On this blog post, we are going to address a very common pronunciation mistake among my students, and maybe among yours too.
Let’s start
Write on the board the word CULTURE and ask your students to try to pronounce it. It could be tried in pairs or just shouted. You’ll be surprised at the variety of different pronunciations your students will come up with.
Time to explain a bit of phonetics.
Your students might not be familiar with the international phonetic alphabet, but don’t let this discourage you.
Let’s break the sound up:
Write the symbol /tʃ/ on the board and model pronunciation. It should be quite easy as this sound exists in many languages. If it helps, ask them to find words in their language that have the same sound.
Got it? Now, write the vowel /ə/. You’ll probably want to explain this is the famous schwa, resist the temptation, or maybe not but, really, there is no need to add to their burden.
To get the sound right, just ask your students to relax and punch (slightly, you don’t want them to pass out) their stomachs. Ask: What sound did you get? Exactly, this is the schwa.
Now that we have the two sounds, put them together and there you have it. Tada!!! /tʃə/
Competition Game
Let’s go back now to our word CULTURE. Again, write it down on the board and, again, ask students to pronounce it. Better? Much better, I’m sure!
Competition: Ask students to work in pairs and tell them they have one minute to write down words ending in –ture. Needless to say, the winner is the pair with more correct –ture ending words.
Write their words on the board. If you feel there are some important ones left, write them on the board. Drill pronunciation.This is my selection of words:
Writing. More fun coming
Once all the words ending in -ture are on the board, ask students to work in pairs and write a sentence containing at least three words ending in- ture. Give students slips of paper ( I normally fold a regular sheet of paper in two, horizontally) and ask them to write (nice and legible) their small tongue twister there. Ask them to pass it to the pair sitting next to them. In pairs, they practise reading the sentence. Repeat procedure as many times as you deem appropriate.
Example:
The texture of the creature in the picture in the literature classroom was just amazing.
Spoiling the fun
This is English. One of the most unpredictable languages as regards pronunciation.
You might want to point out that in some cases, the ending -ture is not always pronounced /tʃə/, as in the word “mature”. Fortunately, this happens in only very few cases.
Fall has finally hit!This is Halloween’s week and it seems the weather has finally chilled out and stopped being silly. The truth is that I don’t see myself telling scary stories in class while the sun outside is shining bright. It just wouldn’t do! Telling scary stories requires a dark, grey, gloomy day; one cannot be telling scary stories and thinking about going to the beach.
Level: B2
Aim:
to introduce and revise vocabulary used to talk about paranormal or unnatural phenomena
to give students’ some listening and speaking practice.
to develop students’ writing skills
STEP 1. INTRODUCTION
Write Paranormal on the whiteboard. Ask students if they know what it means (if necessary, explain that a paranormal activity is not scientifically explainable), and ask them if they believe in paranormal phenomena.
STEP 2. LISTENING COMPREHENSION. A PARANORMAL STORY.
Ask students if they know what a Ouija board is and ask them whether they, or anybody they know, have ever played with a Ouija board. I have a real experience to share with them but in case you don’t, there are plenty of terrifying stories online you might want to share with your students (just to build the right kind of atmosphere).
Play the first 0:53 seconds of the video and ask students to predict what will happen next. Listen to their predictions and then, play the rest of the story.
Play the video a second time and ask the following questions:
True or False? Justify your answer
The narrator and his brother had just bought a Ouija board
The narrator’s brother was willing to play with the board
The first time, the narrator’s brother moved the planchette.
Answer the following questions in your own words:
Why did they decide to play a second time?
What is the ideal environment for a Ouija board?
Why did the narrator leave the room?
Why did he run back to the room and what did he see?
STEP 3. SPEAKING
Before asking students to discuss the questions you might want to pre-teach or revise some vocabulary.
To set the mood: gloomy, desolate, haunted, abandoned, scary, spooky, frightening, creepy and supernatural
To say how you feel: horrified, terrified, petrified, panic-stricken, trembling, paralysed, shuddering
To talk about “people”: a ghost ( a ghostly figure), an apparition, a shadow, an entity, an (evil) spirit, a hallucination, a medium, a UFO.
Ask students to work in groups and answer the following questions.
Do you believe in ghosts? If not, how do you explain people’s claims to have seen them?
Have you experienced the feeling of déjà vu? How do you explain this strange feeling?
Telepathy is communication directly from one mind to another. Is it possible to communicate this way?
Sometimes, the police use psychics to help them. What do you think about this?
Do you believe in hypnosis? What happens when a person is hypnotized?
Can people predict the future? Have you ever had a feeling about the future that turned out to be true?
Have you ever visited a fortune teller?
What do you think about UFO sightings?
Are you a superstitious person? What things are you superstitious about?
STEP 4. WRITING CONTEST. I DON’T BELIEVE IN PARANORMAL, BUT….
I love telling stories, don’t you? Well, the heading in this Step 4 needs no explanation. A contest. A contest which will give me the opportunity to revise narrative tenses and connectors to help students sequence their ideas.
I’m going to use this excellent post from Thought.Co
A good contest, deserves a nice poster. Here it is.
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.
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)
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 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.
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 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!
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)
Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world- Nelson Mandela
I’m so excited. Truly. I am. It’s been months since the last time I taught a class full of students. I know it’s going to be hard but I’m really willing to get back in the swing of things. I’m also preparing material for my workshops, and I have a bunch of work to catch up on, but I’m anyway feeling really motivated. So, it seems I am off to a good start.
This isa lesson for upper- intermediate students (B2) about education. In this post, you will find
Some vocabulary you might need to revise/learn when discussing this subject.
A small challenge with some confusing terms related to education
A video about 6 problems of our education system
Speaking practice: questions to discuss
A written assignment
The warm-up. Setting the context
I don’t think there is a better way to introduce a topic than by showing students a picture that will probably spark interest and hook students into the lesson. That’s the aim of the picture below.
Show the picture and listen to student’ reactions. Probably, the first one would be “Me, neither”, but let’s dig in for more profound reactions.
Tell students to get into pairs and think of three reasons why this boy wouldn’t want to go to school. Allow them 2 or 3 minutes and the write their suggestions on the board and discuss them.
Ask students: Can you relate to the boy in this picture? What can you remember about your kindergarten? In your opinion, what’s the ideal age to start school?
The vocabulary
Ask students to work in pairs. Write on the board the word “education” and ask students to brainstorm vocabulary related to the topic. Encourage them to mind map to help them revise vocabulary related to this thematic area. Allow them some minutes and get feedback from the whole class. I gave handout 1 to my intermediate students last year, so this year (B2), I will probably need to revise and add the terms in handout 2 explaining difficult vocabulary.
The challenge.Did you know?
In this part of the lesson, students are presented with some confusing terms.
Ask them to work in pairs and discuss the questions posed in the flip cards. Award 1 point to the student who has guessed the right answer. Flash Card Deck created by Cristina Cabal with GoConqr Speaking. The questions.
Ask students, in pairs or small groups, to answer the following questions about education, where they will revise some of the vocabulary learned in the previous step. Encourage the use of new vocabulary.
You can get the PDF with the questions here, but isn’t it more appealing to use the Spark below.
Listening. The video: 6 problems with our school system.
Methodology: collaborative retelling
It is a longish video. It lasts almost 6 minutes so I’d suggest breaking it up and asking students to work on different parts of the video. In the video, 6 problems with our education system are mentioned.
This activity will be set as homework.
Introduction. In class, play the first 34 seconds of the video and tell students to give you a summary. They will probably say that the video shows how our system of education has become obsolete and is not preparing children for the real world. Ask them whether they agree with this idea.
2. Homework.
Explain that everybody will need to listen to the introduction again (first 34 sec) which summarizes the content of the video.
Tell students the video talks about 6 problems our current education system is facing nowadays.
Form groups of six students and tell them that, in the next lesson, they will be working in groups of six and each of them will share what they have learned about their assigned problem and their opinion on whether this is a real problem in their country providing examples, if possible.Alternatively, you can form groups of 3 students and assign each student two problems.
Assign tasks to the different students in the group
Student 1: Industrial Age values 0:35-1:26
Student 2: Lack of autonomy 1:26-2:18
Student 3: Inauthentic learning 2:18-3:12
Student 4: No room for passion 3:12-4:15
Student 5: Differences in how we learn 4:15-4:40
Student 6: Lecturing 4:40-5:56
Writing. An opinion essay.
Write an opinion essay on the following:
Our current system of education is now outdated and ineffective.
Here’s a nice post I wrote last year which might help you.
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 pronunciationof 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.
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:
