We are all familiar with “Find someone who…” speaking activity. Traditionally the teacher provides a series of tasks -written/displayed on the board or on printed handouts- for the students to mill around and ask each other in order to exchange personal information. The aim might be to practice a given grammatical structure, such as the modal verb “can”, as in “find someone who can play … Continue reading find someone who (with a twist)
Are you familiar with whispering dictations, also known as Chinese whispers? In this type of dictations, students are arranged in a line one behind another or they are sitting in rows. Then the teacher shows a sentence to the student in front. This person has to whisper it to the student sitting or standing next to him/her, who, in turn, will have to whisper it … Continue reading whispering lyrics dictation
What do you think the featured image above is? What do you think this gadget was used for? Do you like the design? How old might it be? Do you think it was a failure or a flop back then? Display the image on a screen or else print a handful of copies with the image for the students to share and see and let … Continue reading museum of failure
Syntactic priming is the process that takes place when we make predictions upon hearing certain grammatical patterns which guide us to guess the string of words that are more likely to be uttered next based on our previous encounters with those patterns. Basically we are constantly building sentences based on what we hear, which are next confirmed or then reformulated. We hypothesise. We fill gaps. … Continue reading syntactic priming
The year is coming to an end and KIS Activities will be taking a two-week break. It is very comforting and encouraging to have seen this blog grow exponentially this year. In the meantime, here are the three most visited blog posts in 2018: At number three: Articles in English. Students do some practice on definite and indefinite articles from songs you play in class. … Continue reading top three posts of 2018
Here is an alternative way to check answers after you have played a listening extract to your class of students. Find a listening extract from your current textbook series. Play it (twice) and have the students check understanding by letting them compare their answers to the questions. Here is a task for a listening exercise from English File Third Edition Upper-Intermediate (page 20). Listen and … Continue reading prove me wrong: checking answers from listening passages
It’s easy enough to welcome state-of-the-art technology, if our school can afford it. Whether the technology is used or used wisely is up to us. I have been using interactive whiteboards for well over ten years now and I find them an incredible tool for any language teacher. I talk and write far and wide about the kinds of benefits they bring. Today, however, I … Continue reading mini whiteboards 1
