Vocabulary

summer series: three vocabulary activities

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

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Speaking

summer series: three speaking activities

It’s time for another summer series. This time I will be focusing on speaking and here is a selection of three blog posts that have drawn a little bit of attention over the last couple of years. Click on the links for the full posts. In speaking: from specific to general I argue how much more productive it is to think of very specific questions … Continue reading summer series: three speaking activities

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Listening

summer series: three listening activities

This week I am showcasing three listening activities from this site which have gathered a lot of interest. In fact, the listening realm together with vocabulary activities seem to raise the most interest on this site. Click on the links for the full posts. In one minute videos I take a look at Hugh Dellar’s collection of one minute videos on the Lexical Lab channel … Continue reading summer series: three listening activities

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Grammar

summer series: three grammar activities

Hope you are all having a nice relaxing summer. I am indeed. So here’s the second post on the summer series: three grammar activities. Click on the links for the full posts. In skeleton questions the teacher thinks of conversation questions for the class for some speaking practice on a given topic. However, instead of writing down the actual questions, she only provides key content … Continue reading summer series: three grammar activities

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summer
Writing

summer series: three writing activities

We have reached the end of the school year in many countries, including mine, and I shall be taking a break from blogging and sharing brand new content until September. That doesn’t mean that I won´t be writing. Far from that, in the next couple of months I will be busy enough developing ideas that have been sitting on the back burner for a while … Continue reading summer series: three writing activities

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Pronunciation

jungle speech and sentence stealer game

For today’s activity I would like to acknowledge the work of Gianfranco Conti on devising ways of providing drilling and repetition in various ways through games, dictations and translation exercises and, most notably, Richard Cauldwell’s groundbreaking work on phonology and on trying to make the incomprehensible comprehensible. Richard Cauldwell has done outstanding work on sound decoding and he is particularly well known in ELT for … Continue reading jungle speech and sentence stealer game

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Listening

song: correct the lyrics

Songs are a double-edged weapon: on the one hand they are abundant and they are motivating language products so they are very inviting as classroom material. On the other hand, I personally feel most times they are used as fillers and they take up precious time that could be more wisely and productively spent on something else. A major issue is length. The average duration … Continue reading song: correct the lyrics

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