Category Archives: Grammar and Exercises

Creating visual content for my classes with two awesome free online tools

Create your own stuff, freeware, Grammar and Exercises, Lesson Plan: Advanced, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Slides, Speaking, , , , , , , ,

Let’s go visual!

If you have been following my blog for a while you probably know how much I like exploring new tools to spice up my lessons. We all know students prefer looking at a screen than at a book so, for this lesson I have decided to explore two new free online tools, which have a lot of potential for language teaching.

 

Perhaps  you have never considered creating your own content because you think you aren’t tech-savvy and you don’t really know how to go about  these  modern things, but I can assure you that creating these two videos has been as easy as falling off a log.

In class, we are studying how to express preference with the structure would rather and (would)pefer  and this is just the perfect excuse to “play” with these two little tools.

1. For a revision of the grammar for Would Rather and Prefer, I have used biteable.com. This is how this tool works:

  • Login for free.
  • Click “create a new video”.
  • Choose your scenes one by one and enter the text. You can choose between animation scenes, footage scenes and image scenes where you can upload your own pictures. Click + to add a new scene.
  • Choose the colours for your presentation and then the music track or upload your own.
  • Click Preview and the video will be sent to your email address once it’s created.
  • At this point, you can download it, share it on facebook and twitter, or post to youtube.

(presentation created with biteable)

2. For a speaking activity using Would Rather, I have used emaze.com. This is how this amazing free online tool works:

  • Log in for free.
  • You can create a new presentation form scratch or upload a power point presentation.
  • Choose a template.
  • Share it or embed it on your blog.

(presentation created with emaze)

Powered by emaze

Give them a go! You won’t regret it!

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An Engaging Combination: First-Day Introductions+Indirect Questions + Concentric Circles Technique

Create your own stuff, Funny Stuff, Games, Grammar and Exercises, Lesson Plan: Advanced, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Slides, Speaking, , , , , , , ,

Last week was crazy. No lessons yet but lots of tests to be marked and tons of red tape to go through. So, I am shockingly super excited about beginning a new course; yes, excited about getting up early and teaching non-stop for six hours and   no…  I did not trip and fall  into a bucket full of cider   😉 (typical drink where I live).

First days are for introductions and little more, but  this year I think I am going to kill two birds with one stone  and combine introductions and some grammar that needs to be reviewed. So, I have got this idea in mind of asking students to introduce themselves to each other using indirect questions. I hope most of my new students will have, at some point over the years, studied  with me and for the rest, I will have to find a way to deal with the OMG- shocked looks I am sure I am going to get. But let’s cross that bridge when I come to it!

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Level: Intermediate and Above

Time Required: 30-45 minutes

Description of the Activity .This engaging activity has been designed as a  first-day oral introduction activity and to teach/help students revise how to make indirect questions . I will use the concentric circles  technique,  which is a mingle activity .The technique is explained below and I have also published a picture of my students doing the task.

STEP 1.Revision of Indirect Questions.

Indirect questions were studied last year, so we will just do a quick revision with this video I have  created using the free tool powtoon.com

If necessary, we will spend some minutes brushing up in two different ways

  1. Doing some online exercises you can find here  or , here  or if you do not have a computer, you might want to photocopy this worksheet here
  1. Orally producing some questions and asking students to provide the indirect question.

 STEP 2. Writing .

Ask students to write a question they would like to ask their classmates. For example: ” Do you speak any other languages?”, “Where do you live?” or “How long have you been studying English?”.

Give students slips of paper containing the beginning of an indirect question and ask them to make sure they know how to ask their question beginning with the phrase on their card. Cards here. (template downloaded from Teknologic). For example : “Can I ask  you where you live?” or “Would you mind telling me how long you have been studying English?”. 

STEP 3. Explaining the concentric circle technique.

This technique is a kind of mingle. Although mingles can be a bit noisy  and a bit disorganised, most students love it.The distinctive feature of a mingle activity is that all the students work simultaneously and switch from one classmate to another while speaking. Mingles allow constant repetition and this raises students’ confidence in their use of English.

Students arrange themselves so that they are facing each other in two circles. The inner circle faces out, the outer circle faces in, so that each participant has a partner that they are facing (Note: If the group has an uneven number of people, the teacher should participate in the circles). Each student from the outside circle, after speaking with the person facing him or her, moves one step clockwise to speak with a new classmate from the inside circle. I would suggest asking students to switch partners every four minutes for this activity. This concentric circle technique can very well be adapted to talk about any given topic of discussion. Encourage students to elaborate on their answers and use targeted language structure.

STEP 5. Speaking.

Students introduce themselves to the person they are facing and then ask their indirect questions making conversation with their partner. After four minutes, call time and rotate for the next question, forming a new partnership.

The conversation might go something like this:

Student A: Hi, I’m (student’s name)

Student B: Hello, my name’s  (student’s name)

Student A: Can you tell me how long you have been studying English?

Student B : (answers the question giving as many details as possible)

Student B : Can I ask you a question now? Would you mind telling me why you are studying English?

Student A: Answers

Teacher  says :”  Rotate” and students from the outside circle move one step clockwise to speak with a new classmate from the inside circle.

Model an example of a conversation with a student.

Stop the activity when they have had a chance to speak to most students.

 

 

 

A Nice Way to Introduce Orders in Reported Speech

Games, Grammar and Exercises, Writing, Writing skill, , ,

Sometimes I spend an awful lot of time writing the draft for an article which will never see the light of day. That happens mainly on those days when I begin to wonder  whether a certain article I am about to publish will interest any of my readers and also on those days when I run out of inspiration and words don’t seem to flow. More often than not, these wannabe posts end up being deleted while some other times I save them in  a folder and then forget about them until, like  with my wardrobe, spring cleaning frenzy strikes and I decide to do some computer  spring cleaning and bump into them. This is what happened with this article you are about to read.

INTRODUCING REPORTED SPEECH ORDERS

Step 1. Draw some circles on the white board containing the following sentences or any others you fancy

Step 2. Ask students to choose one circle. They now need to write on a separate sheet of paper some orders/instructions they were given in these situations. (Encourage them to write positive and negative orders/instructions). Demonstrate, if necessary, by choosing one circle and writing down some examples. Allow 5 minutes for this step.

Step 3 and Step 4. Students in small groups. Now students need to swap situations with their partners and their partners need to report within their group some of the orders and instructions their partners were given.

For example:

When Carlos got his driving licence ,he was told to keep both hands on the steering wheel.

On the first day at school, Cecilia was told not to stand up without permission.

Step 4 and Step 3. Before students  start, demonstrate  with your own situation (hopefully still on the whiteboard), making sure they understand the task and asking them to infer the rule.

Step 5. Call out a situation and ask students to volunteer orders or instructions given to their classmates in the chosen  context.

Hope you find it useful!

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Moving Up from ” I Made Tea” to” I made myself a nice, hot sandwich of low-fat blue cheese because I was starving”

Games, Grammar and Exercises, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Writing, , , , , ,

Subtitle:

Improving Writing Skills:  how to move up from the Elementary to the Intermediate Level using Adjectives.

If you are a teacher you would agree with me that helping students move from an Elementary Level to an Intermediate one takes time and practice. One does not acquire the level in one day, you need to go step by step and you’ll need to climb all the stairs to be successful, there is no lift here.

When I mark their compositions some students find it difficult to understand why a composition with almost no mistakes deserves a Pass whereas another one with more “red” ink gets a better mark. Although I explain to them that you’re not only marked for grammatical mistakes and they seem to understand I thought it might be a good idea to do an experiment so that they could clearly see my point.

The little experiment was carried out during the last 20 minutes of the lesson after having dedicated most of the lesson to working with adjectives. The aim was letting the student see for themselves the difference, in terms of adequacy, between two or three grammatically correct sentences by voting on the best one. By letting them be the judges of the best sentence, they also become aware of why essays with no mistakes might score significantly higher or lower.

Before starting with the activities dedicated to Adjectives, I told my students that my aim on that day was to improve their writing skills to help them move from an Elementary Level to an Intermediate one. In my opinion, this bit of information before starting is essential to get their full attention!

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STEP 1.  ORDER OF THE ADJECTIVES

Although not all grammarians agree on the order of the adjectives and the rules for adjective order are quite complicated, it is necessary to give them some kind of order they can stick to. I always use this sentence to help them remember

Important points:

1. Don’t overuse adjectives. While having two adjectives before a noun sounds natural, more than three would have the opposite effect.

2. Purpose adjectives go just before the noun: riding boots ( boots for riding), sleeping bags (bags for sleeping).

3. Numbers go before adjectives: three huge houses.

STEP 2. USING STRONG/EXTREME ADJECTIVES

Isn’t it true that  when you cross out things like very furious, students invariably ask … but, “why can’t you say very furious??”

1. I find it important to see the before and the after. So, prior to beginning with step 1, show them an example of what they normally write, well, a bit exaggerated maybe 🙂 .

Last week I went to a  very big beach. It was very hot and I was very angry because I couldn’t find a place to put my towel as it was very crowded. Finally, I saw one of my best friends and I managed to squeeze in next to her. We went for a walk but after half an hour I was very tired and very hungry so I bought a sandwich, but it tasted very bad. Oh My God !!!

1. Brainstorm extreme adjectives like angry-furious, small-tiny, big-enormous, dirty-filthy, happy-delighted, sure-positive…etc.

2. Point out you cannot use very with these adjectives, but “absolutely” or “really” -among others.

3. Practising intonation with extreme adjectives in dialogues is always an enjoyable activity! Even more fun if you give them the card and get them moving around the class and talking to different people. For this activity, I always use this handout from onestopenglish.com

4. That might be a good time to display the text above again so that they improve it using extreme adjectives.

STEP 3. WRITING GAME

Before the game: Write down on slips of papers, verbs that they have recently studied. For this exercise, I chose verbs with dependent prepositions. Put them in a bag or envelope.

Explain that this writing exercise is going to be a competition, where only sentences without grammatical mistakes are going to be shortlisted. These  sentences will be read  aloud and students will vote for the best one taking into account the length of the sentence, the use of adjectives before the noun and also the use of extreme adjectives

1. Students work in pairs competing for points against the other students in the class.

2. From the bag, ask a student -the innocent hand-to pull out a slip of paper containing a verb in the infinitive form.

3. Students have 2 minutes to write a good sentence containing the verb.

4. Quickly correct mistakes and put a tick to the ones being shortlisted.

5. Sentences are read aloud for students to choose the best one, which is awarded one point. The pair with the highest number of points wins.

At some point during the game, I make a point of telling students once again to reflect on why they feel some sentences are intuitively better.

Hope you find it useful!

Making Suggestions

Create your own stuff, freeware, Grammar and Exercises, Lesson Plan: Elementary, Slides, Speaking, Vocabulary, , , ,

Once again I have used some online free tools to spice up my lessons; believe me, something vey much needed at this time of year when students, and shall I say teachers too? begin to feel the necessity of giving English a break. Good weather and a sun-oriented classroom doesn’t help much either.
So this time the structures I need to teach are those to Make Suggestions. Very useful structures to learn, don’t you agree?

To revise the structures I have worked with  a tool I have  already used several times. I like it and I highly recommended.It’s called Goconqr
por cristina.cabal

Fancy a bit of practice?