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10 Ways to start a lesson without telling students what they are going to learn

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Stories are a great way to get students attention and build curiosity. You can then draw language from the story or in response to the story. This way students produce the language in a much more natural and spontaneous way without ever thinking about aims. Try to make your telling of the story as authentic as possible.

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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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This is a spooky grammar lesson for Halloween. Students listen to the first part of a horror story in the form of a dictogloss, then continue the story using inversions. Download the handout and teacher's notes below:
Horror Story Dictogloss - Teacher's Notes
Pre-Listening

Tell students you're going to read them the introduction to a horror story. It features a haunted mansion and the first line is "It was a dark and stormy night..." Tell them to make predictions about what will happen.

Dictogloss

Explain the dictogloss to your students:

You will read the story to them several times. A note on delivery, read the text in a natural way, don't pause mid-sentence, follow the punctuation. You may want to exaggerate the pauses after full stops and commas to give students a bit of extra processing time.

1. The first time all they have to do is listen.

2. Second time they can take notes of words and phrases, stress that it's not a dictation and that they shouldn't worry if their version is different.

3. Students compare notes with a partner or in a three.

4. Students listen for a third time, taking notes and then compare with their group again. You may want to read the text for a fourth time, gauge it with your own group.

5. Students work to recreate the text. You could do this on a Google doc so you can see the versions taking shape. Assign each group a page of the doc so that they're not tempted to copy each other.

6. Show them the original text and copy/paste all their versions below. Have them compare their versions and looks for differences.

It was a dark and stormy night, the wind was whistling through the trees and the rain was pouring down. Not only was I completely soaking wet, my teeth were chattering because of the icy wind. I knocked on the door of the ancient run-down mansion as hard as I could; little did I know the horror that awaited me on the other side of the door. No sooner had I ceased my knocking than the door swung slowly open. The darkness on the other side was pitch-black but so desperate was I to get out of the storm that I jumped inside without a second thought. Hardly had I set foot inside the house when the door slammed shut behind me...

Language Focus

Ask students to complete the following language analysis task in pairs:

Meaning - substitute the phrases for other, simpler words so that the meaning is the same.

Usage - why do you think the writer decided to use the phrases instead of simpler language? What effect do these expressions have on the reader? More emphatic, more exciting, draws the reader in.

Form - Look at the word order after the inversion phrases:

Complete the formula: Inversion phrase + _______ + _______ + _______

(Inversion phrase + auxiliary verb + subject + verb)
Show students further examples of each inversion:
Not only: used with a wide range of tenses and auxiliary verbs:

Not only are vampires afraid of crosses, but also garlic.

Not only did the werewolf have sharp teeth, but also long claws.

Not only would I recommend calling the police, but also I would run away as fast as I could.

Little: most commonly used with "know" and "realise":

Little did I realise how much danger I was in.

Little did she know what had just happened in the other room.

No sooner.... than: Or Hardly.... when Most commonly used with past perfect to express that one action happened immediately after another:

No sooner had I closed the door I heard a strange scratching sound.

No sooner had I fallen asleep a strange light came in through the window.

Hardly had the sound stopped when the door burst open.

Hardly had I turned around when the beast appeared at the end of the corridor.

So + adjective + that...: Used with a range of adjectives to add emphasis and express consequences:

So cold was it that my hands were shaking.

So frightening was the beast that even the brave soldier screamed in fear.

Practice - Key

I had just opened the door when the monster appeared.

HAD

Hardly had I opened the door when the monster appeared.

They had no idea that the beast was watching their every move.

REALISE

Little did they realise (that) the beast was watching their every move.

The enormous size of the beast's tentacles stopped them from reaching the exit.

WERE

So enormous were the beast's tentacles that they couldn't reach the exit.

As soon as they were outside the house, she called the police.

HAD

No sooner had they got out of the house than she called the police.

The car wouldn't start and the gun was jammed.

WOULD

Not only would the car not start but also the gun was jammed.

They didn't know that the call was coming from inside the house until it was too late.

THAT

Little did they know/realise that the call was coming from inside the house until it was too late.

Production

Have students write another paragraph of the story either in class or for homework. Encourage them to use as many inversions as possible and other descriptive language.

Barcelona based English Teacher, blogger and sometime actor and director. View All Posts

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Halloween Horror Story: C1/C2 Inversions

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This is a spooky grammar lesson for Halloween. Students listen to the first part of a horror story in the form of a dictogloss, then continue the story using inversions. Download the handout and teacher's notes below: horror-story-dictogloss-student-handoutDownload horror-story-dictogloss-teacher-notesDownload Horror Story Dictogloss - Teacher's Notes Pre-Listening Tell students you're going to read them the introduction...

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Cuisenaire rods are small wooden rods of different lengths and colours. They are used as a classroom resource to visually represent various areas of language. Cuisenaire rods are used in the Silent Way, a teaching methodology associated with humanism. Example Rods of one colour are used to represent verbs, another is added at the end to represent the past -ed form.

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Language Transfer is most commonly discussed in the context of English Language Learning and Teaching.

Language Transfer refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from one language to another language.

Positive and Negative Language Transfer

When it comes to Language Transfer and its effect in learning a second language, we can two about its effects in terms of negative and positive.
Positive Transfer
When the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called positive transfer.

For example, Spanish speakers learning English may say "Is raining" rather than "It is raining", leaving out the subject of the sentence. French speakers learning English do not usually make the same mistake. This is because sentence subjects can be left out in Spanish, but not in French.

Another example of positive transfer are the true cognates. people who are learning English as their second language can use the words accidents, family and other with similar spelling to their equivalent in Spanish.
Negative Transfer
Language interference is most often discussed as a source of errors known as negative transfer, which occurs when speakers and writers transfer items and structures that are not the same in both languages.

For example, the word actually tends to confuse Spanish native speakers since they think that word means actualmente. (Actualmente is currently in English)

Another example is when Spanish speakers don't use 'it' when they say sentences such as it is sunny, it is a beautiful and they say is sunny, is blue

English native speakers tend to make the mistakes of not conjugating verbs in Spanish in the simple present. Beginners tend to say, yo tener instead of saying yo tengo.

Conscious or Unconscious Language Transfer

Transfer may be conscious or unconscious.

Consciously, learners may sometimes guess when producing speech or text in a second language because they have not learned or have forgotten its proper usage.

Unconsciously, they may not realize that the structures and internal rules of the languages in question are different.

Learn more about Second Language Acquisition

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Language Transfer: Positive or Negative? | EnglishPost.org

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Language Transfer is most commonly discussed in the context of English Language Learning and Teaching. Language Transfer refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from one language to another language. When it comes to Language Transfer and its effect in learning a second language, we can two about its effects in terms of negative and positive.

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Language knowledge and awareness | Cambridge English

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Find out about the language knowledge and awareness category of the Cambridge English Teaching Framework and see how you can develop further.

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My first fumbling language teaching was in Athens, Greece. Forty-five years ago a little group of us founded PILGRIMS in a small town in South East UK, Canterbury. We grew fast into a strong TT centre and we have, over this half-century, written not far short of 100 idea books for EFL teachers. Some of these books have been translated and modified to teach Italian, German, French and Spanish. In my 80th year I wonder at BOTH how much we have done and also how puny, in world terms, that effort has been!

By Mario Rinvolucri Person A: What is it? Person B: It's a single question put by one student to a classmate. The questioner repeats...

Read More

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Mario Rinvolucri, Author at EFL Magazine

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My first fumbling language teaching was in Athens, Greece. Forty-five years ago a little group of us founded PILGRIMS in a small town in South East UK, Canterbury. We grew fast into a strong TT centre and we have, over this half-century, written not far short of 100 idea books for EFL teachers.

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virtualvacation.us - Explore the World from Home

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Explore the world/globe from home with virtualvacation.us! View live footage from different cities, or even take a guessing quiz!

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Hello everyone, Here are the teacher workshops I will be running in July and August 2023. There is information at the links. If you come, let's make sure we have some time together, good work and good conversation. Hope to see you, Adrian Pronunciation and...

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examples, collocations and thesaurus
for learners of English

What is SKELL?

SKELL (Sketch Engine for Language Learning) is a simple tool for students and teachers of English to easily check whether or how a particular phrase or a word is used by real speakers of English.

No registration or payment required. Just type a word and click a button.

All examples, collocations and synonyms were identified automatically by ingenious algorithms and state-of-the-art software analyzing large multi-billion samples of text. No manual work was involved.

SKELL vs. Google Search

SKELL finds good examples of the word or phrase useful for language learners.

Google Search finds web pages with information about the topic specified by the word or phrase.

для изучающих русский язык

Examples in context - concordance

Use the Examples button to display examples of the word or phrase in context. Type a word (e.g. controllable) or a phrase (e.g. in regard to) and click the Search button, you will get up to 40 example sentences.

How it works

Base form will find its derived forms too, e.g. searching for mouse will mice. However, searching for mice (plural, not a base form) will only find examples of mice (not mouse).

Finds all parts of speech.
If you search forwork, it will get sentences with work as a noun as well as a verb and both in various word forms (working, worked, works).

More complex searches and other languages

To find examples in other languages, to use more complex criteria, or to search for grammar structures rather than concrete words, use the concordance search in Sketch Engine.

Word Sketch (collocations)

Word Sketch - collocations

Collocation is a typical combination of two words. Using correct collocations makes the language correct, natural, and advanced. Using incorrect collocations will not usually cause misunderstanding but will be considered incorrect and unnatural. Collocations cannot be guessed, they must be learnt. This is why Word Sketch in SKELL is an invaluable tool.

Word Sketch is a summary of the most typical collocations divided into logical categories. Word Sketch in SKELL is available for every content word, i.e. noun, adjective, adverb or verb.

How it works

Type a word in its base form and click Word Sketch.
Typingmouse will work, typing mice will not.

Click a collocation to see examples in context (concordance).

By default, the most frequent part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) is shown first. Click the link to see a Word Sketch for a different part of speech.

By clicking on the Context button will be shown a broader typical context if exists, e.g. tree suitable for for tree as a noun in the relation 'adjectives with tree'

Other languages

To generate Word Sketch for words in other languages, subscribe for the Sketch Engine free trial.

Synonyms and similar words - thesaurus

Click Similar words to display a list of similar words. The list is generated automatically which means is available for every word in the language, provided there are enough examples in the corpus.

You will get a list of up to 40 most similar words.

Word cloud

The word cloud shows how similar each word is. The words in the centre are the most similar. The size indicates how frequent the word is.

Click the link to show similar words for a different part of speech.

Click a word to open a Word Sketch.

Thesaurus in other languages

To generate thesaurus for words in other languages, try the free trial of Sketch Engine.

Some words do not seem synonyms. Why is that?

Sometimes, words which do not seem similar will be included in the results. this is because computers cannot tell the meaning of the word. The automatically generated thesaurus uses a different technology to identify synonyms. It tries to finds words which tend to combine with the same words as the search word. In the screenshot for cook, you can see that try is nearly in the centre, i.e. is very similar to cook. This is because both cook and try combine with similar words: cook fish, try fish, cook pasta, try pasta, cook salmon, try salmon etc. Although inappropriate words might occasionally be included, the list is still very useful and most importantly, it is available for every word in the language.

... more features

Sketch Engine offers a lot more features than SKELL:

advanced concordances - example searches using complex criteria such as all sentences in the present perfect which contain the word today

word sketches for phrases, not just single words

looking up translations in bilingual corpora

word sketch difference - show the differences between two similar words

generate word lists (most frequent nouns, verbs etc.) or lists of phrases (most frequent 3-word phrases, 4-word phrases etc.)

information about words in 95+ languages

check out a brief survey of some of the many features

try Sketch Engine

Technology behind SKELL

SKELL is a free simplified interface of Sketch Engine adapted to the needs of learners of English. Sketch Engine is a corpus query and management system holding 700+ corpora in 90+ languages. Sketch Engine is used by linguists, lexicographers, lexicologists and other researchers to learn about how language works. Sketch Engine currently handles about 150 TB (terabytes) of data at an unprecedented speed. It is also designed to handle morphologically rich languages such as Russian, Spanish or Japanese.

Data sources

All results in SKELL are a product of ingenious algorithms analysing fully automatically large multi-billion word samples of text, called text corpora. There is no manual work involved when generating the collocations, examples or thesaurus results. See more about the English corpus behind the English SKELL.

The text corpora contain a varied collection of texts such as news, academic papers, Wikipedia articles, open-source books, web pages, discussion forums, blogs, etc. to provide a good example of how language is used in everyday, standard, formal and professional context.

About Skell from its users

on the eflnotes blog by Michael Houston Brown

Disclaimer

This service is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall Lexical Computing Ltd. be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.

References to SKELL and versioning

From time to time, the underlying corpus data may change (cleaning, refining etc.). To refer to particular results (using bookmarked URLs for example), also refer to a particular version. The web interface may also change occasionally. Therefore, each SKELL page carries a version in the bottom-right corner, e.g. skell_3_10 v1.6. This refers to the version of the corpus data and the version of the interface respectively.

Feedback

For reporting issues or writing your feedback, please use the feedback form available on feedback (feedback) in the top-right corner of each page.

If you use results and examples from or links to SKELL, please, cite this paper:

BAISA, Vít a Vít SUCHOMEL. SkELL - Web interface for English Language Learning. In Eighth Workshop on Recent Advances in Slavonic Natural Language Processing. Brno: Tribun EU, 2014, pp. 63-70. ISSN 2336-4289.

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SKELL - corpus tool for language learners | Sketch Engine

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SKELL is a tool for language learners and teachers to see how phrases and words are used by real speakers. Use concordance and collocation examples or thesaurus.

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World of Better Learning | Cambridge University Press

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In this series, we take a look at some of the key ideas that underpin effective teacher training with some help from the seminal titles in the Cambridge back catalogue, including the work of world-renowned experts in teacher training such as Jack Richards, Tessa Woodward and Scott Thornbury.

What is language awareness?

There’s a proverb that says, “if you want to know about water, don’t ask a fish”. Similarly, if you want to know how a language works, you generally won’t get very far if you ask someone who speaks it as their first language. We all interact in our first language(s) without having to think about their grammar, morphology, phonology, etc., so most people are, quite understandably, not aware of the ‘rules’ governing how they speak.

That ability to interact freely is what we might call language proficiency. But knowing about a language and being able to articulate that knowledge are different skills, and we describe them as language awareness.

Both students and teachers can and should develop language awareness, but when teachers do it, the question they look to answer is simply “what is it that a teacher needs to know about English in order to teach it effectively as a second language?” (Thornbury, 2017, p. xiv). Developing language awareness doesn’t involve making value judgements about language – it’s not concerned with deciding what is ‘good’ usage or with examining great literature. Nor does it mean being an expert in linguistics. It’s about developing knowledge of language that is of practical use in teaching.

Why is it important?

“In an ideal world, the language teacher will be both language proficient and language aware” (Thornbury, 2017, p. xv). Separating these two qualities means that English teachers who speak English as a first language need to develop their language awareness just as much as teachers who speak it as a second (or third, or fourth) language (L2). In fact, teachers who have had to learn English as an L2 probably have an advantage in terms of their language awareness over teachers for whom it’s a mother tongue.

Effective teachers draw on their language awareness in many ways. For example:

anticipating problems that students might have with new language and finding ways to support them

pitching lessons at the right level

effectively working with coursebooks, adapting them if necessary

recognising the limitations and appropriacy of language tests

giving feedback and dealing with errors (as well as recognising what is not an error)

answering questions from students

selecting and presenting authentic texts to students

It’s natural, then, to suppose that “the language-aware L2 teacher is more likely to be effective in promoting student learning than the teacher who was not language-aware” (Andrews, 2007, p. ix). Language awareness is the subject matter of language teaching, and any good teacher needs to know their subject.

How should we help teachers develop it?

One thing that we need to do as trainers is to warn teachers of the pitfalls associated with language awareness so that they don’t fall into familiar traps. These include:

Using coursebooks as the only source of language awareness. Coursebooks are designed to support student language awareness, and teachers need to develop language awareness on a deeper level.

Forgetting that our students’ end goal is language proficiency, not language awareness. They need much more than just knowledge about language in order to communicate effectively (e.g. extensive input, opportunities to interact, and so on).

Focusing too much on accuracy in students’ speaking and writing. Students need to be able to develop fluency and don’t benefit from excessive displays of teachers’ language knowledge.

Forewarned in this way, teachers need to be supported in developing language awareness in two steps. The first step is to acquire a foundational understanding of how language works. English teachers can do that by reading, for example, the Cambridge Grammar of English cover to cover(!), but a more fruitful approach might be the guided language analysis tasks of books like About Language and Alive to Language. The second step is to keep that basic language awareness up to date, since language is always changing. Teachers can do that by taking time to analyse the texts that they come across in daily life, perhaps working collaboratively with colleagues.

References

Andrews, S. (2007). Teacher Language Awareness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thornbury, S. (2017). About Language (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

We’re here to support teachers build their knowledge, skills and confidence. If you would like to read more blog articles from our teaching experts, click here.

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What is language awareness and why is it important? | Cambridge English

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In this series we look at some key ideas that underpin effective teacher education. Today we focus on language awareness and its developmental importance.

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You are here

Find a range of complete lesson plans of all language levels for your adult English language classes.

In this section you will find activities to use in the Adult classroom with learners aged 18 and over.

Find a range of complete lesson plans for your business English language classes.

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Here you can find a wide range of practical resources to use in your adult and business classroom.There are full lesson plans to choose from, covering different topics and themes, all organised according to the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR), as well as shorter activities to help your learners improve their English in engaging, motivating and enjoyable ways.All of our practical materials are written by experts in English Language Teaching and are free to download.

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Penny was educated at the universities of Oxford (MA), Cambridge (PGCE) and Reading (MA). She emigrated to Israel in 1967, where she still lives today. Penny has thirty years' experience as an English teacher in elementary, middle and high schools in Is

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Your browser either doesn't support Javascript, or you've turned it off. To use Mentimeter, please make sure to turn Javascript on. How do I enable Javascript?

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Unleash the power of social networks and let the whole world come togther to solve your problem. You can set up your crowdsourcing campagne within minutes. It has never been easier to get loads of opinions and new ideas. Your clients and potential customers will love this new way of brainstorming and voting online.

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Collect ideas and vote. Free online tool for easy brainstorming and voting. For decision making, crowdsourcing and idea generation.

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WordArt.com is an AI-powered word cloud generator that enables you to create amazing and unique word clouds with ease.

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Word clouds (also known as tag cloud, word collage or wordle) are visual representation of text that give greater rank to words that appear more frequently.

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Experiments in Creativity with Dave Birss - Author, Educator, Public Speaker, Experimenter

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Story Dice - a story ideas generator by Dave Birss

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