- Spicing up my lessons!
Category Archives: Speaking
Speaking: Describing a Dish
Happy New Year to everybody! I am back!!! Hard to get started once again after this longish holiday. It’s been eight days now since we have let 2014 in and it is time we get down to some serious work, don’t you think?
Talking in class about food related things after some huge binge eating and drinking is not precisely what appeals to me most, but unfortunately I cannot choose.
This is an activity I am going to do with my Elementary students after some serious work practising food vocabulary.
The activity is simple. The students are sitting in pairs, one student facing the board and the other with his back to the board. Using the OHP, a picture of a popular dish is displayed. Now, the person seeing the picture has to describe it in as much detail as possible, talking about its ingredients and the way it is cooked and the other person has to guess the dish. Allow them two or three minutes and then display another picture for the other student to do the same. Below are some slides with the dishes that I am going to use.
Some useful vocab they are likely to use
Nouns: pan, cinnamon, olives, tuna, blood sausage,
Verbs: to beat eggs, to fry, to boil, to add, to stir with a spoon,to slice (apples)
Speaking: Fashion and Trends
I’m really stressed now. Internet has been down for three days and I only had it serviced this morning after countless phone calls to the company.
Preparing exams, marking exams, preparing classes, publishing…. this is all part of who I am and what I do for a living …. but listen!, catching up on my email has been nothing short of a nightmare. Christmas is coming and it seems all the companies have got hold of my email address ’cause there were like 500 emails waiting for me. Most of them junk! Really, if I get one more email informing me that I can get a 40% discount in ( insert shop here) I am going to go postal.
Anyway, I am sure my students have been checking my site to see if I have published their last oral test as promised. Here it is guys! Sorry to keep you waiting !
The topic: Fashion and Trends
First of all, three nice pictures you need to use as an excuse to talk about the given topic
and now some questions to talk about. Time to show off, guys!
Lesson Plan: Talking about Your Hometown .
This is a lesson for Elementary students.
Step 1. Reading and Listening
Mind mapping is a very important learning tool for visual learners. This mind map has been created with Exam Time, which is very easy to use and embeddable, a feature I always appreciate.
There are some steps previous to this mind mapping we wrote on the board, essentially reading and listening about this issue. Form these listenings and readings we gathered and sorted vocabulary that was, then, written on the board.
Step 2. Mind Mapping
What you see below is a nice way of displaying what was written on the board of the classroom with the help of my students.
por cristina.cabal
Step 3. Speaking
For this activity, instead of the typical photocopy with the list of questions to talk about, I have put students in groups of three or four and given each group a set of cards, which they had to place face down on the table. Students in turns pick up a card and talk for as much as they can about the given question. At this point I give my students the usual talk about how important it is now, to “show off.”
This is a snapshot of the cards. Click here if you want to print them.
Role Play : Renting a House
This year I am teaching two different levels, the 2nd course in the Elementary Level and the 2nd course in the Intermediate Level. Teaching the last courses within a level means my students will have to, necessarily, take the Certificación exam if they want to pass to the next level. The exam has different parts but I know you’ll agree with me if I say that the most stressful one is the Oral test. I know it is not everyone’s cup of tea to face a board of two or three teachers listening, very attentively, to every word you say. Haven’t you always wanted to be centre of attention 😉 ?
The oral Exam in the Elementary Level has two parts. The first part is a Role-Play. Here, the students will have to interact with the teacher. Students will be presented with a situation and they will have to take one role, while the teacher takes the other role.
To prepare my students for these role-plays, I often use PhotoPeach, an online tool which allows you to create a free slide show in seconds. Dying to try my other slideshows with Role-Plays? Click here
This is the last I have uploaded: Renting a House. Prior to this online Role-Play, students, in pairs, have written an advert for a house/flat for rent and from this advert they have written a dialogue, which they have later performed.
This is the last step.