Tag Archives: speaking

Speaking: Describing a Dish

Cooking, Lesson Plan: Elementary, Speaking, , , , ,

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

Pictures, Speaking, , , , ,

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!

Listening : Going Shopping

Listening, , , ,

I am going to teach Elementary Level a lesson about shopping and I have found this very easy short video to get started. There are so many things to learn/revise when you are teaching about going shopping! Teaching Going Shopping gives me the opportunity to revise numbers and prices, the shops in a city, items of clothing and a variety of questions including offers and requests. There will be several steps ending up with the students, hopefully, being able to use interactional language in a role-play situation. An example here

Watch the video (if you don’t want to see the introduction, start 40seconds into the video) and answer the questions. Then, activate the subtitles to check your answers.

Question

♥What does the woman want to buy?

♥What kind of …… is she looking for?

♥How much does the woman think the …….. costs?

♥How much does it really cost?

♥Does she buy it?

Lesson Plan: Stereotypes

Lesson Plan: Intermediate, , , , , ,

This is a lesson for intermediate students, which I thought would be interesting to share, mainly because of the video support, which I selected only after some wasted time listening to some very poor quality videos or  perhaps  good quality videos but which, unfortunately, were not appropriate for this level.

Step 1. What is a stereotype?

A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person related to their race, nationality and sexual orientation…etc

Step 2. Brainstorming Ideas.

Ask the class. What do you think of when you hear the word British? Give them one or two minutes to write down their answers, and then call on a few students to give you their answers. Play the video National Stereotypes, but don’t show the images, just the audio. How many have they guessed?

Step 3. Brainstorming
In pairs, students try to answer the same question but, this time, about Spain and the Spaniards. Embedded below are some of my students’ answers. Do you agree?

Mapa Mental creado con ExamTime por cristina.cabal

Step 4. Speaking: National Stereotypes
Ask students whether they agree or disagree with the following National Stereotypes
1. The British are violent mad football freaks
2. The Italians are good lovers but bad workers
3. The Chinese eat everything that moves
4. The Germans are very punctual
5. The Swiss love clocks

Have you ever wondered how we sound to speakers of other languages when we speak our native language? Some languages are easy to imitate, as for example the Italian language or the German one but I would never have guessed how a Spanish speaking native sounds to the rest of the world.
In this video the British Sketch comedian, Katherine Tate, volunteers to translate into seven different languages. Hilarious! And I hope nobody takes offence!

Step 6.Speaking. Students in pairs answer the following questions about stereotypes

♥What do people think of when they think of Spain and the Spaniards? Do you think these stereotypes are true or false?

♥Do you know of any stereotypes about British people?
♥What are some stereotypes you know of about women?
♥What are some stereotypes about men?

♥ What stereotypes exist about people who are blonde?
♥Do you think some stereotypes are true?
♥What stereotypes exist about religion?

Lesson Plan: Talking about Your Hometown .

American Cultural aspects, freeware, Lesson Plan: Elementary, Speaking, Vocabulary, , , , , ,

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.