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Option 1: have students give presentation about their current job.

Option 2: Have students work in groups. Assign each group a job. Have the groups create and share a job ad for their assigned job.

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Review previously covered writing activities.

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Find 3-4 original texts. Write summaries of the texts. Have students read the texts/summaries and work in groups to connect the summaries to the correct texts.

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How can learners improve their listening comprehension? Teacher Raphael Ahmed shares some useful strategies in one of our top five articles of all time, illustrated by artist Jamie Johnson. Why listening is important
It should not be difficult to realise the importance of listening when we consider that it occupies about 45 per cent of the time adults spend in communication. This is significantly more than speaking, which accounts for 30 per cent, and reading and writing, which make up 16 per cent and nine per cent respectively.

Yet, for all its importance, students (and even teachers) often fail to give listening the attention it needs. This is all the more remarkable as learners often say that listening is the most challenging of all the skills in English.
Listening challenges for English language learners
There are many difficulties an individual may face in understanding a talk, lecture or conversation in a second language (and sometimes even in their first language). The speaker, the situation and the listener can all be the cause of these difficulties.

Contributing factors include the speaker talking quickly, background noise, a lack of visual clues (such as on the telephone), the listener's limited vocabulary, a lack of knowledge of the topic, and an inability to distinguish individual sounds.

While the challenges posed by the speaker or the situation may be out of the listener's hands, there are a few skills or 'strategies' that English learners can use to help them along.
1. Predicting content
Imagine you've just turned on your TV. You see a man in a suit standing in front of a large map with the symbols of a sun, clouds and thunder. What do you imagine he is about to tell you? Most likely, this is going to be a weather forecast. You can expect to hear words like 'sunny', 'windy' and 'overcast'. You'll probably hear the use of the future tense: 'It'll be a cold start to the day'; 'there'll be showers in the afternoon', etc.

Depending on the context - a news report, a university lecture, an exchange in a supermarket - you can often predict the kind of words and style of language the speaker will use. Our knowledge of the world helps us anticipate the kind of information we are likely to hear. Moreover, when we predict the topic of a talk or a conversation, all the related vocabulary stored in our brains is 'activated' to help us better understand what we're listening to.
Practise predicting content:
Watch or listen to a recorded TV programme or clip from YouTube. Pause after every few sentences. Try to predict what is going to happen or what the speaker might say next.

If you are taking a listening test, skim through the questions first and try to predict what kind of information you need to listen out for. A question beginning 'How many..?', for example, will probably require you to listen for a specific number or quantity of something.
2. Listening for gist
Imagine you are a superhero flying in the sky. From that height, it is possible to see what the entire area is like, how densely populated it is, the kind of houses in each area.

When listening, it is also possible to get the 'whole picture' but with one crucial difference: information comes in a sequence. And in that sequence of information, there are content words (the nouns, adjectives and verbs) that can help you form that picture. We often call this listening for gist.

For example, the words 'food', 'friends', 'fun', 'park' and 'sunny day' have their own meanings, but when you hear the words in sequence, they help form the context of a picnic.
Practise listening for gist:
Find a short video with subtitles on a topic that interests you. Use the title to help you predict the content and then listen out for the content words. Go back, and listen again with the subtitles. How much did you understand the first time? Return to the video a week later and try again.

When you learn new words, try to group them with other words used in a similar context. Mind maps are good for this.
3. Detecting signposts
Just like the traffic lights on roads, there are signposts in language that help us follow what we're listening to. These words, which link ideas, help us to understand what the speaker is talking about and where they are taking us. They're particularly important in presentations and lectures.

For example, if a university lecturer says: 'I am going to talk about three factors affecting global warming...' then later on you might hear the phrases 'first of all', 'moving on to' and 'in summary' to indicate the next part of the talk. Other words and phrases can function in a similar way. For instance, to clarify ('in other words', 'to put it another way'); to give examples ('to illustrate this', 'for example'), and so on. Take a look at this list of phrases for more examples.
Practise detecting signpost language:
Most course books for learners of English come with a CD and audio script. Find an example of a business presentation or lecture and see how many signpost phrases you can identify (listen more than once, if necessary). Then check your notes with the audio script.

In your notebook, group signpost phrases according to their functions, and continue to add new expressions as you come across them.
4. Listening for details
Imagine you are a detective taking a closer look at those buildings you saw earlier on as a superhero. This time, rather than taking in the big picture, you're looking for something specific and rejecting anything that does not match what's on your list.

Similarly, when listening for details, you are interested in a specific kind of information - perhaps a number, name or object. You can ignore anything that does not sound relevant. In this way, you are able to narrow down your search and get the detail you need.

In a listening test, if you are asked to write down the age of a person, listen for the words related to age ('old', 'young', 'years', 'date of birth', etc.) or a number that could represent that person's age. If it is a conversation, you might wait to hear someone beginning a question with 'How old...?'
Practise listening for details:
Decide on a type of detailed information you want to practise listening for and watch programmes where you would expect to get that information. For example, you could listen to a weather report to get details about the weather, or you could follow the sports news to find out the latest results.

If you are taking a test, as soon as you get the question paper, skim through the questions, underline the important words and decide what kind of detail you need to identify in the listening text.
5. Inferring meaning
Imagine you are a tourist in a country whose language you do not speak. In a restaurant, you hand over a credit card to pay for the bill, but the server seems to say something apologetic in response. Even though you don't understand his words, you can probably conclude that the restaurant doesn't take credit cards, and you need to pay with cash instead.

This is the technique of inferring meaning: using clues and prior knowledge about a situation to work out the meaning of what we hear.

Similarly, we can infer the relationship between people from the words they use, without having to find out directly. Take the following conversation:
A: Tom, did you do your homework?
Practise inferring meaning: B: I did, sir, but the dog ate it.
Summing up A: That's a terrible excuse. You'll never pass your exams if you don't work harder. Teachers, visit our TeachingEnglish website for more lesson plans and activities, and find out how you can become a TeachingEnglish blogger. This article is one of our top five most-read of all time.
We can infer from the use of the words 'homework' and 'exams' that this is a conversation between a student and his teacher. By using contextual clues and our knowledge of the world, we can work out what's being said, who is speaking and what's taking place.

Find a YouTube clip from a popular television show, for example Friends. Now, rather than watch it, just listen to the dialogue. How much can you infer about what is taking place, who is talking and what their relationship is? Now listen to the clip a second time but watch it too. Were your conclusions correct?

The next time you hear a word you don't understand, try to guess its meaning using the context or situation to help you. But don't worry if you don't get it the first time. As with everything in life, the more you practise, the better you will get.

These strategies are not stand-alone. While prediction is mostly a pre-listening skill, others need to be used simultaneously to get the best result when listening.

Raphael Ahmed is still a teacher of English, and currently interested in AI and its implications on assessment. He got into teaching English in 2011, to make himself more internationally mobile; he heard that he could 'go places' if he did the Cambridge CELTA. Apart from learning, teaching and travelling, he's interested in woodworking, painting, cooking, writing and coding.

Jamie Johnson is an artist and illustrator based in Glasgow, Scotland. He works in painting, collage, drawing and various digital media techniques. Jamie has exhibited his work in galleries around the UK, Europe and North America, most recently as a solo show at Chopping Block Gallery in London. He continues to work with a wide variety of clients as an illustrator and designer, alongside a personal interest in community-based projects.

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Five essential listening skills for English learners

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How can learners improve their listening comprehension? Teacher Raphael Ahmed shares some useful strategies in one of our top five articles of all time, illustrated by artist Jamie Johnson.

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The main aim for a gist task is to develop the students' abilities to either skim for the main idea (of a reading text) or to listen for the main idea (of an audio/video clip). So, you want to make sure the activity matches its aims i.e. you want to give them an activity that focuses on the main idea as opposed to more specific information or details.

Having the students focus on the main idea first gives them important context that they can then use to understand the text in more depth i.e. further detail, vocabulary words, or a grammar point. Here are some common type of gist activities you can use to design your lessons.

Common types of gist activities:

Summarize: Students summarize the text with a restricted word count i.e. in one sentence or three words.

Choose Main Idea: Give them a few options of a main idea summary (ideally a short sentence), and they choose which one best summarizes the listening/reading text.

Design title and/or sub-title: Leave the title section or part of it blank or unknown and students have to come up with their own title/sub-title. During whole class feedback discuss the different titles and perhaps give them the real title to see how close they were. This is more suited towards an upper level class and relatively uncomplicated titles.

Several Main Ideas: You can break any listening and/or reading text into several main idea concepts. Especially important for longer texts. Can have them arrange order of several main idea concepts, too.

Check-list: Have them check main ideas or topics that are related to the reading or listening text.

Choose a Title: Give them a few different title options to choose from. You want to design the titles in such a way that there is one that clearly correlates with the main idea of the article over the others yet the others are not so different resulting in too obvious of an answer where there is no need to skim the article to find out the main idea.

Image Association: Students associate the article with the correct image that is related to the main idea from a few different options. Important to make them different but not so different that the answer will be obvious without skimming through the article for the main idea.

Match Question with Answer: For an interview type of text, they can match which question goes with which answer.

General Idea Questions: Have 1-3 (but, typically, no more than 3) short-answer questions regarding the main idea of the text.

Headings: Leave sub-headings of each paragraph blank and have students match the heading to the corresponding paragraph.

Paragraph Summary: Summarize paragraphs with one word (or perhaps within a few words.

Ordering Chronologically: Students order events in correct chronological order as they appear in the listening or reading text.

Story Board: Give students a few random either/or prompts and have them read which one has to do with the story. For example: let's say there is a short article about a firefighter who goes into a house and saves a cat. The either/or main idea prompts could be like this: Police Man/Firefighter - Fire/Flood - Cat/Dog. Then the students read and choose which one relates to the story.

Guess Who: For a biography type of reading or listening, could put images of different people on the whiteboard and have students guess who the biography is about.

Prediction: Where the students make a prediction about the main idea before they read it. You can use this type of activity in conjunction with most of the already mentioned gist task types. The students make a prediction based on some kind of clue i.e. a group of words, picture(s), the context discussed in the lead-in, a number of different titles etc. For example, you can have a lead-in discussing the topic of how caffeine affects the brain. Then you'd ask them "So, what do you think? What do you think the author's opinion will be regarding caffeine and its effects of on the brain?" Then they read to check their prediction to see if it was correct or not. Or, for another example, you could show a picture of a cup of coffee, a brain, and someone studying; and ask: "What do you think the article's main idea is going to be about based on the pictures?" After discussion they read to check their prediction (if it was accurate or not).

Always have a clear question/activity for the students to do before you have them read.

After they read individually, you want them to do a pair-check (where they discuss their answers in pairs for a moment before going to whole class feedback).

Typically, you want to give them a relatively short time-limit for a gist reading activity to ensure that they skim for the main idea as opposed to getting stuck on trying to understand one or two specific parts of the article or particular words etc.

You have the option to have them read only part of the reading text for the main idea of a reading gist task or listen to only a part of an audio clip for a listening gist activity.

ICQs (Instruction Check Questions):

It's good to give ICQs to ensure that stage aims are met. Some examples of ICQs for a gist task:

Do I want you to read quickly or slowly for this activity? A: Quickly

You only have ___ minutes to read the text (i.e. typically, 1 to 3 minutes depending on text size and student level), is that a lot of time? A: No.

Do you have to understand every word to get the main idea? A: No

Are you going to use your dictionaries to look up words? A: No.

Comprehension Questions:

1. What's the main aim of a gist activity?

2. Should the gist question/activity come before or after you have them read?

3. What kind of questions should you ask after giving instructions?

Reflection:

Can you think of anymore good gist activities? How about ICQs? Do you think this blog is missing any important details?

Please leave your comments below. Thanks!

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A gist task is focused on listening for main idea (listening activity) or skimming for the main idea (reading activity) and is essential to do whenever you introduce a text inside of the classroom. Here you'll get all the info you'll need to properly carry one out!

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Recordings that you use in class use can be "authentic" ones originally made for native speakers (e.g. radio programmes and other podcasts) or "graded" ones designed for EFL learners (e.g. from textbooks , EFL exams, skills books, self-study books, or radio programmes and other podcasts specifically for English language learners). Whichever ones you use, there seems to be a widely accepted "standard" way of using these recordings, as seen in many textbooks and their accompanying teacher's guides. The same method is also often taught as a part of teacher training such as four-week TEFL courses. This article will explain that method and then examine small and large changes you can make to it.

What has perhaps come to be considered the standard way of using listening texts consists of the following stages:

- Lead in

- Pre-teach

- Gist question(s)

- First listening

- Check answers to the gist question(s)

- Look at the detailed comprehension questions

- Listening for detailed comprehension

- Check answers to the detailed comprehension questions

- Language analysis and/ or discussion questions
Lead in
The teacher gets the students thinking and speaking about the topic of the listening, for example by discussing the accompanying photos, speaking about the same topic the people on the recording tackle, predicting something from some extracts, or roleplaying a situation they will later hear other people in. This stage is to get students' interest in the topic and to make the listening easier to understand by helping them think (consciously or unconsciously) about what they might hear.
Pre-teach
After being told the reason for doing so, the students are taught or tested on some vocabulary that is vital to know to be able to do the later comprehension tasks. Note that this it is not useful to think of this as vocabulary to understand the text, as that could theoretically be every word in it, but rather things needed to do the tasks. This is generally limited to around five to seven words or phrases, and if they need more new language to do the tasks it is probably the questions rather than pre-teach stage that the teacher should change. It is obviously important that they also recognise the words when they hear them, so some pronunciation work at this stage is common.
Gist question(s) and first listening
The students are then told what they should listen for the first time they hear the recording. Gist questions should not rely on detailed comprehension, as that is a different kind of understanding, but should be tasks that keep them listening for the whole text. It is therefore best if each question is answered in several parts of the text, e.g. "Is the man generally happy or unhappy with the hotel?" or "What is the woman's purpose?"

If there are several questions to listen for the first time it is played, it is often worth stopping the tape after the first one is answered to make sure everyone understands what they have to do and that they haven't missed the first answer.

If a substantial number of people can't answer the gist question(s) after the first listening, it was probably too difficult for them and you have little choice but to play it again just for this stage, leaving the detailed comprehension questions for the next time you play the recording. If some of them still haven't got it after the second listening for gist, you can either play important passages again to help them or ask them to continue listening for the answers to the gist questions during the detailed comprehension stage that follows. The latter approach usually works fine, as it will be their third listening and the wording in the comprehension questions can help understand what is being said. If you think they might still not even understand the answers at this stage and it is the difficulty of the text rather than the questions that is to blame, it is probably best to abandon the detailed comprehension stage and just do all you can to help them get the answers to the gist questions.
Detailed comprehension questions and further listenings
Common formats for detailed comprehension questions are:

- True/ False

- Gap filling, e.g. writing information in a form

- Sentence completion

- Correcting wrong information

- Putting events in order

- Matching tasks, e.g. drawing lines between the views expressed and the people who said those things

- Short answers to questions

- Note taking, e.g. making lists

- Labelling pictures or diagrams

Detailed comprehension questions can also be designed to lead naturally on to the discussion and/ or language analysis stages.

It is difficult to read and listen at the same time, so students should be given the chance to read through the questions and make sure they understand them after checking their gist question(s) answers and before the recording is played again. They will probably be able to answer some of the questions from what they understood during their initial gist listening. If anyone has answered all of the questions without listening again it was probably too easy (or those students are in the wrong class) but they will still usually be happy to listen again to check their answers. When they are ready and you play the recording again, you can stop the recording after the first question is answered to check everyone is keeping up, as suggested above.
Check answers
Some teachers like to get students comparing their answers before you do so as a class, but unless they have been making notes they often won't have any way of discussing their answers further when they disagree (unlike reading, where they can go back to the text together), so this is very much optional.

You will probably want to play the recording again in some way as you check the answers as a class. The possibilities are to only play the parts that people misunderstood, to play the whole thing again and pause after each question is answered before you ask for their answers, or to pause before each question is answered to ask for their answers then listen to that little bit to check.
Language analysis
Even if you can really show students that they have improved their listening skills, they are likely to want to learn some language from the activity too. In other classes, e.g. many lessons at the beginning of textbook chapters, the listening is set up specifically to introduce a particular language point.

Many textbooks have a language exercise that students do and then listen again to check, but if possible it is best if you can link naturally between this stage and the previous one. The most common way to do so is to include the target language in the detailed comprehension tasks, e.g. "Has he ever been to Tokyo?" if the point is Present Perfect or "He _______ go to the pub later on" if the point is modals of probability/ possibility. Another possibility is to elicit the language by asking for full sentence versions of the short answers they wrote down at the detailed comprehension stage.

Tasks for the language analysis stage include:

- Filling in grammar words or collocates and listening again to check, then discussing why these are the only or most likely words for each gap

- Choosing which of each pair of sentences is in the text, listening again to check. Students then discuss why each sentence is better, the only correct possibility or more likely in that conversation.

In some classes the rest of the lesson will then continue with practice of that language, meaning moving on from the listening and probably not mentioning it again. Otherwise, it is common to have a speaking task still related to the topic of the listening.
Speaking task
The aim of the speaking task could be to recycle the language in the stage above or just to practise a good range of skills during the lesson. Especially in the latter case, almost any speaking task is possible. Common ones include:

- Students giving their own points of view on the things mentioned in the listening

- Roleplaying the same or a similar situation as in the listening, perhaps personalising it or improving on it (e.g. making it more polite)

- Having a different conversation in the same roles as in the listening
Varying the way you do listenings
Ways of changing the "standard" way of doing listenings that is explained above include:

 Varying the sources

 Cutting out stages

 Combining stages

 Adding stages

 Mixing up stages

 Varying how you do the stages

 Using completely different lesson structures
Varying the sources
Other (perhaps more interesting) sources of listening include songs, videos, the teacher and the students themselves. With videos, you might want to have a stage where they listen without being able to see the images to make it more like textbook and exam listening, then let them watch to check their imaginations about what was going on. Songs are useable with the kind of "standard" lesson structure described above if you choose the song and comprehension questions etc carefully, but most students and teachers prefer to use the whole text of the lyrics at some stage. Common activities with the whole text of songs include gapfills, correcting things which aren't in the song, and reordering the text. With any of these, it is generally best if the students can predict most of the answers (e.g. trying to put in the missing words by using the rhyme scheme) before they listen to check.

Listening to the teacher and each other can be done face to face or by recording it first, e.g. on a Dictaphone. The latter allows students to listen and then record their reaction, e.g. by pretending the Dictaphone is a telephone answer machine.
Cutting out stages
The most obvious stage to cut out is the Pre-teach stage, as the tasks can simply be changed to ones students can do with the language they already know - usually enough of a challenge as it is! The Pre-teach stage also often breaks up the rhythm of the lesson, sometimes making the students lose the interest you built up in the Lead-in stage - or even forget the topic. The language covered in the Pre-teach stage is also usually more important for the detailed comprehension questions than for the gist question(s), thereby giving them another opportunity to forget the language you teach them. If learning vocabulary is an aim, this can always be done at the language analysis stage rather than as part of a Pre-teach.

Especially if the listening is mainly to prompt conversation or to introduce a language point, it is also possible to skip the detailed comprehension stage.
Combining stages
It is possible to combine the lead-in and the pre-teach stage, e.g. by giving them words which are used in the text and asking them to predict something about what it said from those words, answering any vocabulary questions before or during that prediction task. The gist task is then to simply listen and check their predictions.

As mentioned above, it is also desirable to combine the detailed comprehension questions and the language analysis stage.
Adding stages
The most common thing to add to the "standard" way above is some more controlled practice before the speaking stage. One possibility is Shadow Reading, which is students trying to read the tapescript aloud with the same timing as the recording, which is being simultaneously played. A simpler activity at the same stage is for the students to read out the conversation in pairs or small groups before having the same conversation again with some details changed, e.g. using their own names and other personal information. They then hide part or all of the tapescript and try similar conversations with no help.
Mixing up stages
See below for a suggestion on how to rearrange the detailed comprehension and gist stages.
Varying how you do the stages Alternative first listening tasks
Although it is a realistic skill to practise, there is no reason why the first listening task should always be a gist question. For example, if we listen to a recorded train announcement we just want to pick out one piece of information and can happily ignore the rest. The first listening task should, though, always be easier than the later ones. Another first listening task that I have used which works well is to just count the number of something, e.g. angry words, speakers, times they disagree, or examples of a particular word.
Alternative Pre-teach stages
Although vocabulary is likely to be the thing that usually stops comprehension, you can also pre-teach grammatical forms, a particular pronunciation point (e.g. minimal pairs, an intonation pattern or the sentence stress difference in can/ can't sentences), or cultural information (e.g. that English apologies usually include excuses so they can expect to hear one).
Alternatives ways of checking their answers
The most obvious and common variation is letting them check their own answers, e.g. with the tapescript, rather than going through them as a class. This is particularly useful when you want to do the next stage with the tapescript anyway, e.g. when students will practise the dialogue in pairs or the language analysis will happen from the written evidence.
Production stage options
Students could produce other listening texts and/ or tasks for each other that are similar to those they have just been listening to. More details of this are given below.
Completely different lesson structures
One way of completely changing the focus of how you do a listening lesson is to make the meaning and content of the text a secondary point and to make the main focus talking about and developing listening skills. This means spending some time that might usually be used on discussing the topic to talk about improving their ability to listen instead, e.g. talking about how you can predict what will be in the text and then doing so, then discussing how successful it was after.

Another big change is to not play the recording all the way through without stopping, but rather to pause during it to discuss what they have heard so far and what might be coming next. This is much more like the listening that we do in everyday life, e.g. in conversations or when dealing with an interactive machine such as an automatic switchboard. Students could predict the next line of the dialogue or how the story continues. Most textbooks have at least one listening set up this way, and many more texts are easily adaptable to this approach.

Most textbooks also have a jigsaw listening task where sections of the class listen to different recordings and then bring the information together in some way, e.g. hear different job interviews and then work with people who heard the other ones to select the best of all the candidates.

Another nice variation is to give students control of the CD player or computer that is playing the recording so that they can listen however they want. This is particularly good if they can work in small groups in different rooms, e.g. when they write questions for each the other team to answer.

If students all have a copy of the CD, you can also give them control by doing the lead in during class and then setting the actual tasks for homework. This is a nice way of making sure they do actually open the CD case, and hopefully copy it onto their mp3 players for extra practice while they are doing so.

Copyright © 2012 Alex Case

Written by Alex Case for UsingEnglish.com

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Different ways of doing a listening - UsingEnglish.com

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Recordings that you use in class use can be "authentic" ones originally made for native speakers (e.g. radio programmes and other podcasts) or "graded" ones designed for EFL learners (e.g. from textbooks , EFL exams, skills books, self-study books, or radio programmes and other podcasts specifically for English language learners).

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ELLLO - 50 High-Beginner Listening Lessons

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50 free ESL listening lessons for beginner students featuring naturally spoken English. ESL students and teachers can access free listening lessons that come with audio, script, quiz and vocabulary support.

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The 'voiced th' /ð/ and 'unvoiced th' /θ/ sounds are the only pair of English sounds that share a single, common spelling. For that reason, the 'th sounds' are presented together in this ESL/ELL pronunciation lesson.

With the exception of being voiced or unvoiced, the /ð/ and /θ/ are nearly identical; the tip of the tongue is placed behind the top front teeth. The friction occurs between the tip of the tongue and the top front teeth. Subtle friction may also occur between the top of the front of the tongue and the tooth ridge. The lips are kept relaxed during the production of both 'th sounds.'

An alternative method of producing the 'th sounds' is to place the tip of the tongue between the top and bottom front teeth. While this method will produce the correct sound, it often creates difficulties transitioning to and from other sounds. This is because the tongue needs to be so much further forward when between the front teeth as compared to behind the top front teeth.

The 'th sounds' are continuous consonants, meaning that they should be capable of being held for a few seconds with even and smooth pronunciation for the entire duration. Because the sounds are fricatives, the majority of the sound comes from the friction of the air traveling through a small opening in the vocal tract.

Listen to the 'th sounds'

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How to pronounce the 'th sounds' /ð, θ/ in American English - Pronuncian: American English Pronunciation

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ESL: The 'voiced th' /ð/ and 'unvoiced th' /θ/ sounds are the only pair of English sounds that share a single, common spelling. To pronounce the sounds, the tip of the tongue is placed behind the top front teeth. The friction occurs between the tip o

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The Internet TESL Journal Richard Soulliere
tarzaninchina [at] yahoo.ca
Taiyuan Normal University (Taiyuan, Shanxi, China)

English language learners often mispronounce the "th" sound by making a simple "s" sound. What follows is a tongue exercise in class that produces near-immediate results in rectifying this learned deficiency.

Introduction of the Problem

Throughout my years of teaching English as a foreign language, I have met many English language learners who say "sink" instead of "think". This occurred in kindergarten all the way through to university level students. Many other teachers encounter the same problem and discussed the ways they have tried to alleviate it, few with any amount of success.

The Technique

A technique I discovered that works well involves all students in the class and can be completed (including practice) in a matter of minutes, so it need not take up an entire class.

First, briefly explain to students that the only way to correctly make the "th" sound is to stick your tongue out. If students reply that this doesn't look nice or involves a loss of face, simply remind them that they're speaking in another language and that they would be saying it wrong and would be more difficult to understand. Many students are willing to become more expressive and chalk it up as part of that expression, especially with full confidence knowing it's correct.

Second, have all students stick their tongues out and to keep them stuck out for thirty seconds. Don't begin timing until all students have stuck out their tongue. Join students by sticking your tongue out as well as it makes it more believable, not to mention allowing them to feed off of you and their classmates to avoid being singularly embarrassed. Make it a point to pay attention to the amount of time it takes as well as insure that all students are keeping their tongues stuck out.

Third, have students practice saying some words with the "th" sound.

Follow-up

Following this exercise, practicing words with the "th" sound in it is important. First, begin with some words. This should be enunciated clearly as they will need to watch your mouth movements closely, so it may help to make a conscious effort to stick your tongue out a little more than usual with the first word and then tone it back down to normal.

Once done assessing their improvement with individual words, move onto some tongue twisters, for example:

These things that these things think, they're the things that these things think.

Thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb.

In future conversations with students, you can employ a simple cue as a corrective measure. If ever they speak the 's' sound where the 'sh' sound should have been spoken, simply stick out your tongue and they'll think back to the error they made by associating that action with the proper way to make that sound.
For students who continue slipping up with this sound, you can employ a mild punishment of having them stick out their tongue for an entire two-minute stretch.

Be Mindful of the Following

There are a few concerns in using this technique and they are as follows:

This should not be done before a break as they'll forget if you continue immediately after the break.

If you stick your tongue out as a joke, particularly if you do so often, the corrective cue of sticking your tongue out might not be usable and make correcting this problem more cumbersome.

For younger students, insure they don't stick their tongues out too far or bite their tongues.

Don't emphasize speed with the tongue twisters as students will be prone to biting their tongue.

Don't perform this in a cold classroom (especially during winter) because students will complain.

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XI, No. 11, November 2005
http://iteslj.org/ http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Soulliere-TH.html

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Teaching the "Th" Sound to ESL/EFL Learners

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The Internet TESL Journal Richard Soullieretarzaninchina [at] yahoo.caTaiyuan Normal University (Taiyuan, Shanxi, China) English language learners often mispronounce the "th" sound by making a simple "s" sound. What follows is a tongue exercise in class that produces near-immediate results in rectifying this learned deficiency.

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© 2013 - 2020 DMM.com LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Engoo is a service that offers lessons for those learning English. Although the lesson materials can be used for self study, they are intended for use with a teacher. To book a lesson with one of our professional teachers, please visit Engoo. © 2013 - 2020 DMM.com LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Below is a list of words that vary only by one having the sound /s/ and the other the sound /θ/.

You can use this list to practise the sounds, or as a list of words to be careful in pronouncing.

At least while you are making a conscious effort to do so, it is fairly easy to pronounce these two sounds differently. /θ/ is pronounced with your tongue between your teeth or even sticking out of your mouth, and you can make sure you pronounce it clearly by putting your finger vertically in front of your lips and checking that it gets wet when you make this sound. /s/ is pronounced with the tongue well inside your mouth and the mouth much more widely stretched.

Elementary

mouse mouth

sing thing

Pre-Intermediate

face faith

force fourth

sick thick

sink think

sort thought

tense tenth

Intermediate

mass math

miss myth

pass path

saw thaw

seem theme

some thumb

song thong

use youth

worse worth

Upper-Intermediate

gross growth

kiss kith

Norse North

race wraith

seam theme

sigh thigh

sin thin

sore thaw

sought thought

sum thumb

truce truth

Advanced

moss moth

piss pith

purse Perth

sank thank

sawn thorn

suds thuds

sump thump

symbol thimble

Written for EnglishClub by Alex Case

Voiced by Jonathan Taylor

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Below is a list of words that vary only by one having the sound /s/ and the other the sound /θ/. You can use this list to practise the sounds, or as a list of words to be careful in pronouncing.

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Simple Past Tense: How to Use It, With Examples | Grammarly

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The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that happened or existed before now. Imagine someone asks you what your brother Wolfgang did while he was in town last weekend.

Write with Grammarly

The simple past tense shows that you are talking about something that has already happened. Unlike the past continuous tense, which is used to talk about past events that happened over a period of time, the simple past tense indicates that the action occurred at a certain time and then was completed.

You can also use the simple past to talk about a past state of being, such as the way someone felt about something. This is often expressed with the simple past tense of the verb to be and an adjective, noun, or prepositional phrase.

How to form the simple past

For regular verbs, add -ed to the root form of the verb (or just -d if the root form ends in an e):

Play→Played

Type→Typed

Listen→Listened

Push→Pushed

Love→Loved

For irregular verbs, things get more complicated. The simple past tense of some irregular verbs looks exactly like the root form:

Put→Put

Cut→Cut

Set→Set

Cost→Cost

Hit→Hit

For other irregular verbs, including to be, the simple past forms are more erratic:

See→Saw

Build→Built

Do→Did

Rise→Rose

Am/Is/Are→Was/Were

The good news is that verbs in the simple past tense (except for to be) don't need to agree in number with their subjects.

How to make the simple past negative

Fortunately, there is a formula for making simple past verbs negative, and it's the same for both regular and irregular verbs (except for the verb to be). The formula is did not + [root form of verb]. You can also use the contraction didn't instead of did not.

For the verb to be, you don't need the auxiliary did. When the subject of the sentence is singular, use was not or wasn't. When the subject is plural, use were not or weren't.

The fourth-place winner wasn't happy at all.

The onlookers were not ready to leave after the contest ended.

The contestants weren't ready to leave either.

How to ask a question

The formula for asking a question in the simple past tense is did + [subject] + [root form of verb].
Did Wolfgang win Did the judges decide fairly, in your opinion? Was Did people take lots of pictures? Wolfgang in a good mood after the contest? the gold medal or the silver medal?
When asking a question with the verb to be, you don't need the auxiliary did. The formula is was/were + [subject].

Common regular verbs in the past tense

Common irregular verbs in the past tense

Simple past tense FAQs
"I ate cereal for breakfast this morning." "Morganucodon was an early mammal that lived with dinosaurs."
What is the simple past tense?

The simple past is a verb tense describing events that already happened.

What are some examples of simple past tense?

Can simple past tense express future action?

The simple past tense can only express actions in the past. However, you can show current ongoing actions that started in the past with the present perfect continuous tense (e.g., "I have been working there for twenty years").

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Simple Past Tense: How to Use It, With Examples

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The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that happened or existed before now. Imagine someone asks you...

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Past Simple Tense - a short grammar lesson for ESL students

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With most verbs, the past tense is formed by adding -ed:

But there are a lot of irregular past tense forms in English. Here are the most common irregular verbs in English, with their past tense forms:

We use the past tense to talk about:

something that happened once in the past:

something that happened several times in the past:

something that was true for some time in the past:

we often use expressions with ago with the past simple:

Past simple questions and negatives

We use to make questions with the past simple:

But questions with who often don't use did:
Who discovered penicillin?
Who wrote Don Quixote?

Past simple questions 1

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Past simple questions 2

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We use didn't ( did not) to make with the past simple:

Past simple negatives 1

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Past simple negatives 2

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Level: intermediate
Past simple and hypotheses

We can also use the past simple to refer to the present or future in hypotheses (when we imagine something). See these pages:

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Learn how to use the past simple to talk about the past, and do the exercises to practise using it.