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
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…
This zero prep activity works really well to practice present simple, present perfect or past simple tenses. This is how it goes: Get all your students to form a big circle. If you have a large number of students, they can break into two or three circles. Then ask them to hold up their fingers in the air, as shown in the photo on top … Continue reading 10 fingers
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 highly productive and engaging way of getting the most out of a reading passage. The idea is for the students to first read and understand the passage as whole individually and in silence. This can take place in the classroom or you may decide to assign a reading passage as out of class work. Clarify meaning, highlight focal vocabulary and interesting bits … Continue reading from reading passage to interview
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
