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Fun and Simple: Adjective Order
If you have following me for a while, then you know how much I love stepping aside from the course book and surprising students with activities that might add a spark to my classes.
Things like flip cards or wheels of fortune are constant guests in my classes. But for this activity, I have decided to invite an old friend I haven’t used for some time. Don’t ask me why. I still love him very much. Word clouds have a lot of potential when teaching languages and they are very easy to use. For this activity, I have used wordart.com.
Aim: to practise the order of adjectives before a noun (attributive position) in a writing competition.
Time: 5 minutes
Level: B2 students
Time: 10 minutes
Preparation: Go to wordart.com or any other word cloud generators and just type the words you want to see in the cloud. In my case, I typed five or six nouns and five adjectives relating to opinion, size, age, temperature, shape, colour, material and origin.
How to go about it:
1. Revise. You might want to revise the order of adjectives before the noun before doing the activity.
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:
- Don’t overuse adjectives. While having two adjectives before a noun sounds natural, more than three would have the opposite effect.
- Purpose adjectives go just before the noun: riding boots (boots for riding), sleeping bags (bags for sleeping).
- Numbers go before adjectives: three huge houses.
2. Competition
- Ask students to form pairs and either display the word cloud on the board or photocopy it.
- Underline the nouns in the word cloud
- Tell students they have two minutes to come up with the longest description for the any of the nouns in the word cloud.
- The winners are the students who have managed to write the most adjectives before the noun.
Rules:
- The adjectives before the noun must be placed in the correct order. Have the class check it while the students read their sentence.
- It has to have sense, ie “a narrow boy” would be incorrect.
Have fun!
Health and Illness: A Lesson Plan for Upper-Intermediate Students
This lesson is aimed at students with a language level of B2 (upper-intermediate) and focuses on revising, learning and using vocabulary related to health and illnesses through a variety of engaging activities which will help them improve listening and speaking.
This lesson plan works well on its own, but I have used it to complement Unit 2 of the course book New English File Upper-intermediate.
The Hot Seat. Revising and consolidating vocabulary.
A fun way to revise and consolidate vocabulary is playing the hot seat with the wheel of fortune.
PROCEDURE
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- Divide the class into two teams and ask them to choose a person to play for them and take the “hot seats”. These two students will be facing their teams and with their backs to the whiteboard
- Decide which team starts the game by tossing a coin. Let’s say Team A starts the game. Tell them each team will have one minute to describe and guess as many words as possible.
- Spin the wheel. Team A will have to define the word for its player. Once the player has guessed the word, the teacher will spin the wheel again for the same team. For every word they guess, they will get 1 point. If the player for Team A doesn’t know the word, then Team B gets the chance to define the word for its player. If he guesses, the team gets 2 points for this word.
- Repeat procedure for Team B.
Role-Play: at the doctor's
At this stage, students will have already learned the vocabulary for minor and more serious illnesses and conditions so now, it’s time to practise it.
Step 1. Working on pronunciation
On the board, write some of the words students have found most difficult to pronounce and revise their pronunciation. In my case, they might include:
| Stomach ache cough temperature consciousness sprained antibiotics antihistamine wound blood pressure medicine paracetamol |
Step 2. Visiting the doctor
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- Ask students about the last time they were ill. What symptoms did they have? Did they go to the doctor? What was the treatment? Did you follow his advice? Could you go to work/school?
- Tell students that they are going to role-play a conversation at the doctor’s where half the class will be patients and the other half will be doctors.
- Students playing the role of patients will get a card with their ailment and they will need to talk to the doctor, describe their ailment and get some advice or treatment.
- Students playing the role of doctors will have to ask questions and then prescribe some medicine, if necessary, and give some advice (rest, diet…etc).
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Step 3.
Build the basic guidelines of the conversation on the board with the students’ help
| Doctor: “Good morning/afternoon. What seems to be the problem?”
Patient: “I haven’t been feeling well for a few days/ I don’t feel well”. Explain your symptoms Doctor: Asks more questions like ” Are you taking anything for… ?“Do you have a headache”? When did it start?” Have you taken your temperature?” …etc |
Step 4.
Ask half the class (the doctors) to remain seated at their desks and ask the other half (the patients) to stand up and move to a corner of the room. Give each of the patients a card with their illness and ask them to choose a doctor and role-play the conversation.
When a student playing the role of patient finishes, he should go back to the corner and wait there for another student (patient) to swap the cards. Students will role-play as patients twice.Once this step is over, change roles: patients will now be doctors and doctors will role-play as patients. Give them new cards or reuse the previous ones.
Listening comprehension: Complementary and alternative medicine
Write “alternative medicine” on the board and ask students if they know what it is and if they have ever tried it.
Tell students they are going to watch a video where Dr Mc Cann discusses traditional medicine and alternative medicine. Ask them to listen once and then, in pairs, share any ideas they got from the video.
Ask students to listen a second time (even a third, if necessary) and answer the following:
True or False? Justify your answers
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- Integrative medicine is a combination of traditional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine.
- At medical school, professors show you some alternative and complementary medical practice.
- Dr McCAnn thinks a doctor needs to treat patients with either conventional or alternative medicine
- According to alternative medicine, the human being can heal himself
- Patients of integrative medicine are willing to take an active role in their healing process.
- Some patients of integrative medicine are not ill at all.
- Dr McCAnn believes integrative medicine is here to stay.
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Answers: At the end of this post
Going the extra mile: Introducing more advanced vocabulary
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- To feel under the weather = to feel slightly ill
- To be as fit as a fiddle= to be healthy
- To phone in sick= to call work and say you’re ill
- To suffer from a disease
- To be a hypochondriac or a cyberchondriac /ˌhaɪ.pəˈkɒn.dri.ək/
- To give someone a diagnosis /ˌdaɪ.əɡˈnəʊ.sɪs/ Ex: The doctor cannot give a diagnosis without doing some tests
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- To treat an illness such as asthma, depression, high blood pressure
- To relieve a headache, dental pain, arthritis /ɑːˈθraɪ.tɪs/
- To practise self-medication with non-prescription medicines /ˈmed.ɪ.sən//ˈmed.sən/
- To have an operation, to undergo an operation
- To donate organs, to be a donor
- To go down with a cold / the flu
- To need surgery /ˈsɜː.dʒəi/
- Symptoms
- A life-threatening illness
- A tumour /ˈtʃuː.mər/ (UK) /ˈtuː.mɚ/ (US). Ex: Brain tumours develop in fewer than one in 50,000 people
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- The side effects of drugs
- Vaccination
- Integrative medicine: a combination of traditional and alternative medicine
- Home-made remedies
- Alternative medicine /ɒlˈtɜː.nə.tɪv/
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- Homeopathy /ˌhəʊ.miˈɒp.ə.θi/: a way of treating illnesses using very small amounts of natural substances,
- Osteopathy /ˌɒs.tiˈɒp.ə.θi/: the treatment of injuries to bones and muscles using pressure and movement
- Yoga
- Reflexology: a treatment in which your feet are rubbed and pressed in a special way in order to improve blood flow and help you relax,
- Acupuncture /ˈæk.jə.pʌŋk.tʃər/: to insert very fine needles into the body at points along the meridians
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Controversial Statements about health.Discussion Posters
Using vocabulary is key in this lesson. In fact, all the lesson is aimed at motivating students to use vocabulary they are already familiar with and to give them a chance to use newly-learnt terms.
So, this lesson could not finish without devising another strategy to help them use the target vocabulary; this time with the help of visual images in the form of posters and with controversial statements that will, hopefully, spark discussion.
Procedure: Gallery Walk
On the wall of the class, display the posters. Ask students in threes to choose a poster and discuss the statement written on it. Encourage the use of target vocabulary.
You can download the posters here.
Listening Comprehension Answers:
1.T 2.F 3.F 4.T 5.T 6.T 7.T
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Lacking inspiration? 6 awesome resource websites to find stuff for your classes
I like to consider myself a creative person and I’m always designing and devising activities to step away from the course book with the aim of sparking students ‘interest. Unfortunately, I’m not always in that mood. No problem :)Luckily, there are plenty of websites offering free resources that can really save the day.
These are my favourite go-to sites when I am feeling kind of lazy or uninspired, but still want to shine in class.
Eslbrains. Great for listening comprehension
This website offers activities based mostly on TED Talks videos. It provides free downloadable students’ and teachers’ worksheets and you can choose the video by topic or level (B1, B2, and C1)
Print and discuss. Stimulating conversation questions
This site doesn’t probably offer an astonishing variety of discussion topics, but I find the questions in each set quite stimulating. Scroll down the page to find their selection of topics for your conversation classes.
EFL Magazine- Resources. Anything you need is probably here.
EFL magazine has collected a host of great resources from different sites around the world.
The site has an excellent collection of resources for teachers. There are sections for grammar, pronunciation, functions, business, tests, speaking topics, vocabulary and lesson plans.
Teaching English- British Council. Excellent for lesson plans and methodology
This is an excellent site. The section for lesson plans specifically offers well-designed lesson plans to suit adults and teens. It also provides downloadable worksheets for both teachers and students.
Highly recommendable is also their Facebook page where tips, ideas, practical advice and lesson plans are offered.
Road to Grammar. Awesome for quizzes.
Road to Grammar is the place to go if you want to find a simple interactive grammar or vocabulary quiz. Don’t miss the Games Section with my favourite online game Fluent. It’s addictive!
You might also want to have a look at Road to Grammar Junior
Busy Teachers. Also called “teacher’s paradise”.
Awesome compilation of resources for every level. On this site, you’ll find worksheets for grammar, vocabulary, speaking, reading, writing and pronunciation among other things.
My favourite section is the Listening Section, where you can filter the activities by level (from complete beginner to advancedd)
Blog de Cristina is also on Facebook. Click to follow!
What are favourite sites? Can you add to the list?
Ready-Made Lesson: Personal Identity
I must have been in my teens, but I vividly remember my mother telling my father that someone called James Dean had called. The funny part was not only that the famous now-long- deceased actor had phoned my dad, but the way everybody pronounced his name, /jamez dean/, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, while me and my naughty siblings couldn’t help cracking up, repeating /james dean, james dean/while in stitches. (The Spanish pronunciation of the “j” is similar to the Scottish word “loch” or the German word “Bach”)
In case you are wondering, my parents (now almost 80) had never ever heard a word in English so everybody said /james dean/ just like that and never gave it a second thought. We, me and my three siblings, just liked fooling around. I know better now!! 🙂
About the lesson:
In this lesson, aimed at B2 students and above, students discuss their names and their personalities through some engaging activities.
In part 2, you have the possibility of asking students to use their own devices and complete the task in class or alternatively set the task for homework.
Part 1. Talking about your name
A video-based listening activity
Tell students they are going to watch a short extract from the Graham Norton show, where the actresses Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman discuss their birth names. Play from 0:00 until 2:50.
Introduce:
- To be named ( after someone)
- To name someone
- A pet name
- A middle name
- A nickname
Procedure:
Play the video once and ask students some comprehension questions. Play the video a second time if necessary.
- Meryl Streep was named Mary at birth. How did she end up being called Meryl?
- Is she happy about her surname? How does she wish it to be different?
- Why is Nicole Kidman called Hokulani? Who is she named after?
Discussion questions:
- Are you happy with your name? Why (not)?
- Does your name have a meaning? If so, what does it mean?
- Do you have a middle name? What is it?
- Do you have a nickname? If so, what is it and how did you get it?
- If you could change your name would you? What would it be? Why?
- U2’s lead singer, Bono, called his daughter Memphis Eve and Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter is called Apple. Do you know any “normal people” with unique baby names? What about you, do you prefer giving your child a more traditional name or a unique name?
- In some countries, when women marry they take their husband’s last name? What do you think of this?
Part 2. Talking about your personality
In this second part, we are going to revise and learn some more complex personality adjectives. To introduce personality adjectives we are going to use a website which analyses your personality based on the numerical value of your name. Whether students believe in it or not should be irrelevant, we are only interested in language acquisition here.
The warm-up
As this lesson is aimed at upper-intermediate students and above, students will have some prior knowledge of the most common personality adjectives, at least enough to get them started.
Choose any activity from 10 Games and Activities to Practise Personality Adjectives, a very successful – if I might say so-blog post I wrote last year
Homework. The Website.
Ask students whether they think a name can shape their personality and refer them to this website where they’ll have to write their name in the space provided and read about their personality.
You can always ask them to read their horoscope, but this is “old news”, so I thought this might better spark students’ interest.
At home, students go to the website and find out about their personality based on their names. They look up any new words they don’t know, especially personality adjectives, as they will need to share this analysis with their classmates and say whether they agree or disagree with it, giving reasons.
Gathering Feedback
This activity can be done in a traditional way i.e board and chalk. Students call out an adjective and you write the personality adjective on the board.
Again, with the aim of creating a more engaging activity, I’m going to use a free online tool called “Answergarden” to get instantaneous feedback. The tool is very easy to use. Here’s a tutorial in case you need it, but it really has a very friendly intuitive interface making it very easy to use, even for those teachers who are not too tech-savvy. The app takes students answers and creates a word cloud that can be exported or embedded. Students will need to use their own devices but, if necessary, every three students can share one.
Once you have created the word cloud in Asnwergarden, use the overhead proyector to display it and ask volunteer students to explain the meaning of the adjectives and say whether they think it is positive, negative or neutral.
Below, an example of a word cloud created with Answergarden.
Speaking
Put students in pairs and ask them to share their name report from the website and say whether they agree or disagree with such analysis.
Ask them to discuss the following questions.
- What kind of people do you usually get along with?
- What kinds of personality traits do you hate?
- Is your personality more similar to your mother’s or father’s?
- Do you think we are born with our personalities, or do we develop them because of what happens to us?
- Do you tend to fall in love with good looks or with a great personality?
- Does one person’s character affect the personalities of the surrounding people? Are you influenced by anybody you know?
- Does birth order affect personality? What qualities do a first-born child, a last-born and an only child have?
The Quiz: As Free as a Bird.
Let’s go the extra mile! In this quiz, you’ll find more colourful ways to talk about someone’s personality. In order to learn them, I suggest taking the quiz two or three times, the last time checking if just by looking at the picture students can remember the simile.
After doing the quiz, you can always ask some follow-up questions like:
Do you know anybody who is as stubborn as a mule?
Enjoy!