A practically zero preparation way of reviewing vocabulary with your students is to compile a list of lexical items you would like to review (ten to fifteen seems to be a fine number) and then ask them to get a piece of paper and draw three columns in it headed: I know, Not sure and I don’t know. Then dictate the words. As you dictate … Continue reading co-hyponyms in songs
I have been listening to Sting’s last album 44/876 quite a lot recently and there are two songs that have particularly called my attention as an English teacher/teacher trainer/materials writer. The first one is Crooked Tree, for which I wrote a blog post last week dealing with co-hyponyms and how that song presents itself well for exploiting them and exploring the topic area of crime … Continue reading connotation in songs
I am a big fan of Padlet and similar web-based noticeboards. Basically these digital noticeboards allow users to place text, images, upload and embed videos or audio recordings and do team work on a given noticeboard. There are many tutorials on the Internet on how to use Padlet. I have my own but I’d rather not share here as you can find more updated ones … Continue reading Padlet: practical use #295
Today I would like to explore a very useful collection of videos recently started by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley, authors of the celebrated textbook series Outcomes. These videos are housed in their Youtube Channel Lexical Lab and the idea behind these videos is to explore common English expressions through life situations where you might expect to hear or use them. This series is called One-minute … Continue reading one minute videos
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
