At which point in a Beginner or even Elementary course do you introduce and teach the past simple? Here’s a guide. It has always bugged me that Beginner textbooks do not introduce the past simple until half way through the book. So it sadly transpires that students will not start using the past simple tense until a few months into their English course. This is … Continue reading past simple for beginners ( a matter of common sense)
This is one of my favourite song activities ever. It focuses on having a look at relevant vocabulary from a song by means of a dictation (again, with a twist), on having the students mingle and help each other with meaning and then doing your typical fill-in-gaps. Finally you may decide to allow time for some speaking interaction with the target vocabulary. Select 10-15 key … Continue reading songs: fill-in-gaps with a twist
About a year ago I discovered a nice collection of one minute videos recorded by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley. Each video recording features an English expression which is clearly explained and presented with examples from real life conversations. You can find this collection housed in their Youtube Channel Lexical Lab. I shared a generic way of exploiting these videos for all language levels in … Continue reading one-minute videos 2
Time to highlight three blog posts focusing on vocabulary revision, recycling and practice. Linguist David Wilkins (1972) wrote: “without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Let’s have a look at some of my favourite vocabulary activities. Once again, click on the links for the full posts. In dictation 1 students review words and expressions from previous days by means … Continue reading summer series: three vocabulary activities
Pelmanism: a card game in which matching pairs must be selected from memory from cards laid face down. Here is my tweaked version of it. Give your students some scrap paper and ask them to cut out cards. On each card they must write down a word or an expression that they have seen in class that is both challenging and interesting to know and … Continue reading pelmanism (with a twist)
Here is a listening game that you will fall in love with and, most importantly, your A1- A2 students will too. You may also try this with higher levels with the suggested items below or with more specific searches. You need Google assistant on your computer or a phone and a set of speakers. Arrange your students in groups of three or four and decide … Continue reading the ultimate listening game: ask Google assistant
I typically kick off my lessons with a vocabulary review activity followed by a communicative goal to put the revised language into practice. As a big fan of dictations, I decided to try this activity out with my class of Upper-Intermediate students. A couple of days before they had completed an activity from the textbook (expressions with take). There was a list of 6 expressions … Continue reading phrasal verbs 4
