Class run websites and wikis are the fashionable new learning tool that many educators are talking about.  From Shelly Terrell (a guest on the digitalplay blog) to Renata Wilmot at bell campus who led a workshop on using weebly.com websites. But so many attempts at using google groups, wikis, forums and websites run by your students simply never work (or at best only work initially).

Most, including my own initial attempts at using such websites don’t work for one of 3 reasons.

1. Capability: – Students need to be capable of maintaining the website (or the teacher needs to be). Many teachers simply don’t have time to maintain a website for each of their classes on top of their other commitments. Other teachers don’t have the technological knowhow to do so. Students often have the same problems. Either they don’t have the language capabilities or they don’t have the computer skills to make such a website work (especially with young learners).
2. Motivation: – Students or teachers simply aren’t interested or are otherwise unmotivated to use or run the website
3. Constructive:- students don’t benefit from having the website (specifically that they don’t improve their English by using or making it)

Capability

One of the biggest mistakes teachers make when setting up such sites for their students is that they over-estimate their students’ technological capabilities. A tiny number of your students will ever have made a post on wikipedia or otherwise run their own website aside from a Myspace or facebook page. Giving a class a web address and telling them what to do simply won’t work. You must be prepared to spend some lesson time on the website initially.

Motivation

Primarily this is about knowing your students. The website is essentially extra-curricular in most cases and thus students need to be motivated to do it. Are your students likely to find the idea of running their own class website exciting or boring? This leads on to the last point…

Constructive

What do you want your students to gain from the website. If you work in a secondary school and your primary aim is that students learn how to run their own website then you need to think more closely about their motivation for doing so. If your primary aim is for students to improve their English then you need to think about how they are going to do this by running the site. Specifically it brings about questions of error correction. Someone will need to check that the website is being used as it should be, that common errors are not reinforced and other time-consuming formatting details.

How to:

Once you’ve thought about the points above and how you’re going to tackle them, you’ll need to set up the website. I’m not going to lie, the first time you do this it will be time-consuming. I like wikispaces it follows the simple and familiar layout of wikipedia and other wikis, it’s free, has no ads, it’s easy to view who has changed the website and undo changes. You can register a wikispace for education at the link above. Create the basic sections or pages of the site so that it is ready for your students to use. Then you need to create accounts for your students. This is actually really easy using wikispaces for educators as it has a “create users” function under the “manage wiki” section. You can simply copy and paste your class registers into the box and then create some simple passwords (names backwards for example). You don’t need students’ email addresses and all the users are created in one go.

introducing the website

plan to spend some lesson time with the class. Give them a handout with the wiki address, their username and their password on it so they don’t loose it. The handout could then contain some very simple tasks to familiarize students with the wiki and what to do. E.g. “Sign in”, click the “edit” button and write a sentence about yourself, don’t forget to click “save” (it’s important the students succeed in writing something on the wiki, however small, whilst in class). Perhaps follow this with some comprehension questions based on the template you’ve created (what do you write on the “my english page”, where can you write your new words etc). This is best done with pairs on a computer rather than the whole class in the computer room since a whole class of people editing at exactly the same time often leads to messy and incomplete saves. I usually then set some compulsory homework after this first session to back-up what the students have done and ensure that everyone is capable of contributing. After this the task is to maintain the momentum

Long term contributions

Encouraging long-term contributions from the class is often the hardest part. First of all be very clear with the students about the aim of the website. Explain to them how exactly it will be useful to them and explain that the website will only be as good as they make it. The website should also be fun and interesting for students to make (especially with young learners whose main motivation in class is having fun rather than the self-awareness that the learning itself is important for them). I also rotate “moderators”, a student whose job it is to correct any mistakes and ensure that there is new content, every week or month.

An Example

http://avo-bell.wikispaces.com

Class is pre-intermediate (A2.2) 11 and 12 year olds

Students motivation is that they get their own website run by themselves with minimal input from the teacher. They get to write about things that they are interested in. They get to share their interests and ideas with students in other classes. They get to share their new words (less work for them). They get a self-made revision section to revise for tests.

Benefits: Initially the idea was simply to encourage students to write in English outside the classroom (since many students already read or listen to English). They also gain a self-awareness of errors since they take it in turn to be moderators and correct the mistakes of their classmates (observed by the teacher who makes any necessary changes). There are numerous other advantages such as collaboration and a sense of purpose for their language learning.

Ideas for your class wikis

• A word list updated by students
• revision pages for each chapter in your textbook (again made by students)
• a discussion forum (wikis automatically include a discussion forum for each page)
• Record when students use their language outside of the classroom (like a testimonial)
• give students a platform to write in English
• share useful websites and games for language learning with your students
• give notices to your students

Has anyone else tried setting up a class website? Did it work? If not what went wrong? If yes what do you use it for. Please let me know in the comments below

In part two of the speaking exam at CAE students speak for one minute uninterrupted whilst comparing and contrasting two or three given pictures as well as answering the questions given.

Students biggest downfall here is a fondness for descriptive language (simply describing what they see in the pictures) when the examiner is looking for the more advanced language of speculation  (and comparison).

Pre-speaking task

brainstorm useful expressions for speculating and encourage them to start with one of these expressions rather than describing what’s in the pictures. It’s possible, Maybe,  subject + could + present perfect, subject + could + be, It’s quite likely that, etc.

Just a minute

Aims

1. to get students used to speaking under pressure like they will have to in the exam (but in a relaxed game atmosphere)
2. to familiarise students with the time constraint of 1 minute
3. to encourages students to demonstrate a wide vocabulary

Explain the rules of the BBC radio 4 programme “just a minute”. Comedians have to talk for 1 minute on a given topic without

• Repetition (of any word)
• Hesitation (pauses or fillers like “errr”)
• Deviation (talking about something outside the topic)

If another competitor hears the speaker break one of the these rules they are allowed to interrupt and continue with the same topic for the remaining seconds. The winner is whoever is speaking when the minute ends (regardless of how long they’ve actually been speaking for). Play a youtube clip of the programme. I like this one since it is fairly brief and deals with the cultural topic of accents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikHeWjIbcXk&NR=1v=ikHeWjIbcXk&NR=1 (audio only)

Once finished you can explain that the first man has a southern American accent (often called a drawl) and the second man is from Newcastle, a city in the north of England which certainly isn’t posh.

Tell the students they’re going to play the game. Give the students and easy topic “My favourite (film/band/place)” or something similar since they will probably find the game quite difficult. Students tend to enjoy the game a lot but are initially reluctant to interrupt their classmates. Reassure them by telling them that their classmates will probably be quite relieved to be interrupted if they are hesitating or struggling for something to say. Nevertheless the teacher can always stop the speaker when they hear them break a rule and then nominate another student. Try to ensure changeovers happen quickly and do not pause the timer. If you do not have a countdown timer you can use this one here and simply change the time to 1 (rather than 60).

Snap - To develop a wide range of vocabulary to describe feelings

Feelings vocabulary is a common in the second part of the question in this task (“Say what each person might be feeling”).  Find some photos of people expressing different emotions and either print them as flashcards or save the files and use them as a slide-show. Some example images include “soldier crying“, “marriage ceremony“, “exam“, “skydiver jumping“, “start of hundred metre race” etc.

Tell students they are going to secretly write down a word or phrase (not a sentence) to describe how the person or people in the picture might be feeling. When finished students compare with their team-mate (partner) to see if they have the same word. If the word is the same then the team is eliminated, if not the students write down another word in secret and repeat. The winning team is the team that has the most different words to describe what they might be feeling (or you could stop after 4 or 5 words and move on to the next picture). When comparing encourage students to use language of speculation to make a sentence rather than simply reading their word of showing their partner. e.g. “They’re probably be a bit on edge“.

Variation The game could also be played as a whole class like the popular packing memory game. Student one chooses an expression to speculate what the person or people in the picture might be feeling “he could be feeling sad”, student two then repeats what student 1 has said but adds their own feeling word to the end “he might be feeling sad and/or stressed”, student 3 repeats what student 2 said and adds a third feeling adjective to the end “he may be feeling sad and/or stressed and/or distraught” and so on. The game can be quite a challenging memory feat.

Step 1.  Get a box (i use a shoe box because my girlfriend buys lots of shoes). A large envelope, (plastic) bag or plastic pocket from a folder will do fine. You will need one for each group/level you teach.

Step 2. Get some paper (or card if you have it), it only has to be blank on one side so you can use scrap paper (and save the environment), cut the paper into strips/rectangles big enough to comfortably write a word or phrase that’s a legible size.

Step 3. Write the new words or phrases from each lesson on the pieces of paper (one word on each slip). You can do this yourself or you can give your students a slip of paper each at the end of the lesson and ask them to write a new word from the lesson on the slip. Then collect them and discard any words which appear more than once, keeping the rest in your vocab box (which can stay in your classroom or staff room).

Headlines (Thanks to Rebecca Hudson at Bell Teacher Campus 2010)

Bring in some example (tabloid) newspaper headlines or write a couple on the board. Ask the students what tense they are in (usually present simple), ask them if the grammar is simple or complex (simple, lack of articles and auxiliaries etc). Have the students take one or two words per pair from the vocabulary box (or more although the more words per pair the harder the activity gets). Then get them to create their own newspaper headline using the word(s) they have been given (putting the new vocabulary into a sentence). The headline can be real or silly but the students then have to decide what the story is about (putting the headline into a context). Once each pair is finished have someone from each pair read out the headline and summarise the story for the rest of the class (checking understanding of the vocabulary in the headline). Encourage students to ask questions about the story.

Articulate

Articulate is a popular game in the UK, the original (slightly more complicated) version is available to buy here although even the most advanced students will find most of the game quite hard especially if their general knowledge is poor. Instead you can use words from the vocab box. Students have to describe the word to their partners without saying the word on the piece of paper, their partner tries to guess the word.

Miming (Thanks to Lindsay Warwick at Bell Teacher Campus 2010)

Students have to mime or act out the word on the slip of paper without speaking, their partners (or the whole class) then has to guess the word (it is better in pairs since there is less of an audience for the actor and more student participation). This will work much better if the words on the pieces of paper are verbs (so a little preparation is required to find some mime-able verbs from the box beforehand.

Pictionary (Thanks in part to Lindsay Warwick at Bell Teacher Campus 2010)

Students have to draw the word on their piece of paper (no writing and no talking), their partner then has to guess the word being drawn. An online interactive version of this game is available here although much of the vocabulary is quite advanced and it also includes famous people and slang words.

Picture Dictation (Apologies this was from a wonderful workshop on dictations by a lady at Bell Teacher Campus 2010 although it seems I have not written down her name)

The teacher will have to prepare some words from the vocabulary box on a given theme, adjectives work nicely for this exercise. Examples include character adjectives, words to describe buildings, furniture etc. Ask students to draw their favourite place, their bedroom, their childhood idol (depending on the level and the vocabulary theme). It works best if there is a story behind the picture so asking students to think of their childhood or something from a holiday is a good idea. Give the students 2-5mins for their drawing. Once finished dictate the words on the slips of paper and ask students to write down the word if it fits their picture and ask them to write it on the picture in the most appropriate place (if the drawing is of their favourite holiday and the word is “relaxing”, the student might write it next to the sunbathers on the beach…assuming they drew a beach holiday). Once 20 or so words have been dictated (and each student has at least 3 or 4 words written on their picture) ask the students to tell their partner about the picture using the words they have written down. The teacher may need to check students have written the words correctly and in an appropriate place before this starts and continue to monitor the students throughout the pairwork to ensure correct usage of the vocabulary.

Buzzwords

Give students one word on a slip of paper and get them to start a simple speaking exercise in pairs(role-play an interview, telling their partner about their weekend etc) The students have to use their word at any point during the activity. Stop the activity after a minute or so. Students get a point if they managed to use their word during the exercise and their partner gets a point if they can guess the word that was used (so maximum 2 points each). Coach students on good strategies for the game. i.e. It’s a bad idea to pause, look at your paper and then immediately say the word in context where it doesn’t quite fit… however it’s a good idea to use many new words (since it will make it harder for your partner to guess the word on your paper).

Swine/Bird flu dictation (or any other fashionable illness) (I think this was from Lindsay Warwick Bell Teacher Campus 2010)

Students take a word from the vocab box and produce a sentence using the new word. However instead of saying the word on the slip of paper the student coughs or sneezes (or makes a beep noise if your students are wary of coughs and sneezes) to produce a blank. The student then produces two more different sentences using the word (complete with coughs) and the other student writes down the sentences, replacing the cough with the appropriate word if they can guess it.

Questions (again from Lindsay at the Bell Teacher Campus 2010)

The teacher prepares some questions separate slips of paper, these should be open-ended and provide opportunity for a variety of answers. What did you do last year? what will the world be like in 1000 years? and my personal favourite “why did the chicken cross the road?” and so on. Students work in pairs or small groups. Student one picks a question at random and student 2 chooses a random word (or 2 for more advanced groups) from the vocabulary box. Student 2 then has to answer the question by creating a sentence (or 2 or 3) using the word(s) from the vocab box. e.g. Why did the chicken cross the road? The chicken planned to cross the road yesterday but decided to implement its plan to escape the peckish fox today…(from a C1 level group although the activity will easily work with lower levels). Once again from Lindsay Warwick

What am I?

Put some blue-tack (or tape) on the back of some new words from a given topic (animals, jobs etc) and stick a new word on each students’ back or forehead (so that they can’t see the word). Students then stand up and move around the class trying to find out what word they have by asking questions to other class members (nobody is allowed to say any of the words on the pieces of paper). Students should ask 1 question only before finding a new person to ask (this ensures all students see all the new words rather than just one if students work in pairs). Once a student is confident they know what word is on their head or back they put their hand up or run to the teacher and say the word. This works with abilities from Elementary (if the topic is for example animals and they already know how to ask what colour are they?, how many legs have they got? etc) to Advanced.

Bingo

I suspect most teachers have used this game in the EFL classroom at some point. Here’s some things to remember. The game should provide links between meanings and words. This means students write down words and the teacher shows flashcards, or students draw pictures and the teacher says the word, or students write down words and the teacher gives definitions. If students write down words and the teacher says them, what are the students really practising? Certainly not vocabulary since they don’t need to understand a word to know when someone is saying it (I could probably play this bingo in Spanish and I don’t speak Spanish!) It becomes a basic listening exercise which might be useful for highlighting minimal pairs in pronunciation (“He’s” and “His” for example) but not for revising vocabulary. Why not get students to take it in turns to play the bingo caller (practising their pronunciation of the words too).

(from Lindsay Warwick’s tweet https://twitter.com/Linzsw)

The website http://www.memorize.com offers you the chance to make customisable vocabulary activities. You can then use the vocabulary you put in to play matching  games or multiple choice quizzes (or flashcards).  The best feature of the multiple choice mode is that it repeats items you get wrong later on. At its simplest you can use the “Table Wizard” to match words to definitions but there are many other things you can do:

Matching pictures to words using the “Image Wizard”

Matching labels to a diagram using the “Diagram Wizard”  (here it’s a family tree but it could also be used for body parts or labelling parts of a graph if you teach Business English etc)

Grammatical gap-fill exercises by using the “Image Wizard” or “Table Wizard” and then editing to add extra pictures and text. Here is a picture to explain how to further edit the tables (using the code from the example above)

They are all easy to make, don’t require you to save anything on your computer or even sign-up (although it’s better if you do sign-up, it’s free and it’s then easier to keep track of your creations).

Once finished they’re saved online, you can give students the web address of your memorize homepage (http://www.memorize.com/home/username) which will contain a list of all the things you’ve created. Students can then use it to practise vocabulary at home. If you have a computer room you could use them in class too.

Hangman?

I tend not to use this activity very often, basically because I don’t think it’s very good. It doesn’t provide revision of meaning or words in context. Hangman, at best, provides mindless spelling practise and at worst wastes time. It’s often done as a whole class where single students call out single letters (often at random) and once the word is finally guessed, it’s erased from the board in a matter of seconds. Does this really provide students with spelling practise? Even if done in pairs it is a time-consuming way of practising spelling (by guessing letters from a word in a random order).

• + (that) + clause   [the "say" structure] e.g. He explained that he had already tried that
• + Direct Object + (that) + clause  [the "tell" structure] e.g. He convinced me that doing homework was worthwhile
• + direct object + to + infinitive      e.g. she reminded me to pack my toothbrush
• + gerund/-ing form [everything here can also be in the first group]  e.g. he admitted killing the King
• +to + Infinitive [for actions/requests/promises etc] e.g. they agreed to help with my application
• +preposition + gerund   e.g. I insisted on doing the washing up
• + direct object + preposition + gerund   e.g. They accused me of stealing from work

A fairly comprehensive list of reporting verbs and their structures can be found
here or here

Activity

Use a short clip of a film, a TV programme or a short video dialogue ideally one where a large variety of reporting verbs can be used. I often use this one as it has a huge variety of reporting verbs available although it is probably more suited to young adults or teenagers since the video is a mock police-interview of Sesame street character Grover (Elmer has been murdered).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q0V4TXozaE

Put the students into pairs and have one student from each pair leave the room (If this is not possible in your school you can alter this and do it as a whole class activity). Tell the remaining students they are going to watch a very important film (tell them to imagine it is a crucial scene in a film), but their friend has gone to collect your takeaway pizza from downstairs (or making popcorn or…), the remaining students need to watch and take detailed notes about what happens and especially what is said so that they can tell their friend when he/she comes back. Play the first half of the video (up to where the detective starts punching Grover), then pause and ask the rest of the class to come back in (you could introduce feedback before inviting the students back in if the watching students found the video difficult to understand). The students who saw the video then tell their partners what happened and what was said (using a wide variety of reporting verbs). The teacher monitors and makes corrections where errors are directly related to use of reporting verbs.
Students swap (the other students go outside) and the process is repeated with the second half of the video.

Follow-up

students work in pairs to produce a formal summary of the events (for the independent police complaints commission). They can then practise producing passive structures (for verbs which have a direct object) and other formal language (vocabulary, use of nouns to replace verbs etc). Encourage students to include the actions from video as well as the speech e.g. The suspect was offered some cigarettes, The suspect was assaulted by the interrogating officer.

Future Activities

During oral activities in class (particularly oral activities of a problem-solving nature) have students discuss in pairs. Then ask one person from each pair to stand up and move clockwise around the classroom (so that each standing student has moved to a new partner). Tell the students to feedback their ideas from their previous partners before adding anything new and perhaps reaching new conclusions. Remind students of the different reporting verbs they know to relate what was discussed in their previous group.

Activity 1: to help students remember which verbs take the infinitive and which take the -ing form

The term gerund and participle are both used to describe the -ing form of the verb with slightly different definitions (the gerund having a noun-like function and the participle having a verb like function). This distinction is largely useless to your students. Whether they call it the -ing, the gerund or a participle, the important thing is that students can use it correctly. I usually refer to it as a gerund for this activity since most of my students are familiar with the term and this activity works well if the -ing form is given a “name”.
Students use their notes on gerunds and infinitives (either from the text-book, from a written text or from their own notes) to form newspaper headlines using the verbs correctly followed by gerund or infinitive. However, if they are using the gerund the person or subject of the headline must also begin with a /j/ sound. Likewise if they are using the infinitive the person should begin with an /i/ sound.

Encourage students to use their notes to check as it is important to get it right first time for this activity and encourage students to make their headlines realistic, memorable or both. Students often find it easier to remember whether a verb takes the gerund or infinitive by associating it with the memorable headlines rather than remembering lists of verbs.

Activity 2: To provide practise using a variety of verbs followed by -ing or -infinitive

Play the game consequences. Each student is given a piece of blank paper and writes the first part of a story. Everyone then folds over the paper so that the writing is concealed and passes it to the person on their right, who writes the next part of the story before folding over the paper and passing it on again. Once the story is finished the last student unfolds the paper and reads the often amusing story. Remind the students before the exercise that they are practising verbs followed by -ing forms or infinitives so you don’t want nouns after the verbs (“He demanded…their wallets”) . The instructions given by the teacher might be:

1. Once upon a time (write the name of character one) was walking in the park he/she (student then folds the paper concealing their writing and the paper is then passed to the next person)
2. …met (character two) and they (student folds the paper over and writes “decided…” under the fold so that only the word “decided” is visible to the next person, the paper is then passed on).
3. (complete the sentence correctly using -ing or infinitive) but then they met (character 3) and he/she (student folds the paper over and writes “suggested…” under the fold so that only the word “suggested” is visible to the next person, the paper is then passed on).
4. (student completes the sentence  correctly using -ing or infinitive, not with an object). Finally they all (fold) agreed… (pass paper)
5. (complete sentence) but an old man/woman (fold) demanded (pass)
6. (complete the sentence) luckily they (fold) managed (pass)
7. (complete sentence) …etc
8. Finally they all went to (place) and (finish story e.g. they lived happily ever after)

Of course there are many other verbs you could use to extend or change the story (a list is available here). Once complete the students should read the stories individually or in pairs and correct any mistakes with -ing or infinitives before reading them out to the class (ask the rest of the class to listen and make corrections if there are still mistakes with -ing or infinitive).

Technorati Tags: TEFL, TESOL, English, GrammarTeaching

Before the lesson

Find out what is expected at the school in terms of:

• the textbooks, do students have their own, can they write in them?
• homework, how much homework is given to students?
• As much background on the group as possible, the level, the age range, the size of the class and problems with individual students (their strengths and weaknesses)
• What is appropriate regarding discipline (especially with young learners), are children sent outside? given extra homework? are their parents phoned?
• how long is the lesson? do the students have breaks?
• is food and drink allowed in the classroom? is smoking?

Remember

Everyone is nervous in a first lesson, the teacher is often nervous with new students and likewise the students are nervous with a new teacher and new classmates. The primary aim is to set tone for future lessons by being enthusiastic and encouraging participation. Also it’s a bonus if you are able to gauge the ability of the group, their strengths and weaknesses.

Things to do

• Introduce yourself, tell the students your name and write it on the board. Make sure the students are in the right class.
• If all the students are on time, go through the rules for the classroom. Explain both why the rule is important and what will happen if the rule is not followed. This is important for all age ranges. Suggested rules are:

1. Communication is in English not in L1 regardless of the activity. Talking in L1 might save the students time but it wastes an opportunity to practise and improve spoken English. For adults the consequences might simply be that they won’t improve as much. For children alternative consequences for talking in L1 might be required. e.g. Losing points, their name on the board, a sad face in their book, no games at the end of a lesson.
2. Don’t be late. If students are late they obviously miss out but they also stop students who are on-time from progressing as the first activity has to be explained multiple times to each late-comer.
3. Mobile phones. I allow mobile phones in class, some people have important jobs and might need to answer their phones. Likewise children’s parents might phone them with important information. I don’t allow people to chat on their phones unless it is an important conversation (a child’s parent or a student’s boss), it’s rude and it interrupts lessons. You could teach this as part of British culture (you simply would not walk out of a meeting to talk on your phone without an explanation in the UK).
4. Homework. Explain that homework is important for consolidating work that is done in class and that students won’t progress unless they put some effort in outside of the classroom. Emphasise that all homework is equally important (copying new words for young children, non-exam format exercises in exam preparation classes, writings and research homework). Again consequences should be clear for young learners who do not do homework.
5. Participation in class. I do not mind students asking why we are doing a particular activity in class (the aims of activities should be transparent to learners anyway). I do insist on participation whether it is a student who refuses to do written activities and “thinks” about them instead, a student who refuses to stand up and participate in language games or a student who prefers to “listen” rather than speak in oral activities. Explain that every activity is important and that we wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.
6. Tolerance. Students should be tolerant of others whether it is a weak student, or simply views that differ from their own. Everyone should feel positive about being in class in order to fulfil their potential.
7. Materials. Tell students what they are expected to bring to each class. A pen, pencil, rubber, notebook, vocabulary book?, textbook?, homework book etc. Ensure that students keep a record of the work that is done and don’t leave it behind, throw it away or lose it.

Young learners should be told or even agree on the consequences for not following each rule and the agreed consequences should be strictly followed. Letting students off “just this once” encourages students to rule-break since there is a lack of consequences, it breeds accusations of not being fair and it loses the respect of students.

Activities

I find 90% of students will sit in more or less the same as they sat in the first lesson every week. Particularly in the first lesson but also at regular points throughout the course students are encouraged to swap places. In the first lesson students changes places after each activity. I personally don’t use all the activities below for each lesson. Warm-up and getting to know you activities are great but there comes a point when it’s no longer beneficial to students and it’s time to learn something new or perhaps open the course book!

• write lots of short pieces of information about yourself on the board, your age, your home town, your favourite food, your hobby, the last place you went on holiday. Have students come up with grammatical questions that fit the answers on the board S: “how old are you?” T: “I’m 23″ (circle answer on the board). Then have a student play the role of teacher and write information about themselves on the board or alternatively ask students to do the same in pairs
• True or false. Write sentences about yourself on the board that are either true or false. “I once swam 10,000m when I was 16 years old” (true), “I support Manchester Utd” (false). Ask students to work in pairs to discuss whether they think the statements are true or false. Then have a student play the role of the teacher or alternatively ask students to do the same in pairs
• Give students 2 minutes  to think of an adjective beginning with the same sound as the first sound of their name. e.g. sensible Simon or sensational Simon or silly Simon. Tell them that if possible the word should describe themselves in some way. Go round the class and ask students to say their adjective followed by their first name. This is a great way of remembering names and monitoring students vocabulary levels.
• Have you ever? An alternative to the popular drinking game “I have never…” Students think of one thing that they’ve done that they don’t think anyone else in the class will have done. It could be a country they’ve been to, an activity they’ve tried, a film they’ve seen. Everyone stands up and asks each person in the class “have you ever…” if they successfully find something they’ve done that no-one else has then they can sit down. Great for showing present perfect tense for the class to find out interesting things about each other.
• Give students a piece of paper with a number of different objects on them from a variety of different vocabulary sets and levels ranging from a fish, a lightbulb, a cactus, a chessboard, a clock, a magnifying glass, a teddy bear… Ask students to decide which picture best describes their character and to come up with a short explanation why.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. If I missed something or you have some more ideas let me know.

Technorati Tags: TEFL, TESOL, English, Teaching

Here is a useful activity for practising the 3rd conditional for hypothetical past situations. It assumes students are already, at least partially, familiar with the use and form of the 3rd conditional.

The lesson is taken from the blog TurklishTefl. It centres around the youtube video God is a DJ (or below). The video features a “butterfly effect” or chain of events and the lesson revolves around getting students to discuss what might have happened if, for example, the lady had not dropped the bag with the ball. The full lesson plan from TurklishTefl is available here

Or you can download it by copying the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfX-s4dcYBg
into a Youtube Downloader (click “enter a link”, copy and paste the youtube video web address and then choose a suitable file type)

Technorati Tags: TEFL, TESOL, English, Grammar, Teaching

Independent learning for young learners? Surely young learners are simply not mature enough to want to do extra English homework without being asked. Why would they?

There a number of motivational problems when it comes to learning English for young learners. Namely they often do not have the foresight to see that it is useful to them for anything other than getting good grades in school. You can try to explain to an 11 yr old or even an 8 yr old that maybe when they’re 25 they’ll have better employment and promotion prospects if they can communicate in a global language but it might be easier to offer young learners an alternative motivation.

Students don’t practise English outside the classroom primarily because

1. The number of new words and structures in authentic texts is daunting and makes reading difficult
2. The texts in their textbook are boring
3. As far as they are concerned they have nothing to gain from learning English besides improved grades.

Difficulty

Discourage translating new words due to the number of pitfalls associated with translating single words in isolation (it shouldn’t be too difficult to demonstrate that translations are rarely 1-to-1 in your student’s mother tongue and English). Instead try to encourage user to Ignore new words! or Guess new words!

Ignoring new words: Students are often held back by a desire to find the meaning of every new word they come across despite comprehending the wider meaning of the phrase or sentence. This makes reading a slow and painful progress that can be quite discouraging. Students should be encouraged to ask themselves “do i need to look up this word to understand the sentence and the wider meaning?” If the student feels they do need the word why not encourage them to…

Guess: A useful skill for learners of all ages and levels is to be able to deduce the meaning of new words using the wider context of the sentence. Using the worksheet “Word Detectives” (an example is available to download in the green Downloads box or here) students practised this process of deducing the meaning of new words based on the surrounding context. Before giving students the worksheet, write the new words from the worksheet on the board and ask if anyone knows these words. Ask if they can guess. Now write an example sentence on the board and ask students to guess the meaning of the word using the sentence. Remind students not to worry whether they are right or wrong. Hopefully the students will be able to guess the word meaning. Give students the worksheet and encourage them to guess the meanings of the words in the same way. If you want students can check their answers using a monolingual dictionary which often takes considerable time. Point out to students during feedback that most of their guesses are correct (hopefully) and that it is much quicker, more fun, and easier to guess rather than look up each work.

Interest

Find out what students are interested in. If they’re interested in football try the PremierSkills website inassociation with the British Council which also includes lesson plans and activities for most videos and texts. Use the Newsround website to search for pop-stars, tv shows or even dinosaurs and Big Ben. Students will enjoy choosing what to read about and it will only take 5 mins to make some general comprehension questions based on the short text together with some extra questions where students need to deduce the meaning of new words based on the context. Don’t forget to get students to write down the websites so they can do it at home. You could set them a homework to read about an article and make questions for a classmate, or read an article and summarise it for the class next week (emphasis on using their own words to demonstrate understanding).

Newsround also has presspack competitions where young children are encouraged to write a news story or report for the website with a prize (an authentic writing activity with a real prize).

Escape the room style games such as Mystery of Time and Space are also great for encouraging independent learning. Download my MOTAS Game Guide here or in the green Downloads box, or give students a website with an English walkthrough to the game so that students can read the instructions. Any unfamiliar words in theinstructions will be deduced from trial and error in the game producing the correct result. (By trial and error students will easily discover the meaning of the word “above” in the instructions “click on the painting above the cupboard”.) I’ve used this game in class and students always ask for the website afterwards. (Thanks to Digital Play for the original idea of using such computer games)

Purpose

Often doing an activity that is interesting is enough purpose for the students. Their purpose is to find out something new about something they’re interested in. In addition to this they have the reward of reading an authentic text that students in the UK their own age might be reading.

Technorati Tags: TEFL, TESOL, English, Teaching

Online games can be a useful way of practising vocabulary, structures, or just listening or reading comprehension. The main drawback of (computer) gaming is of course that you need computers with internet access. Ideally one per student or 1 per pair although some activities are also possible using just one computer in front of the class (provided everyone can see) .

There are a few sites such as the British Council’s Kids Section which have games specifically designed for TEFL teaching. Unfortunately I’ve found many of these TEFL specific games restricted in terms of the  topics used and the opportunity for adaptation as well as being primarily for very young learners.

Introducing Digital Play a blog containing lesson plans for a huge variety of online games

Personal favourites include:

Mystery of Time and Space an escape-the-room style game with a lesson plan from Digital Play here the focus is on furniture vocabulary and a live listening comprehension (explain to the students how to escape in the same way you would to a native speaker but allow them to ask you for clarification). My own MOTAS Game Guide for young learners is available to download here or in the green Downloads box (the worksheet was intended to allow students to play the game and practise their English at home)

Machinarium another escape-the-room style game this time focusing on phrasal verbs with a lesson plan from Digital Play here and a gap-fill worksheet to focus on the phrasal verbs (pre game) also from Digital Play here

Orbox A sort of simplistic space-maze. Elementary students work in pairs, one of whom can see the computer screen and the other has access to the keyboard (but can’t see the screen). Students take it in turns to give directions to the keyboard user (up, down, left, right). Students swap after each level. See which pair is on the highest level after a certain time (10mins?) (Again thanks to Digital Play)

Tube Crisis You’re on the London Underground (or The Tube) and it’s very busy. How could you get rid of all these people? What would happen if you…? Try playing this game as a whole class to practise 2nd conditionals (and then again as 1st conditionals since they know the outcomes of each activity now) using Digital Play’s lesson plan here.

Technorati Tags: TEFL, TESOL, Teaching, English, Games