I absolutely embrace use of new technologies in the language classroom and time, research and experience have made a wiser teacher when it comes to integrating use of mobile phones and interactive whiteboard in the classroom setting. If I were to sum it in a short and direct way I would go along with these words: at times, in small doses and with a clear … Continue reading subtitles on/subtitles off
In this short blog post I will share with you another alternative way to exploit reading passages. This time the students create questions for the text. Write on the board: what which where why when who how Then tell the students to look at the reading passage and try to write questions about the text on a piece of paper using those question words. Give … Continue reading reading frenzy 2
Reading passages in the language classroom are primarily used to have students understand the texts as a whole, to have them look for specific pieces of information or to introduce new language in context. I also like to take advantage of reading passages to let students discover facts and reasons and share them with peers by means of splitting the text into two halves and … Continue reading reading frenzy 1
Today I would like to share a zero preparation activity that you can use as a warmer or to introduce a new discussion topic or a new unit from your adopted textbook series. Let’s take a look at this unit as an example. The focal vocabulary area in the first section (6.1. Have you ever been to Florida) centers around leisure time and activities. English … Continue reading 5 reasons
Here is a fantastic tool to introduce to our students in the language classroom if we have the technology available to us, that is, an Internet connected device, a data projector and speakers (or an interactive whiteboard). Youglish is a website that will render occurrences of word searches using YouTube video as corpora. One simply types the word or words into the search box and … Continue reading do you youglish?
When engaging our students in speaking activities we can move from general to specific or from specific to general. Ideally, the latter is a much more productive strategy. For instance, we can ask the students: What’s your favourite food? (from general to specific) …or… Have a look at these photos (an orange, a hamburger, a chili pepper, an ice cream). Tell any five people in … Continue reading speaking: from specific to general
This activity gets your students engaged in building collective stories around focal vocabulary from a reading passage. I will be using this text, which presents itself rather well for this type of activity as an example. Out and About level 1, Cambridge University Press. Free sample from publisher here. The students are asked to read and listen to the lyrics. The highlighted words are in … Continue reading the dream
