If you were to pick three things you really love in life, which three things would you pick? I would definitely pick English (including learning, teaching, training and writing), music and traveling in no specific order. Today I will be sharing with you the music hat that I wear sometimes in life. A few months ago I wrote a song about plastic pollution. It started … Continue reading a song lesson on plastic pollution
I am not quite sure how I stumbled upon this site but it was a pleasant encounter. The site also provides many ideas to use the content in creative out of the box ways based on Edward de Bono’s book How to Have Creative Ideas. Even though it isn’t an ESL site as such, we can of course use it to our teaching advantage. Click … Continue reading random word generator
This speaking activity gets students to make choices, take sides and use arguments and counter arguments to support their ideas. This is how it goes: Think of controvesial issues for debate in the classroom. For instance, “eating meat is wrong”. Do not disclose this topic but write “eating meat is …” on the board instead. Ask the students to come up to the board and … Continue reading taking sides
In the book Teaching Lexically, Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkey refer to horizontal and vertical development exercises and the pay-offs they bring. By developping a sentence horizontally we are adding something that the writer or speaker might say next. By developping a sentence vertically we are adding something that someone else might say next. I’m quoting from their excellent book now. “These kinds of exercises … Continue reading vertical and horizontal development
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
