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A website packed with skills activities and language exercises for academic english

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Academic English for International Students & EAP Teachers

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Academic English Resources and Academic English Worksheets for International Students. Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking Skills.

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After dealing with the paramount importance of questions, Johanna today puts forward the idea of going beyond questions to enhance comprehension and work on the higher-order thinking skills.

When it comes down to texts, I usually carry out a series of activities which are meant

... to prepare learners before they meet the text: personal response questions to introduce topic, brainstorm topic or vocabulary and fill a table; start from a visual prompt (a pic, a painting, etc), elicit description and prediction;

... to check learners have understood the global meaning of the text: elicit key words from students and make a word cloud to check understanding, but also to reconstruct the text or summarise a text. I sometimes ask them to write comprehension questions to share;

... to really teach reading strategies (process-oriented task): gap filling exercise (to be completed while reading) and list of words that could possibly fill (ask student to guess the gap fill before reading to encourage predictive skills); tasks which combine Listening and note taking (dictogloss), reconstruct the text and compare in pairs or groups;

... to encourage learners to give personal reactions to a text: personal response questions; turn texts into a different text type (interview, diary entry, whatsapp message, a video, ads, a haiku, a radio commercial); to enact talk shows on the topic;

... to stimulate work on other skills (speaking, writing, or the other receptive skill): turn texts into a different text type (interview, diary entry, whatsapp message, a video, an ad, a haiku, a radio commercial); plan and carry out a survey on the text topic (if possible) by asking students to devise questions and go round the class surveying.

We have seen a few approaches for exploiting texts, check comprehension and intervene in the text and shape up follow up activities, activities to stimulate personal response to a text and creative tasks. This set of activities is based on the procedures for working with Written Texts Alan Maley was speaking about in his book "Short and Sweet" (1993): expand and reduce, transfer the media and reformulate, reconstruct and create, analyses and interpret.
There are a few I particularly liked.

This is a type of alternative approach to comprehension questions that allows students not only to write questions for others and before they read, but to cope with the text individually or in group by filling in this table

Before reading a text the student fills in the first column and most importantly the second one. The questions the student writes will make him connect the text to himself and make it more relevant as he wants to know these details. Making the student write the questions and share them with his partner before reading is a type of activity which engages him to read the article and raises his expectations.

2 - UPSUM

Johanna says the best way to check comprehension is to ask students to summarise a text. If we leave behind the traditional approach, some interesting and original activities to sum a text up involve a word count or a time limit, a diagram and an infographic. Infographics produced with Canva stimulate the students' creativity and allow him to really focus on the essential and most important information as well as on organizing it logically. These infographic are ready-made revision papers too.

3 - READ WITH A PEN

An activity I find really useful to include critical thinking into reading consists simply in reading with a pen and marking the text with different symbols to identify parts you feel strongly/mildly about, you find surprising or just needs further discussion and consideration.

😊😊

😊

☹

☹ ☹

!

?

After reading the text individually and marking it, students are asked to work in pairs and discuss the texts starting with the ! and ? parts. After allowing them some time for this co-operative activity, feedback is carried out and a new activity/set of activities are carried out.

Texts RECONSTRUCTION and REWRITING tasks involve dictogloss, gapped texts, and reconstructing a text where some parts have been hidden (a nice activity with the poem Television was introduced to us) or rewriting it from a different perspective or in a different genre or messing it up with it!

I think, therefore I am.

I think, therefore I am smart.

I overthink, therefore I am anxious.

I think, therefore I am confused.

To be, or not to be

Two beers, or not two beers

To bee, or not to bee

(Brexit) Plan B, or no plan B

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After dealing with the paramount importance of questions, Johanna today puts forward the idea of going beyond questions to enhance comprehension and work on the higher-order thinking skills. When it comes down to texts, I usually carry out a series of activities which are meant ...

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Here at Short of the Week we strive to provide variety. Short film is an incredibly broad medium, and as an audience sometimes we want different things from our short fixes. Sometimes we itch for that 20 min character drama that leaves us emotionally devastated...sometimes, y'know, we want to watch 2 minutes of a frazzled cat hilariously messing everything up.

Catastrophe, a much lauded film out of the Netherlands that premiered at TIFF 2017, is exactly that latter type of film, and it delivers on its slight premise with extraordinary skill. It brings back fond memories for us of insane action-comedy classics like Mac n' Cheese and that were en vogue at the start of the decade, but which have receded in popularity a bit amongst creators in favor of weirder, more personal animations. Or, maybe it's us who changed?

Either way, Catastrophe is a delight-a tight, perfectly paced bit of chaos, as a bird-besotted house cat is placed in charge of its home when its owner steps out. Suddenly the bird in its cage becomes unresponsive! In fright, the cat attempts CPR, but its good intentions accidentally set off a chain-reaction of calamities.

There is a classic cartooning sensibility to Catastrophe reminiscent of Looney Toons and Tom and Jerry, what with the expert attention to timing, and the hilariously improbable pratfalls, but here it is updated to strikingly designed 3D animation. The twist of course is in sympathy, unlike Sylvester and Tweety, here the cat is trying to save the bird!

Aside from the design, the skill brought to bear on the project makes it surprising to realize that its director, Jamille van Wijngaarden, is not of an animation background. A graduate of the Film Academy of Amsterdam, van Wijngaarden made a name for herself via stylish live-action student shorts that playfully update classic fairy tales in award-winning efforts like and Happily Never After. This sensibility for modern updates of classic material makes sense in the context of Catastrophe however, as does those shorts' subtle VFX work. Additionally, since graduating in 2014, van Wijngaarden has been active in directing TV sketches, and her work for popular programs in the Netherlands provided good experience for this short's visual comedy.

Staying busy as Catastophe embarked on a 100 festival tour before coming online last week, the director has another live-action short, Tienminutengesprek, on the festival circuit right now, and is currently working on her feature debut.

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Catastrophe by Jamille van Wijngaarden | Comedy Short Film

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Here at Short of the Week we strive to provide variety. Short film is an incredibly broad medium, and as an audience sometimes we want different things from our short fixes. Sometimes we itch for that 20 min character drama that leaves us emotionally devastated...sometimes, y'know, we want to watch 2 minutes of a frazzled cat hilariously messing everything up.

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A resourceful blog with lesson plans and video resources

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With this lesson, students talk about bans and prohibitions. After reading an article, they discuss smoking and vaping. They also talk about trends and practise using adjectives.

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ESL Brains ‐ Unique video‐based teaching materials for adults

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See our ESL lesson plans and worksheets for teaching adults which touch contemporary topics. All materials are based on TED Talks or other video materials.

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A blog by Ian James for TEFL teachers who love exploiting videos in their lessons. Packed with short videos and excellent comprehension activities.

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Video Lesson plans for teachers

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This is Jamie Keddie's site. He was my tutor @VILT, NILE in Norwich in 2016 and taught me how to exploit videos and images with fresh eyes.

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I recently read about a teacher from the Midwestern United States. It was a Friday afternoon and she was at work. Her students were excited about the news of the day - the inauguration of the 45th US president. They asked their teacher if they could watch the live broadcast and she felt that it would ...

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A collection of thousands of photographs taken by teachers for teachers: photos available free from copyright for non-commercial use by teachers.

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eltpics's albums | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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Make learning interactive and engaging in class and for revisione.

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An app/pop up to insert instructional content on any web page: useful for reading comprehensions and writing analysis.

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Insert instructional content into any web page

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Here are some resources to make videos interactive.

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Another app which can help make videos interactive.

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PlayPosit | Interactive Video Learning Objects

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With over 5 million learners and counting, PlayPosit offers a variety of options for interaction customization, premade templates, playback control, LMS LTI integration, and more. Instructors and instructional designers can build lessons as they envision them while expanding the traditional and onli

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An app which purifies your videos by removing inappropriate comments or ads, or unwanted related videos.

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Environmental Issues - Some Online Resources 

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Environmental Issues - Some Online Resources 

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My tutor Johanna's blog

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The English Language Garden is for teachers and learners of English as a foreign language.

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Pics4Learning is an image library that is safe and free for education. The copyright-friendly photos and illustrations can be used for classroom projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other projects in an educational setting.

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Thousands of copyright free and copyright friendly images and photos for teachers and students.

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Cambridge Dictionary | English Dictionary, Translations & Thesaurus

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The most popular dictionary and thesaurus for learners of English. Meanings and definitions of words with pronunciations and translations.

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A tool for making learning interactive.

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Nearpod: Foster a love of learning in every student

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Create active learning experiences students can’t wait to be a part of.

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Here is a tool that has driven us crazy @NILE, Galway
It's useful to make presentations, to intro a topic with a quick survey, to poll some ideas and responses.

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