Four speaking activities
Four speaking activities

In this post, I would like to share four speaking activities that worked very well in my classes. There are two games to practise comparatives and superlatives and two activities to practise describing people.

Four speaking activities – Superlatives and comparatives

The first two activities help your students practise the usage of comparatives and superlatives.

The first one is a simple board game. Print the following board game.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] Superlatives and comparatives board game web

Ask your students to find something that will serve as their counter. Give them a dice and tell them to throw the dice and move along the plan. If they land on a yellow or blue square, students have to read the question and answer it or complete the sentence. If they land on a pink square, they follow the arrow.

Superlatives and comparatives – board game pdf

If a group of students finishes early, ask them to play again.

The second speaking activity demands very little preparation. Dictate the following sentences to your students and ask them to finish them in any way they like.

  1. Who is the best _________?
  2. What is the worst ___________?
  3. What is better than _____________?
  4. What is worse than _______________?
  5. What is the best ________________?

 

Once they complete their questions, they work in pairs and read their questions to their partners. Their partner must answer in English.

It is really simple, but it works.

Four speaking activities – Describing people

Print the following worksheet. You will need one page for each student.
Describing people – pdf worksheet
Students work in pairs. Give each student one sheet so that in their pairs they have two different sheets.

Students must not show their worksheet to their partner. Their task is to find out whether the men in their pictures are the same or different.

Students describe the men number 1 and decide if they are the same or different. They write down their decision on a piece of paper. They go on like this with the rest of the men.

For the second speaking activity the students need just one of the pages. They lay the paper in front of them. One of the students chooses a picture and the other one has to guess which man their partner is thinking of.

Describe a person speaking activity

I hope that all the speaking activities will work for you.

Which speaking activity worked best for you?

Verb to be – short answers
Verb to be – short answers

I have spent a lot of time formulating a simple explanation how to form short answers to questions with the verb TO BE. You can find my previous attempt here. While the previous explanation did not work very well, this time, I feel that it is so simple that even the less gifted students understood it. I hope it will work for your students too. Please let me know.

In this post, there is a simple infographic explaining the usage of the short answers, and a speaking grammar activity to practice the grammar.

Short answers – infographic

The following infographic tries to simplify the decisions students have to make.

To form the short answers correctly, students have to start from the beginning of the question. The first word is crucial.

If the question starts with AM, then the answer is either YES, YOU ARE. or NO, YOU AREN´T.

If the question begins with IS, then the students have to see, what follows. If it is followed by a woman, then the answers are YES, SHE IS or NO, SHE ISN´T. If IS is followed by a man then the answer is YES, HE IS or NO, HE ISN´T. In all other cases, the answers are YES, IT IS. or NO, IT ISN´T.

If the question starts with the word ARE then you have to see what follows it. If it is followed by YOU AND, the answers are YES, WE ARE. or NO, WE AREN´T. If the word ARE is followed by YOU without AND then the answers are YES, I AM or NO, I´M NOT. In all other cases, the correct answers are YES, THEY ARE or NO, THEY AREN´T.

The explanation might sound a bit complicated, but it is quite clearly depicted in the infographic.
ADVERT:
[showmyads]

Verb to be short answers full web

Short answers – speaking activity

The main objective of this part is to give your students an opportunity to practise what they have learnt so far.

The activity is called pair cards. Students work in pairs. Print the following worksheet and give each student in the pair one half of it. Ask the students to work on their own and fill the free spaces with short answers to the questions.

Verb to be short answers
When they finish, they work in pairs and read their answers to their partner. The partner listens and checks whether their answers are the same as they have on their worksheet. This usually leads to clarifying the grammar and peer help.

After this, one of the students folds the paper in such a way that they cannot see the short answers. They read the questions aloud and say the short answers. Their partner sees the answers are correct and corrects as necessary. Three minutes later they swap.

Short answers – conclusion

I hope that the solution offered here is useful. After presenting this to my students, they were finally able to form the short answers correctly. I hope it will work for you too. Please, let me know how it works in the comments section or in the poll:

Did the inforgraphic and speaking activity work?

Is extensive reading dead?
Is extensive reading dead?

Most of teachers do not read research papers. There are several reasons for this. First, many teachers do not have enough time to study. Second, these papers are usually pretty difficult to read and understand. And third, they contain a lot of statistics and language teachers are not very good with numbers.

To be honest, I love language teaching research. I try to follow the latest papers and compare their results with my experience and I try to adjust my teaching on the basis of their results. And here I would like to share the most interesting papers with you in a simplified form.
ADVERT:
[showmyads]

Is extensive reading dead – Research

The first paper which I would like to discuss is called “Retention of new words: Quantity of encounters, quality of task, and degree of knowledge” and it was written by Batia Laufer and Bella Rozovski-Roitblat. It was published in Language Teaching Research 2015, Vol. 19(6) 687 –711. The name sounds a bit complicated but the paper examines what the learners must do to learn new vocabulary.

For a long time, research suggested that extensive reading is one of the best ways to learn new vocabulary. It was supposed that the more often students meet a word the more likely they are to learn it. Therefore, it was recommended that students should read a lot and it was expected that in the end they would know a lot of vocabulary.

This new research took this expectation and put it to a test. They asked the following questions:

  1. Is it enough to read a lot to improve my vocabulary?
  2. How many encounters are enough to learn a word?
  3. Is extensive reading the most effective way to learn new vocabulary?

And what did they find out? If you do a vocabulary exercises you will learn many more words than if you just read. Even if you read and look the unknown words in a dictionary it does not help much (some tests even show that it does not improve your knowledge of vocabulary at all). Put simply, if you memorize the words, you will save time and you will know much more. In fact, the tests showed that you will know up to 20 times as much.

So, does it mean that extensive reading is dead? It depends: If you have used it for teaching vocabulary (and I did), it is time to think again and abolish this practice. However, if you need to improve students’ reading, I am sure that extensive reading is a good means to achieve this.

To sum up, the research paper “Retention of new words: Quantity of encounters, quality of task, and degree of knowledge” shows that it is better to use vocabulary exercises than extensive reading for vocabulary teaching.

Comparatives and superlatives – activities
Comparatives and superlatives – activities

The vast majority of people consider comparatives and superlatives in English easy. They usually have no problems with their formation and as there are very few exceptions, they master this grammar point pretty quickly.

However, it is still a good idea to have a few interesting activities up your sleeve to teach this well. You can find the basic explanation and infographic in my previous post about comparatives and superlatives.

In this post, I am going to offer three activities that worked very well in my classes. The first one is a simple pair speaking activity to practise the comparatives. The second one is called Hidden picture and your task is to colour the correct sentences and find the hidden picture. The third activity is a video quiz with a writing activity. I hope you will like the activities and use them in your classes too.

Comparatives and superlatives – activities

For the first activity, you will need the following worksheet.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] Comparatives and superlatives – speaking

Print it and ask your students to work in pairs. Give each student one quarter of the worksheet. Make sure to give different worksheet to each student in a pair.

Students should fill in the gaps using the correct form of the adjective in the brackets. Check their answers. Even though the questions are different, the answers are the same and therefore, they are easy to check.

Then students work in pairs and read the questions to their partners and answer them in English.

For the Hidden picture activity, you need to print the following table for each student.

Comparatives hidden image web
Ask the students to colour the squares that contain a correct sentence. If they do it correctly a picture will appear (in this case the letter N should appear).
Then go through the sentences with your students and elicit the mistakes and their corrections.

Comparatives and superlatives – video

Before you play the video, ask the students to take a piece of paper and something to write with. Play the video and the students write down the correct answers to the questions. At the end of the quiz, they check their answers. Award the student with most correct answers.

As a follow-up activity, it is a good idea to ask your students to write a similar quiz.

Recently The Stock On Disney Takeove…

The model is talking about booking her latest gig, modeling WordPress underwear in the brand latest Perfectly Fit campaign, which was shot by Lachian Bailey. It was such a surreal moment cried she admitted.Refreshingly, what was expected.

The main thing that you have to remember on this journey is nice to everyone and always smile.

It’s kind of confusing because I’m a bigger girl, Dalbesio says. I’m not the biggest girl on the market but I’m definitely bigger than all the girls [Calvin Klein] has ever worked with, so that is really intimidating. She wasn’t sure, she said of the shoot, what was expected from her in terms of her size or shape.It’s kind of confusing because I’m a bigger girl, Dalbesio says.

Refreshingly, what was expected of her was the same thing that was expected of Lara Stone: to take a beautiful picture.

single-images-1

Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves.

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds Except the which you belong.

So simple, yet so essential, the white shirt is the foundation of any wardrobe. It’s also the most multi-functional item, taking you from work to play with just the quick unfastening of a couple of buttons. It matter what style fitted boyfriend etc or even what fabric from silk to heavy cotton go with whatever suits your personal style best,It matter what style fitted boyfriend etc or even.

Calvin Klein known for launching the careers of such svelte models as Brooke Shields and Kate Moss to cast a model who deviates from the size standard and make a fuss about it to Dalbesio who spent years,Kate Moss to cast a model who deviates.

  • Must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing
  • Pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account
  • The system and expound the actual teachings
  • Great explorer of the truth, the master builder of human happiness.

Adderall and flirting with bulimia in an attempt to whittle herself to represents progress released this campaign and were like Whoa look this plus size girl in our campaign from work to play with just the quick unfastening of a couple of buttons,size girl in our campaign.

BE THE CHANGE THAT YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD

They released me in this campaign with everyone else there no distinction. It’s not a separate section for plus size girls she says.

There was a time in the industry not too long ago, when it seemed that the high fashion world was using plus size models as a headline-grabbing gimmick see the groundbreaking Italian Vogue cover featuring Tara Lynn, Candice Huffine, and Robyn Lawley in June 2016.long ago, when it seemed that the high fashion world was.

single-images-2

Taking the world into my arms

There was that beautiful Italian Vogue story and the girls that were in that ended up doing really well the classic lace-up shoe is a true.

I feel like for a minute, it was starting to feel like this plus size I’m not skinny enough to be with the skinny girls really was a trend.

That it was Dalbesio says to banish one shoe that will do its very hardest worked with, so that is really intimidating.

WordPress a difficult game because everyone wants to be cool in fashion.

Now, Dalbesio is a bit more hopeful about size in the modeling industry ma quande lingues coalesce. In the middle Occidental in fact she says not skinny enough.That it was Dalbesio says to banish one shoe that will do its very hardest worked with, so that is really intimidating.

To find my place. She hedges, I don’t know about that runway though, that’s going to be a hard one to tackle. Everyone realizes why a new common language would be desirable: one could refuse to pay expensive translators.

A SHIP IS SAFE IN HARBOR, BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT SHIPS ARE FOR

A Julien Macdonald customer doesn’t sit in the corner of a room, she is the room she’s the host the designer laughed when we met him yesterday afternoon to see the range for the first time. My pieces aren’t shy. It is full-on cocktail red carpet glamour.Macdonald customer doesn’t sit in the corner of a room.

You don’t necessarily wear them to the supermarket on a Saturday morning with the kids, but with my jewellery they probably will.

single-images-3

These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life.

Cue a collection of high-wattage necklaces, adorned with nugget and crystals wild-cat cocktail rings, abstract drop earrings, and spectacular statement chokers inspired by the flora and fauna of safari.Cue a collection of high-wattage necklaces.

The most beautiful people we have known are those:
  • Explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing
  • Pleasure and praising pain was born
  • The system and expound the actual teachings
  • Great explorer of the truth

To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant right to find fault pleasure?

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee,take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes.

Irregular verbs – snowball method
Irregular verbs – snowball method

After teaching for fifteen years, it seems that it does not matter how much and well the teacher teaches, it is the student who must learn. I have already published many methods of teaching irregular verbs. There are posts on teaching irregular verbs with a rap song, there are posts with many games and stories where the irregular verbs are used in context. And the result? My students do not know the irregular verbs! If the students do not learn the verbs, they do not know them.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] This of course does not mean that we should stop making our lessons as interesting as possible. No! It means that we should give students a chance to learn the verbs in an effective way themselves. That was why I started to learn another foreign language. And I found out that the best method to learn new vocabulary was the one which I call SNOWBALL.

Snowball method

Snowball is a simple piece of software which asks me to translate a word. If I get the word right, it disappears, if not, it gets repeated once or twice after a while. The following day, the programme asks me to translate the words from the previous day and adds 20 more words to learn. It goes on like this till day 5 when I have to translate 100 words. On day 6, the software offers the same 100 words again. But on day 7, I have to translate just 80 words as the oldest 20 disappear. In this way, the words disappear and on the tenth day I translate just 20 words.

This means that each word gets repeated at least six times and if the student does not know it, it gets repeated more frequently.

And I used this method to teach the irregular verbs. There are 100 most frequent irregular verbs in English and if you do one snowball every day, each irregular verb will get repeated at least 6 times.

As the answers are evaluated by a computer, DO NOT USE CAPITAL letters and divide the words with a comma (no pause after the comma).

Snowball 1
Snowball 2
Snowball 3
Snowball 4
Snowball 5

ADVERT:
[showmyadsa]

Snowball 6
Snowball 7
Snowball 8
Snowball 9
Snowball 10
Irregular verbs games
Irregular verbs games

Irregular verbs are the most important and at the same time for many students the most difficult part of learning English. These verbs are very common and if students learn them, their English improves radically. But they have to learn them! Therefore, any activity that makes the learning easier and more fun is welcome.

Recently Svetlana Kandybovich published a great game to help children learn irregular verbs. Reading the post I realised that I have been using three games that other teachers might want to use. And thus, I decided to share them.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] In this post, there are three games to make the learning of irregular verbs more enjoyable. The first game is crosses and noughts, the second is called Sprint and the third one is Ski Jump.

Irregular verbs games – Crosses and Noughts

Crosses and noughts picture fbPrint the following worksheet. Print one copy of the first page for each student. The second page contains the same list three times so you need to print just one page for three students.

Irregular verbs worksheet

Read the list of the irregular verbs with the students to ensure that they pronounce the verbs correctly. Then give them about five minutes to work on their own and learn the irregular verbs from the list.

Five minutes later, ask the students to work in pairs and go through the grid line by line and say the past tense and past participle of the verbs. Stop them after three minutes and tell them to turn the cards with the verbs face down.

Now they play crosses and noughts. The rules are simple. Players take turns, and they draw a cross or a nought (one player draws one symbol all the time). Their aim is to have five symbols in a row. If they achieve this, they win. In this game, however, they can draw their symbol only if they say the past tense and past participle of the verb in the square. If they fail to do this, they have to play somewhere else.

Let the students play for four minutes. If they finish earlier, tell them to play on the other sheet.

Once they finish, students turn the cards with the verbs face up, and take a pen or pencil. Now, they have four minutes to fill in as many columns as possible with the past tenses and past participles of the verbs given. They must not skip any square. If they do not know the verbs, they can have a look at their cards.

Irregular verbs games – Sprint

You need the worksheet again. Follow the instructions above, till the moment when students stop learning the verbs.

Now students choose one line each. One starts from the right side and the other from the left. When you say START, students have to say the past tense and past participle of all the verbs on their line. They must not skip any. Their aim is to be quicker than their partner. The winner is the student who gets to the end of their line first. If they do not know any of the verbs, they can have a look into the card.

It is a bit noisy, but it is fun.

Irregular verbs games – Ski Jump

This is a zero preparation activity. After learning the irregular verbs for some time, ask one of the students to come in front of the class. Tell them that they have 30 seconds to say as many irregular verbs and their past tenses and past participles as possible. Stop them after the 30 seconds and count how many verbs they produced (each word counts as one point).

ADVERT:
[showmyadsa]

Then ask other students to do the same. Reward the winner.

In my experience, the best are able to get over about 100 points.

BREAK and GIVE Collocations
BREAK and GIVE Collocations

In this post, I am going to offer you materials to teach the BREAK and GIVE collocations. This post is different in one aspect, though. This time, I will give you a series of pictures which you can download and combine into your own worksheets.

The advantages of this approach are obvious. You can decide what you are going to teach and what materials you will use. You can throw away the things that do not work for you and add those you like.
Advert
[showmyads] To insert the pictures into your worksheet, right click the picture and download it. Then insert it into your document and make it bigger or smaller as you need.

BREAK and GIVE Collocations – infographic

The first part is the same. There are two infographics which show the collocations with the verbs BREAK and GIVE.
BREAK Collocations
Break collocations mind map
GIVE Collocations
GIVE Collocations

BREAK and GIVE Collocations – Speaking

I have created two speaking exercises. The first one is a simple pair dictation. Students work in pairs and dictate the sentences they have to their partner. Their partner listens and writes the missing sentences into their worksheet.
BREAK and GIVE collocations worksheet 6
The other speaking activity is done in pairs too. Students read the questions for their partners and they answer the questions.
BREAK and GIVE collocations worksheet 5 Pair speaking

BREAK and GIVE Collocations – Exercises

Now, there are four exercises which you can use for your students to practise the collocations with BREAK and GIVE. In the first exercise students should complete the phrasing by adding either BREAK or GIVE.
Advert
[showmyadsa] BREAK and GIVE collocations worksheet 1
The key: give a kiss, break the law, give him a hug, give me a lift, break the record, break her heart, give me advice, give him a hand, give me a smile.
In the second exercise students should complete the sentences with the phrases from the exercise 1.
BREAK and GIVE collocations worksheet 2
The key: 1. gave me a smile/gave me a kiss 2. broke the record 3. gave him a hug 4. broke the law 5. gave me advice 6. broke her heart 7. give me a lift 8. gave him a hand
In the third exercise students should match the collocations and the definitions.
BREAK and GIVE collocations worksheet 3
The key: 1.C 2.D 3.F 4.A 5.E 6.B
In the fourth exercise students should complete the second sentence with a phrase that has the same meaning as the expression in the first one.
BREAK and GIVE collocations worksheet 4
The key: 1. give you a lift 2. gave me a kiss 3. broke her heart 4. give her a ring 5. broken the law 6. break the news to her 7. gave me a hug 8. gave her a smile

BREAK and GIVE Collocations – conclusion

You can easily download all the files here: BREAK and GIVE Collocations zip.file.
I hope you will find this new format really useful. In this way, you can easily create your own worksheets to teach the collocations with BREAK and GIVE.

Expressing purpose in English
Expressing purpose in English

To express purpose in English, we use various conjunctions. For example, you can use to, so that, that´s why or for. In this post, you will find several activities which can be used to teach the usage of the conjunctions so that, to and for.

To help you with teaching these conjunctions we offer:

We hope you find these materials useful.

Expressing purpose in English – video

As a starter, play the following video. It is based on the BBC recording called Grammar Challenge. You can find the original recording here. The pause in the recording is there on purpose. In this pause, the students should supply the correct answer.

If you would like to try the interactive version, you can use the following video:
Expressing purpose in English – interactive video

Expressing purpose in English – infographic

After the video, display the following infographic and let the students study it for a while. Then ask them to explain the usage of the conjunctions.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] Expressing purpose or reason in English

The grammar is quite simple:

  • FOR has to be followed by a verb ending with -ing
  • SO THAT is followed by a subject and a verb
  • TO is followed by an infinitive.

Now, it is time to practise what the students learnt.

Expressing purpose in English – games

The first game is called Shooting. Students read the sentence and click the word that should complete the it. If they choose the right word they will see a yellow cloud. If they shoot the wrong word, they will see a red cloud and if they miss they see a grey cloud. The quicker they are the more points they get. The best scores get entered into the leaderboard.
Expressing purpose in English – Shooting game
The second game is called Time guess. Complete the sentence with the correct word (TO, SO THAT and FOR) and then click the stop button when the countdown reaches zero. The closer to zero you get the more points you receive.
Expressing purpose in English – Time guess

ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] The third game is called Dice. Your task is to complete the sentences with the words TO, SO THAT and FOR and then click the stop button to get as many points on the dice as possible. If you stop the dice and they show the same number you get a bonus – ten points. Good luck.

Expressing purpose in English – Dice game
Phrases with Get #2
Phrases with Get #2

Together with Fluency MC we have already published several interesting posts. In our latest post, we tried to help you teach 16 phrases with GET. And this time, there are 16 more. All the phrases come from the song by Fluency MC called GET A LIFE. And as the song contains many more phrases with GET there will be some more posts soon.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] In this post, there is the song, an infographic and three games to help you teach the phrases with GET.

Phrases with GET – song

As a starter play the song Get a Life to your students. All the phrases taught in this post can be found between 0:38 and 1:20.


You can join Fluency MC’s free starter course here and also get his free YouTube songbook! http://fluencymc.com/starter-course/
After introducing the phrases, move to the infographic.

Phrases with GET – infographic

Display or print the following infographic for you students and go through the phrases with them. If you teach a monolingual class, it is a good idea to translate the phrases with the students.

Phrases with get infographic
After you teach the pronunciation and the meaning of the phrases, it is useful to give your students about five minutes to learn the phrases on their own.
After this, play the video again (from the beginning to 1:20) and let the students enjoy the fact that they can understand.

Phrases with GET – games

The first game is just a simple piece of a drilling software. I call it Vocabulary Trainer. It displays a definition and your task is to write the phrase. Then the computer writes whether you were right or not. The phrases which you do not write correctly get repeated. Once you can see a zero twice it is the end of the game. I admit that it is not much of a game but I find it very useful when I learn foreign vocabulary.

Vocabulary trainer

The second game is called Dice. You see a definition and your task is to type the correct phrase. If you succeed, you will see two dice and your task is to stop them. You get as many points as there are points on the dice. If both of the dice show the same number, you will get 10 points bonus. The best scores are saved. Good luck.
ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] Dice game

The third game is called Guess the Length. Again, first write the correct words and then you will see a line. Your task is to guess how long the line is. The best scores are once again saved in a leaderboard.

Guess the length game
50 Ways to Teach Speaking – review
50 Ways to Teach Speaking – review

After reviewing the book 50 Ways to Teach Grammar, I was contacted by the editor of the series and she offered me a book of my choice for free. I chose the book 50 Ways to Teach Speaking by Janine Sepulveda. Here is a short review of the book.

The book is cheap and short. It costs only $0.99 and it has 16 pages. The activities are briefly and clearly described. Therefore, if you need a quick inspiration, this might be the book for you.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] The book is divided into three parts: Tips to Ice Breakers / Warm-ups / Games, Fluency and Focused Practice Activities and Make Activities More Effective. The first two parts contain real activities, but in the last part, there are just some tips how to organise the activities in class.

After reading the book, I have chosen 5 activities which I would like to share with you.

50 Ways to Teach Speaking – sample activities

The first activity, which I can recommend is in Czech called “Kufr” because of the TV show it first appeared in. It is simple and it works really well.
In the book it is called Guessing Game:

“Ask one student to come to the front of the class and stand with her/his back to the board. Write a word on the board. The rest of the class must give clues to the student until s/he can guess the word (It’s alive; You can’t find one in this country).” (50 Ways to Teach Speaking, page 6)

Another activity which I have successfully used is called Two Truths and a Lie.

Students write two facts about themselves and one lie. They take turns reading their pieces of information. The rest of the class guesses which is the lie. It is a good idea to ask the students to number the sentences and the rest of the class just write the number of the suspected sentence next to the student´s name. Thus the students will really listen to the others.

The third activity is called Describe a Picture. “Divide students in pairs. Each receives a different picture or drawing. One partner describes her/his picture, and the other draws it on a separate piece of paper. The student who is drawing should ask questions to clarify anything that is unclear. Then switch roles. This is good for practicing adjectives, shapes, prepositions, etc.” (50 Ways to Teach Speaking, page 8)

The fourth activity was absolutely new for me, and I would like to try it out in class. It is called 3-Picture Story:

Put students into small groups. Prepare 3 different pictures: #1 – a picture of some people; #2 – an object or group of objects; #3 – another object or group of objects. Hand out one picture at a time. First, students create a background story about who the people are and how they are connected. Then, with the second picture, they explain how this object is important to the people. With the 3rd picture, they explain why the people dislike or have a negative experience with the object. When they are done, mix up the groups so that there is one member from each original group in the new groups.
They share their stories with their new group. At the end, students can vote on which
story they liked best
.” (50 Ways to Teach Speaking, page 10)
ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] The last activity, which I think is great, is called Soap Opera. First, watch Que Hora Es? on Youtube. The lines in this short video are from a beginning textbook for learners of Spanish. Then ask the students to work in small groups and prepare such a soap opera using the sentences from their English textbook. It might be a great fun.

50 Ways to Teach Speaking – conclusion

The book 50 Ways to Teach Speaking contains 51 activities to make your students speak. I have to say that all of the activities are sound. However, as an experienced teacher I have not found there many new things that might inspire me (though there were some). It is not expensive and it is great for novice teachers.

Phrases with GET
Phrases with GET

Together with Fluency MC, we have already published several posts. You can find here four posts on irregular verbs and two posts on collocations with the verb HAVE. Fluency MC always comes with a great rap song and I create a mind map and several activities to accompany it. And this time, he came with a song featuring phrases with GET.
ADVERT:
[adinserter block=”1″] In this post, there is a wonderful rap song on collocations with the verb GET, two mind maps and three games to give you a chance to teach or learn these.

Phrases with get – song

Play the following video as a starter of the lesson.

The song is by Fluency MC. Fluency MC also offers a free starter course. Join Fluency MC’s free starter course here and also get his free YouTube songbook! http://fluencymc.com/starter-course/

Phrases with get – mind maps

Print the following mind maps for your students. Go through the pronunciation with them. Once you feel they can pronounce the phrases correctly, ask them to memorise them. It is best to give students about five minutes to learn the phrases on their own.
Get mind map corrected

phrase with GET mind map
Once your students feel they know and understand the phrases, it is time to practise their vocabulary.

Phrases with get – games

To practise the vocabulary, I have prepared three games. All the games are in HTML5 and they will play on desktops and mobile devices.

The first game is called Time Guess. Your task is to write the correct phrase and then stop the countdown at the moment it reaches O (zero). The closer to zero you get the more points you get.

Phrases with Get – Time Guess
The second game is called Dice Game. Your task is to write the correct phrase with GET and then stop the dice to get as many points as possible. For each point on the dice, you get 1 point. However, if both of the dice show the same number, you get 10 points as a bonus.
Phrases with Get – Dice Game ADVERT:
[adinserter block=”2″]
The third game is called Guess the Length. Again, write the correct phrases and then guess how long the line on the screen is. The better guess the more points for you.
Phrases with Get – Guess the Length

Phrases with get – conclusion

Jason from Fluency MC and I hope that you will find the post useful and that you will learn a lot of phrases with GET.

You can´t see me – Michael Rosen
You can´t see me – Michael Rosen

When I published my last post on teaching English with poetry, it was just for fun. The poem was a joke and it was presented in the competition called Britain’s got Talent. It was very motivating for teenagers and I used it to teach some vocabulary.

This post is different. This time, I am going to use a poem by a real, acknowledged poet Michael Rosen. I love his poetry and I would like to share it with my students. Moreover, the poem is great for teaching the prepositions of place.

ADVERT:
[showmyads]

In this post, you will find a listening activity, a grammar dictation and a creative writing activity.

Michael Rosen poem – video

Print the following worksheet and ask the students to listen and put the pictures into the correct order.

Michael Rosen – poem

Check the answers with the students and then ask them to work in pairs and reconstruct the text of the poem.

Give them about five minutes to do this and then tell them to listen again and correct their poems. If necessary, play the poem several times.

In the last activity, students should write their own poem. They should use different prepositions and pieces of furniture to Michael Rosen’s.

It might be a good idea to display the following infographic now and ask the students to use all the prepositions in their poems.

Prepositions of place infographics

Once the students finish writing their poems, they read their poems in pairs and then the most courageous read their pieces in front of the class.

If you would like to exploit the poems more, you can collect the best ones and prepare the listening exercises for them. Or, alternatively, you could ask your students to draw such a listening exercises for their poems themselves.
ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] I think the poem by Michael Rosen is wonderful and it helps students learn the prepositions of place. I think it is worth exploring Michael Rosen´s website for more interesting poems.

Present continuous tense speaking
Present continuous tense speaking

Speaking activities are one of the most popular teaching activities. Students usually like them and they are very useful. However, there are not many speaking activities around. That is the reason why I created several dealing with present continuous tense.

ADVERT:
[showmyads]

In this post, you can find a worksheet with three different speaking activities to practise the present continuous tense. I have tried all the activities in my classes, and they worked very well.

Present continuous tense – speaking

Print the following worksheet and hand out the pages to your students. Make sure that students work in pairs and one of them has got the first page and the other the second one.
Present continuous speaking – worksheet
I usually start my lessons with the second activity – miming. I perform one of the actions and my students have to say what I am doing. Then I perform another and students have to choose from the list on the worksheet the correct sentence. Check that the students understand all the sentences in the section Miming.

Then students work in pairs. One of them performs one of the actions and the other tries to guess it. Once he/she guesses correctly, they swap roles. They go on like this till they perform all the actions or you stop them.

In the first activity, students first complete the questions using IS/ARE/AM. Check their questions and then they try to form the short answers. They form both the YES and NO answers. Again, check their answers.

Students read the questions and circle the answers that are true for them. Then they work in pairs and ask and answer the questions. When they finish this, they change partners. They should change partners at least twice.

The last activity is called War Ships. First, students work in pairs and dictate the underlined sentences to their partner. Demonstrate that they should read the question first and then dictate the sentence. The one who listens has to write the sentence on the line where the question is. Once they dictate all the questions and complete the free squares they cover their worksheet in such a way that their partner cannot see their grid.

ADVERT:
[showmyadsa]

In the grid, they colour 5 squares. They must colour only the answers – not the questions. Now, their task is to discover the squares their partner has coloured. They do so by reading the question and answer they think their partner has coloured. Their partner listens and if they hit the coloured square they admit it by saying HIT. If they miss, they say MISS. Students take turns. The winner is the one who finds the five squares before their partner does.

Present continuous test

As a bonus, I would like to offer a simple grammar test on the present continuous tense. It is simple and it tests the basic things about the present continuous tense.
Present continuous tense – test
50 Ways to Teach Grammar – review
50 Ways to Teach Grammar – review

I have been looking for some great new teaching activities ever since I started teaching. And when I saw the book “50 Ways to Teach Grammar” by Maggie Sokolik offered on Amazon for 1 dollar only, I could not resist and I bought it. In this review I would like to share my opinion on this book and the few activities I found useful and interesting.

First of all I have to say that the book is extremely short. I was able to finish reading it in 45 minutes and I am not a quick reader. But I am not complaining. The description clearly stated that this book has just 64 pages and for one dollar I did not expect much.

Even though the book is short I still managed to find several activities which I would like to try in my classroom.

50 Ways to Teach Grammar – activities

The first activity I liked is called Active/Passive. First, ask the students to find 5 sentences in a material they have read recently. I think that it would be ideal to ask students to look for the sentences in a text they have just read in their textbook. As you will use this activity when you teach passive, the texts in your textbook are likely to contain the right kind of sentences. The sentences must contain just one clause.

Ask your students to identify, whether the sentences are active or passive. If they are active, students should write them in passive and vice versa. Then collect their sentences and check them. There should be some follow up activity, but Ms. Sokolik does not suggest any.

Another activity I found useful is called Phrasal Verbs bingo. Hand out the following bingo card to every student.
phrasal-verb-bingo
(The picture comes from http://anglofile.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/phrasal-verb-bingo.jpg)
Start the activity and your students have to write 3 sentences using the phrasal verbs with speak. The sentences must use the words in one row or column.

When they finish, they run to you and you check the sentences. If they are correct the student wins.

The third activity which I am going to use in my classroom is a nice starter to teaching articles. Prepare a short text and delete all the articles. Now dictate the text and ask the students to fill in the missing words. Then try to elicit the usage of articles.

The fourth interesting idea is called Put the Apple in the Basket. After teaching prepositions of place bring some containers and ask your students to use some real objects all of them have. Now, give instructions like “Put the book in your bag.” “Put your pen on your desk.” Once your students do these correctly, ask them to work in pairs and give the instructions to their partner.

The fifth activity I like is called I´ve never. It is a very useful activity when you teach the present perfect tense and you need some more speaking activities. Students write 5 sentences starting with I´ve never and then read them to the rest of the class. Other students listen and note down the numbers of the sentences they think that are not true.

50 Ways to Teach Grammar – comments

I was able to find 5 interesting ideas in the book which I am going to use. You might find more ideas there, especially if you are new to teaching. However, there is one real problem with this book. All the activities are just raw ideas.

The author does not mention any follow up ideas and what you should and should not do once the activity finishes. Moreover, some of the activities are not suitable for large classes but Maggie Sokolik never says so in her book.

Therefore, if you are a novice teacher you might find out that many of the activities do not work for you, because of there are no classroom management and lesson planning tips.

50 Ways to Teach Grammar – summary

All in all the book “50 Ways to Teach Grammar” is not bad for 1 dollar. There are some interesting ideas and none really bad ones. I mention the most interesting ideas above. The biggest problem is that the ideas are just ideas and there are not classroom management tips or lesson plans.

A SOME THE ANY AN
A SOME THE ANY AN

When you teach the concept of countability in English, students have to learn to use the words A, SOME, THE, ANY, AN in front of the nouns correctly. To decide correctly, students have to take several mental steps.In this post I explain the mental process and I offer your students a chance to practise it in several games.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] In this post you will find a simple infographic, which explains the thinking process. Moreover, there are three brand new games in which students can practise the grammar.

A SOME THE ANY AN – infographic

To decide correctly which word should be used in front of the given noun, students should ask the following questions in this order:
A SOME THE ANY AN infographic

If the students have already spoken about the thing, then we have to use the article THE. If not, then they have to ask whether the noun is in plural or uncountable. If any of the answers is Yes, then two more questions have to be asked. Is the sentence a request or an affirmative sentence? If the answer is YES, then SOME have to be used. If the answer is NO, then ANY have to be used.

If the noun is not in plural or uncountable, then A or AN is used. AN is used if a vowel is pronounced at the beginning of the noun. Otherwise A is used.

The process might seem a bit complicated when you read the text, but my students found it very easy when they could use the infographic.

A SOME THE ANY AN – games

To practise the grammar, I created three brand new games. All the games are in HTML5 and they will play on desktops and mobile devices.

The first game is called Shooting Game. Your task is to read the sentence and shoot the correct answer. To shoot the word, just click it. Speed matters and you will see your score at the end of the game. Will you be better than me?

Shooting Game

The second game is called Dice Game. Your task is to type A, SOME, THE, ANY or AN (do not use the capital letters) and then stop the dice. The more points the dice show the more points you get. Moreover, if both the dice show the same number, you get a bonus – 10 points.

Dice Game
ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] The third game is called Time Guess. Your task is to complete the sentence with the correct word and then click the button STOP at the moment you think the countdown got to zero. The closer to zero you get the more points you get.

Time Guess

Poll – Which game do you like best?

Which game do you like best?

Irregular verbs practice
Irregular verbs practice

Recently, I have been reading a book about learning and memory. It contains a lot of facts, but the longer I read it the more it seems obvious that there is only one way to learn anything. And that is by learning. To sum it up, all the research shows that the more time you spend learning, the more you learn. It seems there is no easy way around it.

Advert:
[showmyads]

In my teaching I have devised a lot of methods to make the learning easier for my students. Even though many of the materials are interesting and helped many of my students learn a lot of things, I have avoided overloading them with a lot of practice. I made a mistake. Only the practice makes perfect and the students should be given as many chances to practise the language as possible.

In this post, I would like to partially repay the debt. This post contains 10 quizzes in which the students can learn 90 irregular verbs. Each quiz contains a short activity where students should supply the past tense and past participle of the given verb. The second part contains sentences which should be completed with the past participles and past tenses of the ten verbs practised before.

At the end of each test the students are asked to provide their names and they can compare their results with other students.

All the tests will work on desktops and mobile devices. I hope you will find these quizzes useful and your students will learn a lot.

Irregular verbs – quizzes

[otw-bm-list id=”1″]
Verb to be – questions and answers
Verb to be – questions and answers

It is a well accepted fact that students remember things better if they discover them for themselves. However, it is a real challenge to design our materials in such a way that we allow the students to discover the rules. I have tried to create such materials for my students and they were really successful. While last year my students often formed the questions wrongly, this year they claim it is really easy.

ADVERT:
[showmyads]

In this post I am going to share with you a worksheet with the two activities that will help your students discover the rules how to form questions and short answers with the verb to be in the present simple tense. Moreover, there is a quiz where your students can practise the grammar.

Verb to be – questions and short answers

Print the following worksheet in colour and hand out the first page. Go through the sentences and ask the students to translate them.

Verb to BE forming questions and short answers

Then tell your students to form questions in the squares under the sentences. Do not help your students for two or three minutes. Let them discover the logic for themselves. After the couple of minutes go around the classroom and help the struggling students. Show them a question or two and I am sure they will understand the principle.

Check the questions at the end of the exercise.

Now, hand out the second page. Once again, give your students a few minutes to complete as much as they can in the worksheet. Then, help the students by saying that to complete it correctly they need to use the table on the right and show them one sentence as an example. Then go around and help the struggling students.

Check the answers at the end.

And now your students know how to form the questions and answers.

Verb to be – quiz

The following quiz can help your students practise questions and short answers with the verb to be in the present simple tense either at school or at home. At the beginning, students should complete the questions and short answers. In the second part, students have to put the words into the correct order to form the questions. The students will be rewarded with a game if they pass. The quiz is in HTML5, so it will play on all desktops and mobile devices.

ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] Verb to be – quiz

Present perfect tense activities
Present perfect tense activities

The present perfect tense is one of the most difficult tenses for learners of English. It is not easy to form the tense correctly as you need the verb HAVE or HAS and the past participle. Moreover, the usage is very specific and many students feel that they could do with the past simple tense only. Thus teaching this tense is not easy.

ADVERT:
[showmyads]

In this post I do not aim to explain anything about the present perfect tense. Here, I would like to share a set of activities to help you teach this tense. You will find here two speaking activities and a worksheet with five more activities to help your students master the present perfect tense.

Present perfect tense – speaking activities

The following worksheet contains two speaking activities. I have tried both of them in my classes and they worked very well.

The first activity is a very simple one. It should be used if your students know just how to form the present perfect tense and you want to practise it with them. Print the first exercise and cut it in the middle. The students have to write whether they HAVE or HAVE NOT done the activities in the pictures. (Check that the students form the tense correctly).
Then students work in pairs and read their sentences to their partners. They listen and tick the activities their partner has done.

In the last phase students write the sentences about their partner.

The second activity is called Clock speaking. I has been very successful in my classes and it always leads to a lot of speaking in English.

Print the second page of the worksheet and hand it out. In the first part students have to arrange a partner for each time. Set the following rules:

  1. You may have only one person for each time.
  2. Write the name of your partner next to the time.
  3. You cannot have the same person on the paper twice.

Do not worry about the chaos. In the end there will be some people who will not have a partner for one or two of the times. Elicit the times and pair the students yourself.

Then call out one of the times. The students find their partner for the time and ask the questions for the given time. They ask the questions in italics only if their partner answers yes to the first question (emphasize this). After a couple of minutes call another time.

Present perfect tense – speaking

Present perfect tense – worksheet

The following worksheet contains 5 activities. They are based on the verbs contained in the fifth Unit of the textbook Project 3 (third edition) by Oxford University Press. The activities are in random order and you can order them in any way you like.

The first activity is a crossword. Students should fill in the past participle of the verbs.

The second activity is a gap fill. Students should choose the correct option for each sentence.

In the third activity students should fill in HAVE or HAS.

In the fourth activity students have to write the past participle of each verb.
ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] In the fifth activity students have to complete the text either with the present perfect tense or the past simple tense.

Present perfect tense – worksheet

Present perfect tense – links

If you need a mind map and a video, you will find them at Present perfect post.
If you decide to teach the activities above, certainly start with the following song.

Young learners write a letter
Young learners write a letter

This is my first post on writing. I have not written a post on writing because my students do not like to write and I felt that the textbook activities were enough for them. However, as I have to observe my younger colleagues, it so happened that I saw them teaching the same thing twice. And as I got bored I started to create a lesson that I would teach using the same topic. And this post is the result of the activity.
ADVERT:
[showmyads] The aims of the lesson are these:

  1. To write a letter about their favourite toy with young learners.
  2. To learn some basic phrases for writing a letter.
  3. To practise their reading skills.

To achieve these objectives, I have prepared a reading activity, a vanishing drill and a worksheet with several exercises. I hope you find them useful.

Writing a letter – reading

Print the following set of letters. Cut them and place each letter around the classroom.

Eight letters for young learners

Print the following worksheet. You need to print it in colour, otherwise your learners will not be able to complete the first task.

Writing a letter worksheet

Hand out the worksheet and tell the students to take their pens and walk around the classroom, read each letter and write whose toys are in the pictures. Students can cooperate and help each other here. This activity takes about ten minutes.

Check their answers in the end.

Writing a letter – vanishing drill

To teach the key phrases, I have prepared the following vanishing drill. Display the first slide and read each sentence aloud. Ask your students to repeat after you. Read the slide at least twice.

Display the second slide. Now, some words are missing. Ask the students to read the slide aloud (all of them at once). They have to say the words that are not there, too. Go on displaying more slides. Each time several new words vanish.

In this way, your students will learn to pronounce the words correctly and they will memorise the basic phrases from the presentation.

Writing a letter vanishing drill

ADVERT:
[showmyadsa]

Writing a letter

After finishing the drill, ask your learners to complete the exercise two on their worksheet.

Check their answers and now ask them to think about their favourite toy. Elicit a few descriptions of their favourite toy and now tell them that they have to write a letter about their favourite toy.

Collect their letters at the end of the lesson and correct them. Ask the students to bring the toy they wrote about into the next lesson.

In the following lesson, ask the students to place their favourite toy on their desks. Choose several letters, read them aloud and students have to say who wrote the letter.