Category Archives: Writing

Write a comic with www.writecomics.com

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It’s never been easier to write a comic. This fantastic site http://www.writecomics.com/ allows you to create your own comics in just a few minutes and you don’t even need to register.
It’s great to do with your own students in the computer room or, alternatively, set this task as homework. I can almost see my students’ faces lighting up when I tell them.

How to do it:

♥Choose a background by clicking on your choice

♥Choose the people or the animals. You can also add props and/or aliens

♥Then, the speech bubbles, as many as you need

♥Type the text

♥If you change your mind about something, double-click to delete it

♥Add as many scenes as you need

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The only thing I don’t like about this site is that you cannot save or embed your comic strip, but. you can copy the url or use a screen capture program to take a picture of it and then embed it into your blog.

Some ideas:
To practise tenses
To write role-plays
To make an interview

Improving writing skills

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This is an activity I’m going to do tomorrow with my intermediate students and I thought someone might find it useful. It can be done to revise vocabulary and make students write, a skill we often neglect in class. By including visual aid I have made the role of the teacher seem less important and therefore encouraged autonomous learning.

In this activity we will be revising vocabulary, mainly phrasal verbs with “turn” and verbs followed by infinitive or/and -ing.

How to do it:
Ask students to work in pairs and give each pair a blank sheet of paper. Tell students they are going to use their imagination to write a dialogue .Give students a situation they can start with (for ex two flatmates talking about their plans for the weekend; their names Christina and George). The aim of the exercise is to build up a dialogue using the prompt you display in the photopeach slideshow. Once they have written their sentence containing the prompt they have to pass their paper to the students on the left who must continue the story using the next prompt. Sometimes an additional sentence will be necessary to transition form one idea to the next.
Collect their dialogues and stick them on the walls of the class for everybody to read

Revising – Using Prompts to Revise Vocabulary on PhotoPeach

Click here to see a sample of the dialogue. I wasn’t very inspired!

Giving a speech with a nice presentation and using a Wiki

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I thought I would kill two birds with one stone by asking my intermediate students to give a speech  about the advantages and disadvantages of a certain issue (I’ve already published a guide on how to do it here) as before working on pronunciation and intonation  they had to write it  , which ,in this course ,is essential if they want to pass their English exam with flying colours.

I have used a Wiki , from Wikispaces, so that they could choose  from  25 issues the one they fancied most   and the date that suited them best . By doing it with a wiki I  gave them plenty of time to think , rethink and then change their minds about  what they had previously decided.You can see one of the wikis I created here with the instructions on how to use it. I also gave them the option of illustrating their speeches and this is just an example of some of the nice presentations we have enjoyed.

This one has been done by Andrea Martínez Pérez. Thanks Andrea! It looks great!