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
If I was in Boston and you were in Washington DC, where could we meet halfway? A good meeting point would be New York. If I want to sell my bike for 60 euros and you offer 20, where do we meet halfway? The bike is yours for 40 euros. But what if I say “exhausted” and you say “rush”? Where can we meet halfway? … Continue reading meet me halfway
An activity that combines translation, drilling newly acquired vocabulary and engaging the students with the language to go beyond vocabulary input provided by textbooks and to present an extra challenge, yet still within the students’ grasp, in the spirit of what Jim Scrivener calls “doable demands”. As Jim wisely puts it in Demand High, “communicative language teaching had painted itself into a corner, encouraging a … Continue reading I wonder how you say…
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
Here is a very minimal preparation activity for Basic learners of English that focuses on reviewing common adjectives for the language level. At the same time they can revise basic nouns that they know. I compiled a list of common adjectives and grouped them into sets of six: Display this image on the board or write down the adjectives. You can also dictate the adjectives … Continue reading common adjectives
Memory is the process by which we encode, store and retrieve information. When we have conversations our short term memory is activated to remember what the speaker has said and to respond coherently. We also activate our long term memory to use the language we know that is stored in our brains. As the old saying goes, “use it or lose it”. Memory is quintessential to … Continue reading the -irregular- year I was born in
This is the second blog post on using mini whiteboards in the language classroom. In my previous post, Mini whiteboards 1, I talked about using them as a space to view lexical items and build collaborative stories. I also provided a few links with some more creative ideas from other Internet sources. This time I am looking at mini whiteboards for students to provide and … Continue reading mini whiteboards 2
