-term planning - what is the point in teaching ten new lexical items on Monday in the perfect lesson, if on Friday nearly eight of them will have been forgotten?

Yet, it is not uncommon for teachers to focus mostly on the here-and-now, to 'zoom in' without 'zooming out'; new items are taught, the instructor dwells on them for two or three lessons, then moves on after being satisfied through a test (usually done in writing) that most of the students have 'learnt' them.

The bigger picture, the long-term planning in those schemes of work that very few of us look at in their daily practice, is what matters the most if we want long-term retention to happen.

The most important part of a lesson, any lesson, is the bit in which you set out what you intend the students to be able to do with the content of that lesson in the long term (e.g. receptive and/or productive mastery?) by when (e.g. the end of the year?) and think about how you are going to get there from the end of that lesson onwards.

2. Insufficient 'horizontal' progression

In 'The Language Teacher Toolkit', Steve Smith and I draw a distinction between 'vertical' and 'horizontal ' progression in lessons. The former refers to progression from a lower level of language complexity to a higher one, whilst the latter refers to progression in terms of speed and control (e.g. I can produce language faster and with fewer mistakes at time 2 than at time 1).

If we do endorse, as I do, the equation Learning = Automaticity, then horizontal progression across all four skills (each skill involving different processes) should really take priority over vertical progression in lessons as well as throughout the whole of the academic year. Hence, vertical progression should only be attempted once much horizontal progression has been achieved. E.g.: no point teaching students how to form complex sentence in French, Spanish or Italian if they have not automatized how to use basic verb forms, articles or make noun and adjective agree, right?

Yet, how many of us venture into teaching more complex grammatical or syntactic structures without having ensured that the basic ones have been automatized (100 % accuracy) or at least routinized (80 % accuracy) thereby seriously damaging our students' learning? How many of our Advanced level students of French, Spanish and German still struggle with adjectival agreement, gender and number of nouns, verb conjugation and word order in year 13?

Horizontal progression is the most neglected aspect of language teaching and learning, because it 'slows down' the coverage of the syllabus and requires extra resources. But when it comes to horizontal progression, less is more - is it better to teach ten grammar items in year 7 'superficially', knowing that you will have to re-teach them over and over again all the way to year 11, or cut down coverage by half (as I have done) so that routinization will actually happen the first time around thanks to extensive exposure and usage?

Figure 2 - Less is more when it comes to curriculum design

In my approach, the teacher selects only a few core grammar structures per year and tracks down their level of routinization throughout the year through low-stake assessments, some given as homework (e.g. a student records himself as he describes a picture under time constraints).

The pace dictated by textbooks, one unit every six weeks is unrealistic and unfair to our students. Only few of them can cope and we end up teaching to those few if we keep this pace. No wonder only those few choose to pursue Modern Languages beyond GCSE.

3.Four common recycling mistakes

Many of us recycle systematically and extensively across units. Many more don't - their curriculum design does not make explicit provision for recycling opportunities of old material across new units and topics are 'compartmentalised' so to speak. But even those who recycle often make the following very common 'mistakes'.

Mistake 1 - Vocabulary and grammar are often recycled using digital tools such as Memrise and Quizlets or other resources (e.g. Powerpoints or textbooks) which practise vocabulary in the very same phrases/sentences or context in which they were originally learnt. Recycling, though, is most effective when the to-be-consolidated vocabulary is 'hooked' (possibly through semantic processing) to an increasingly wider range of contexts, be these words, images, sounds or tasks. So, re-using the same set of Quizlet, Memrise or Linguascope activities does not constitute effective recycling because it limits the range of retrieval cues available to the learner at recall. In simpler words: consolidating the word 'plage' using the same sentence 'je vais à la plage' is going to be much less conducive to retention than recycling it through a wide range of contexts (e.g. 'je suis à la plage', 'il y a une belle plage près de chez moi', 'la plage est bondèe', 'j'habite près de la plage', etc.) because associating 5 contexts to that word offers working memory a wider range of retrieval paths and consequently more chance of successful recall.

Mistake 2: words are often recycled in isolation, which is ineffective for the same reason discussed above: learning is more effective when an item is processed in association with a wide range of other items or linguistic contexts.

Mistake 3 : the target vocabulary and grammar - especially the latter - are rarely recycled across all four skills, listening and speaking tending to be the most neglected.

Mistake 4 : homework is rarely used to recycle old material, yet there are many minimal-preparation tasks that one can set for out-of-school assignments to effectively serve that purpose. Projects to be carried out exclusively as homework are one of them.

Mistake 5 : We tend to recycle items that we teach explicitly (i.e. by explaining the rules governing their usage). But why not recycling systematically and consciously items that we don't actually teach explicitly but would like nonetheless our students to pick up? Which brings me to the next point.

4.Over-emphasis on explicit learning

Not all classroom learning must occur explicitly. Much research shows that masses of exposure to highly patterned, repetitive comprehensible input (i.e. 90-95 %) can bring about learning. Hence, a big chunk of teaching and learning in the modern language classroom can and should occur implicitly.

As an example, at the beginning of every lesson I teach, as I call the register, I ask the students to tell me how they feel using the vocabulary in the table below which I project on the screen and they have in their books. By staging this activity every day, after a few weeks, the students not only learn all the vocabulary in the table without any explicit teaching, but often even internalize the basic rule of adjectival agreement in French ('add 'e' to the end of the adjective with feminine nouns') by mere usage and/or exposure.

Figure 2 - Taking the emotional temperature (daily lesson starter)

Also, at the end of lessons, as an 'exit ticket', I usually ask my students to tell me, write on mini-whiteboards or discuss with their classmates 4 or 5 things they are going to do after school or at the weekend, using the immediate future ('je vais + infinitive' in French or 'voy a + infinitive' in Spanish) which is modelled on a scaffolding sheet that I project on the interactive whiteboard. Again, after a few weeks, with no explanation, they usually grasp implicitly and effortlessly how to use that tense merely through repeated usage.

After delivering countless workshops on how to embed implicit learning in the curriculum it has become apparent to me that, at least in British schools, most teachers do not have a principled approach to implicit teaching. Yet, implicit learning through frequent exposure and usage, when carefully and methodically planned and implemented can yield amazing results.

5.Too much single-word teaching

As I repeat ad nauseam in my blogs, teaching single words is less effective than teaching functional chunks, i.e. phrases used in the performance of communicative functions (list of communicative functions, here). Why? Firstly, because our brain's working memory can only process 4 items at any one time, so better learning four items consisting of chunks of three or four words than four items consisting of one, as this will result in less cognitive effort when creating sentences. Think of the processes involved in creating and uttering a sentence (listed in the figure below), how cumbersome it can be to a novice as s/he executes each stage using single words.

Figure 4 - Oral production of a sentence

Secondly, learning vocabulary through chunks can avoid a series of commonly made mistakes if it is done smartly. For instance, when teaching clothes, teaching 'J'ai une chemise verte' (I have a green shirt) and 'j'ai un blouson vert (I have a green coat), rather than simply teaching the noun preceded by the determiner (i.e. 'une chemise' or 'un blouson'), as books usually do, means that (a) you teach more vocabulary in one go and (b) that you do not have to teach noun-to-adjective agreement explicitly, thereby reducing the chances of the students making mistakes in handling that structure for many years to come - as they commonly do.

Thirdly, it is evident from research that advanced learners and native speakers produce language in the attainment of a communicative goal through the execution of specific speech routines which consists of chunks of language that they piece together at high speed. Hence, chunking should be actively fostered in the foreign language classroom.

6.Cognitively overloading students

In my latest round of workshops in England, a few weeks ago, I made the attendees experience cognitive overload in attempting to memorize Japanese or Malay numbers from 1 to 10. It was a frustrating but eye-opening experience, as they experienced what their students often go through in their lessons.

If our brains can only contain four items at any one time and we are not teaching them chunks, imagine how hard it must be for a beginner to keep a sentence as long as six or seven words in their Working Memory whilst making adjectives and nouns agree with one another, conjugating verbs, getting the word order right etc. This is one common cause of cognitive overload of (C0) and the main reason why you should teach chunks rather than single word.

Other very common causes of CO involve:

receptive tasks which involve input which is not comprehensible input (i.e. less than 90% of it is accessible without resorting to extratextual help);

comprehension questions on aural texts delivered at high speed;

tasks which cause anxiety and stress (two strong inhibitors of Working Memory performance);

having to attend to several tasks at the same time, e.g. when we ask our students to peer assess speaking performance with a multi-trait rubric which includes several items to feedback on (e.g. use of tenses, range of vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.)

7. Over-reliance on shallow processing

The ability to recall a specific lexical item is not simply a function of the power law of practice but also of how many associations it has with other lexical items and information in long-term memory, as well as how strong those association are. Moreover, retention will be stronger when the cognitive and emotional investment of the learner is stronger.

Hence vocabulary teaching activities should involve mostly meaning-based associations, sorting and classifying, problem solving, creativity with the language and any other task which is about deep processing. Yet, a lot of vocabulary teaching is about shallow processing, that is, mere repetition, without much involvement of higher order thinking skills, which usually creates a weaker memory trace.

8.Vocabulary, communicative functions and grammar are not usually taught across all four skills

Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing are four different skills which involve four different sets of processes and micro-skills. Hence the use of the target lexical items, grammar structures and functions need to be acquired by our students across four skills, not just one or two, as it usually happens. Think of how many times you have tested your students' uptake of the grammar structures you have taught over the years through listening and speaking, for instance; not many, right?

9.Under-emphasis on the receptive skills

In British schools, there is an over-emphasis on production, especially writing at the detriment of Listening and Reading, the former being by far the more neglected of the two skills. Yet, much research evidence shows that extensive exposure to highly patterned comprehensible input significantly facilitates learning.

Moreover, an added benefit of doing a lot of receptive work is that aural and written texts make recycling of old material easier (you can embed in texts any language you like), than doing productive work all the time. In the last three years, I have literally doubled the amount of receptive work I do with my students and this has significantly enhanced my teaching.

The issue is that many teachers want their students to come up with some form of product by the end of every lesson, as concrete evidence that learning happened.

A final point, when teachers talk about automaticity and fluency, many seem to forget that automaticity in the execution of receptive skills is as important as automaticity in speaking and writing production. Oral spontaneity, for instance, cannot be achieved if one cannot process aural input fast and accurately.

10. Ineffective listening instruction

I shall briefly touch on this issue as I have discussed it extensively in many previous posts and articles of mine; not only, as mentioned above, Listening is highly neglected, but it is also usually badly taught. As I have been vocally advocating for the last two years, listening comprehension tasks do not teach listening skills; nor do they model language use - they are tests through and through which elicit the application of inferencing strategies ( see here for more).

11. Insufficient focus on creating questions

'Creating questions' is a communicative function which plays a key role in oral spontaneity. You cannot acquire oral spontaneity unless you can master this function. Yet, MFL students are often given long lists of questions to answer or memorize the answers to, but are rarely systematically taught how to form questions. There is no textbook currently on the UK market which dedicates to this function the space and treatment it thoroughly deserves.

Since last year, I have made 'creating questions' one my 'universals', i.e. one of the ten functions/structures that I set out to teach in every single lesson of mine, regardless of the topic-at-hand (I am going to write a post about my 'universals' over the next few days). Nowadays, as my primary students see the free wheeldecide.com wheel appear on my classroom screen, whatever question prompt the wheel selects, they know they have to produce a question in the context of the topic-at-hand on their miniboards using that prompt (scaffolding is provided of course).

Figure 6 - Spin the wheel from http://www.wheeldecide.com

12. One method fits all

What is most striking about the textbooks in use in UK schools is that by and large they use the same methodological approach from beginners to intermediate. The level of difficulty may increase as you move from year 7 to year 11, but you see the same sort of tasks and task sequences; the same emphasis on the four skills; the same speed of delivery in the listening tracks; the same insufficient amount of recycling; the same target language-to-first language ration; etc.

Yet, it is evident that at different levels of proficiency L2 learners have different needs. Hence approaches may be required which differ from level to level and even from language to language. So, with beginners one may have to use a much more structured approach than one would with upper intermediate students; may need to do more work on decoding skills, may need to focus more on the receptive skills, especially listening; may have to make greater use of the first language; etc.

13.Flawed assessment and assessment ladders

The vast majority of the assessment tasks and procedures found in the textbooks currently on the market leave much to be desired for many reasons to do with:

(1) construct validity, i.e. they do not actually measure what they purport to measure as they do not test the students fairly on the actual content and skills taught by the course (e.g. listening tests are more about educated guesswork than actual understanding, an important survival skill set but not one that we actually systematically teach);

(2) the flawed assumption they are based upon, that progression is about how many tenses you master and the length of the text-at-hand (but a shorter text can be more challenging than a longer one);

(3) grammar tests assess the acquisition of the target structure mainly through gap-fill tasks, which do not tell as anything about students' ability to use that structure in real time and under time constraints (e.g. in a spontaneous conversation). They only tell us about their grasp of how the grammar structure works (i.e. declarative knowledge as opposed to procedural knowledge).

The assessment ladders that are currently circulating in British MFL circles are a major cause for concern to me, as they have not been created, as they should have been, a posteriori, emerging from actual data, i.e. by observing what students do at different levels of proficiency; rather, they have been created a priori, by individuals who are not even expert language acquisition researchers who have arbitrarily decided what students should and should not be able to do at different developmental levels.

In other words, unless I study what poor, average and very able students can and cannot do well on a specific listening, speaking, reading and writing task or set of tasks at different levels of proficiency how can I - unless I have psychic powers - come up with an assessment ladder which states effectively what students should be able to do in each of the four skills at level 1 to 9?

So, for instance, in wanting to come up with an effective year 7 to 11 nine-point writing assessment ladder, I would have to start by asking my best A* year 11 students to write an essay under exam constraints and determine, based on their performance, what the features of a typical level 9 essay are and then work my way down to year 7 by studying students at each key developmental stage. A long and pain-staking process - but because assessment does have an important wash-back effect on teaching, it is paramount that it is done well, rather than opting for quick-and-dirty solutions which give us a botched-up and vague measurement of our students' ability, as the old National Curriculum Levels used to do.

The rubrics that I have seen posted on the TES, on some highly renowned and respected educators' websites and published by Pearson are very disappointing in this respect.

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Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.)

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13 commonly made mistakes in Modern Language Instruction

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1. Too much zooming in not enough zooming out The acquisition of a phoneme, lexical item, grammar structure or learning strategy is a very long and pain-staking process involving lots of exposure and practice and much trial and error that may last months or even years.

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Cannot afford going to courses? Webinars are an excellent substitute:

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The United Kingdom´s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. A registered charity: 209131 (England and Wales) SC037733 (Scotland) Our privacy and copyright statements. Our Freedom of Information Publications Scheme. © British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN, UK.

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The United Kingdom´s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. A registered charity: 209131 (England and Wales) SC037733 (Scotland) Our privacy and copyright statements. Our Freedom of Information Publications Scheme. © British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN, UK.

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Looking for more ideas?

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EFL ESL TEFL TESL TESOL Resources Worksheets And Other Materials For English Language Teachers

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This time I created 80 role-play cards. You can use them to have practise speaking in 40 different situations. Scroll down to learn more about the cards.

Each card from the pack is numbered. One card is for student A and the other for student B so there are two cards for each number. The cards contain 3/4 tasks for student A and the same number of tasks for student B. The instructions make up a conversation which your students need to have. Have a look at the cards below:

As you can see above, each card also contains useful language which is supposed to help and guide your students who have problems with speaking.

The situations include conversations in shops and a restaurant, conversations with teachers and classmates as well as conversations with relatives and much more.

I'm going to use the cards with my 12-year-old students at the beginning of each lesson to warm them up. I think I'll have two students draw a card number so that during each class 2 pairs of students will be asked to role-play a specific scenario.
You can download 24 of the cards for free to test them out. Just click under the picture below. I hope you like the cards and decide to buy them for only $1. If you do, you'll receive a digital version of the cards within 8 hours although it takes this long only when I sleep at night 🙂 More often than not, I send all resources within 1 hour or less. IMPORTANT! An email from me might end up in your spam folder so make sure to check it too. Get the free cards here. Like the cards? Great! To buy the whole set, click below. I'd like to know what you guys think about the cards so be sure to leave a comment below. I'll be adding new teaching resources soon so visit englishteachercorner.com again. Have fun teaching everyone 🙂

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Role-play Cards - EFL ESL TEFL TESL TESOL Resources Worksheets And Other Materials For English Language Teachers

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This time I created 80 role-play cards. You can use them to have practise speaking in 40 different situations. Scroll down to learn more about the cards. Each card from the pack is numbered. One card is for student A and the other for student B so there are two cards for each number.

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learning teaching (3rd edition): the essential guide to english language teaching.macmillan books for teachers / buch mit dvd-rom

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didaktik / methodik / schulpädagogik / fachdidaktik

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unterricht und didaktik: moderne sprachen

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Learning Teaching (3rd Edition): The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching.Macmillan Books for Teachers / Buch mit DVD-ROM

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Broschiertes BuchLearning Teaching wurde komplett überarbeitet und aktualisiert. Aktuelle methodisch-didaktische Entwicklungen und Trends im Bereich English as a Foreign Language wurden dabei berücksichtigt. Auch der Einsatz moderner technischer Hilfsmittel im Unterricht wie PCs, Interactive Whit...

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Introduction to the 3rd day: Revision

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the brain book: know your own mind and how to use it

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children's & teenage literature studies: general

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psychological theory & schools of thought

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social sciences: textbooks & study guides

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The Brain Book: Know Your Own Mind and How to Use it

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Amazon.com: The Brain Book: Know Your Own Mind and How to Use it (9780415034555): Peter Russell: Books

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Dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where learners are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction.

Example
Learners discuss the sea. The teacher then explains the task, and reads a short text on the sea to the class, who just listen. The teacher reads the text again, and the learners take notes. In groups, the learners then reconstruct the text.

In the classroom
Dictogloss is often regarded as a multiple skills and systems activity. Learners practise listening, writing and speaking (by working in groups) and use vocabulary, grammar and discourse systems in order to complete the task.

Further links:
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/tattoo-possibilities-higher-level https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/error-correction-2

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Dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where learners are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction. Example Learners discuss the sea. The teacher then explains the task, and reads a short text on the sea to the class, who just listen.

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https://www.natobilc.org/en/

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BILC has the following responsibilities: The dissemination of information on developments in the field of language training to participating countries. The convening of an annual conference and a professional seminar during which participating nations review the work done in the co-ordination field and in the study of particular language topics.

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Revising vocab and definitions with Quizlet

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Revising vocab and definitions with Quizlet

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The security system for this website has been triggered. Completing the challenge below proves you are a human and gives you temporary access.

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Using pictures

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by Claudia Pesce 75,229 views

Most ESL students have taken enough courses and classes to become accustomed to pictures, flashcards and illustrations. So accustomed, in fact, that they may not be fully engaged in some activities. After all, why should they care about "Mr. Thompson" or "Susan", or "Betty"?

They do care, however, about their family and friends. Which is why using photos in your ESL classroom will breathe some fresh air into any activity. Here are some creative ESL activities and games you can play with photos.

10 ESL Activities Using Photos

1. Magnetic Photos
If you happen to have a magnetic whiteboard, get your hands on some Avery Magnet Sheets or similar magnetic printable paper, and print one head shot for each of your students. You will have personalized magnets that your kids will absolutely love, and which are great for any number of games or activities. Leave the corner of your whiteboard for the Student of the Week and simply stick the student's photo there. Or use them to spark some friendly competition! Ask students to take out a sheet of paper, imagine they had to interview their favorite sports or movie star, and tell them to write as many questions as they can. Walk around the classroom and see how many each has written. On your whiteboard, place their photos from top to bottom to show who's written more so far.

2. What's on the Menu?
Why use only magnetic photos of your students when you print any type of photo out of magnetic paper? It may be more expensive than regular paper, but oh, so worth it! In this case, take a few days to get some snapshots of real meals, anything from a plate of spaghetti to a burger with fries. Print the photos on magnetic paper and presto! They will be ready to create their own menus. Smaller boards are ideal for them to create a menu and practice restaurant role plays.

3. Comparatives and Superlatives
Ask students to bring in some family photos, particularly where you can see people standing as a group. Have students compare them by saying who is taller than who, who's the shortest, etc..but don't stop at physical descriptions. Have them share with the class who's the most musical, most artistic, better at sports, etc...

4. Photo Album
Try this great worksheet where students use the possessive case to talk about their families, but replace the black and white illustrations with photos of real people, members of your family. Ask students to guess or imagine details about them, who they are, what they do, etc...You may choose to correct them in the end and supply the real facts, or not.

5. Photo Novel
This is a wonderful extended class project. The first thing you have to do is get your hands on a Polaroid camera, or simply use a regular digital camera and print the shots later. Have your students come up with an idea for a short story plot. Take a sequence of photos of your students acting different scenes of the plot. Once you have all of the photos printed out, students assemble them into a book or magazine format and write the captions below each one.

6. Inquisitive Minds
Ask students to bring 4 or 5 photos from home, any type of photo as long as the student does not appear in it: trips, vacations, family members, objects, pets, etc...Tells students not to show them to their classmates. Mix them up and stick them onto the board. Students ask each other questions (using Present Perfect, for example) to find out which photo belongs to whom: Diego, have you ever been to Rome?

7. A Sequence of Steps
At home, take photos of something being done in steps, for example someone baking a cake. First, you get a shot of the eggs in the bowl, then the flour being added, everything mixed, then poured into a cake tin, etc... Bring the photos to class and ask your students to put them in the right order. Finally, have them write step by step instructions using vocabulary for sequences: first, second, then, next, etc...

8. What's Wrong with This Picture?
You can have a lot of fun with this one! This is a great way to practice modals like should, shouldn't, must, or mustn't. Take a few pictures of objects or things around the house in places where you wouldn't ordinarily find them. For example, shoes in the fridge, a pizza on a pillow, a stack of magazines in the bathtub. First ask students what is wrong with each picture and then to tell you where this item should be: The shoes shouldn't be in the fridge. They should be in the closet. You mustn't eat pizza in the bedroom. You should eat it at the table.

9. What's the story?
Bring photos that show something interesting or that could spark a conversation, for example, a photo of someone reading a book, building something, or carrying out any type of activity. Hand them out and ask students to write a paragraph imagining the story behind the photo. Encourage them to get as creative as they can be, and tell them there are no right or wrong answers.

10. A picture says a thousand words...
Bring photos of different types of landscapes. Give one to each of your students and ask them to write a description of what they see. Stick the photos vertically on one side of the board/wall and the descriptions on the other side. Students take turns matching the right description to each photo.

There are so many ways in which you can use photos to enhance activities and engage students. Children love looking at photos, and it's a lot easier sometimes for them to connect to real people rather than cartoons or illustrations.

Also, bear in mind that if you want to save on paper, you can always prepare Power Point slides for some of these activities. Remember that a photo op is also a great learning op!

P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.

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What You Can Do With Photos: 10 Creative ESL Games/Activities

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by Claudia Pesce 75,229 views They do care, however, about their family and friends. Which is why using photos in your ESL classroom will breathe some fresh air into any activity. Here are some creative ESL activities and games you can play with photos.

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Exploiting the info gathered during the introduction

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Exploiting the info gathered during the introduction

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Discourse markers are words and phrases used in speaking and writing to 'signpost' discourse. Discourse markers do this by showing turns, joining ideas together, showing attitude, and generally controlling communication. Some people regard discourse markers as a feature of spoken language only.

Example
Words like 'actually', 'so', 'OK', 'right?' and 'anyway' all function as discourse markers as they help the speaker to manage the conversation and mark when it changes.

In the classroom
Discourse markers are an important feature of both formal and informal native speaker language. The skilful use of discourse markers often indicates a higher level of fluency and an ability to produce and understand authentic language.

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Discourse markers are words and phrases used in speaking and writing to 'signpost' discourse. Discourse markers do this by showing turns, joining ideas together, showing attitude, and generally controlling communication. Some people regard discourse markers as a feature of spoken language only.