Category Archives: General

How to Ace the C1 Monologue: the Skeleton

General,

I have never been politically correct so let’s not mince words. For an exam, you need to follow these three tips:

  1. study
  2. practise
  3. be smart

I know you are able to maintain a conversation at a decent level but this is not what an exam is about. An exam is about impressing the examiner. Yes! You heard me correctly! You need to make a strong, though not necessarily lasting, impression on the examiner(s).

Disclaimer: this is the way I would do the monologue. This does not necessarily mean it is the only way to approach it.

So, now that we are on the same page, the big question is…Do you want to ace your exam?

Assuming you have followed tips number 1 and number 2 above( I would reconsider taking the exam if you have not studied or practised, like a lot. ), here comes the most difficult part: bringing to mind vocabulary specific to the topic you have been given, which is part and parcel of tip number 3 and this brings us back to tip number 1.  

Am I making any sense?

Tip 3: About being smart. General TIPS
  1. Say you are given a monologue with three prompts to talk about. They might also throw in some images for visual effect but you do not, and I repeat do not, need to describe them. Can you make references to them when you are speaking? Yes. 
  2. You are not being tested on your honesty. So, if you feel you have nothing to say on the topic, lie, invent… all is fair in love and war! 
  3. If you are allowed some time to organise your ideas, use that time in a clever way and plan. I have often seen candidates not taking this minute and making a mess of the exam just because they didn’t take the time to organise their ideas.
  4. You need to talk about all the prompts given. If you do not have much to say about a certain prompt, spend less time on it and introduce it by saying something like: I am not really much into… I am not an expert st/in… 
  5. Brainstorm vocabulary (idioms, phrasal verbs, specific vocabulary to include). This is a unique step, and this where studying and feeling confident that you know the vocabulary is important. Listen up! You need to use a good range of vocabulary.
  6. Remember that you need to use a full range of grammatical structures and this is again where being clever is important. You need to think in advance of some “flashy” grammar you want to use. OK. Say you want to use an inversion. Easy…

I could go on and on but I think you get the gist.

NOTE: These are some ideas and you should be adding to this list the items you feel most comfortable with. You don’t have to use these ones, what you need to bear in mind is that you have to use advanced vocabulary and structures. So, you need to pull your weight and add to this list or cross off what you don’t feel confident using.  It is up to you, now.

It is important to practise key phrases, which you can use no matter the topic in the exam. What I like to call the “skeleton” of your monologue and you need to write it down and say it and try it with different topics and figure out a way to make it work with whatever topic you land yourself with.

  • write it down
  • say it aloud
  • practise it with different topics

So, here you have some ideas for your “skeleton”:

Download the poster here

 I know that taking an oral exam is a nerve-wracking experience but, if you practise and study, I cannot promise it is going to be a walk in the park but it will certainly be easier.

NOTE: my students will be using Flipgrid to record themselves doing a number of topics.

Housing Issues. A Lesson Plan for C1 students.

General, , , , , , ,

Is there a limit to how long you can spend teaching and talking about a topic? I wonder,  how many subtopics are there to talk about? It’s been one month since the course began and I am still doing lesson One. OMG! At this pace, I am never gonna reach the end of the textbook.

Here is a little something I did with my C1 students. Unit 1 was about cities, but how do we talk about cities and not about Housing? My thoughts exactly, we cannot.

  • Topic: Housing
  • Level: C1
  • Activities: Speaking, Listening, Mediation, Vocabulary. Board Game
  • PDF ( available at the end of the post) 🙂
Optional lead-in:  Speaking

Students get into pairs and talk about these 2 questions.

  • It is said an average person lives in 11 homes in their lifetime. What is your number?
  • If money was not a problem, where would you live and what kind of house would you have?
Revising Vocabulary

It is always a good idea to give students some time to come up with vocabulary they already know. You can do it in different ways.

  1. The traditional way: give students a couple of minutes to come with as many words or expressions they can think of related to housing.  This can be done in pairs with one person writing down the answers. Get group feedback and write the most interesting words/chunks on the board.
  2. Using technology to create a word cloud on the board: you can use Answergarden, Mentimeter or Wooclap for this. (hover over the name of the tool and it will take you to the tool)

Fun extension: ask pairs to write a sentence using as many words as possible from the board. Score pairs a point per word and award a bonus point for the longest.

Introducing Vocabulary
  • affordable home
  • low-income housing
  • budget
  • low -income households
  • mortgage
  • tenants
  • landlords
  • overburdened with housing costs
  • homeowners
  • social housing
  • to make a down payment
  • disposable income
  • average price
  • to evict /eviction
  • homelessness
  • rising home prices
  • overcrowding and under occupations
  • real state bubble
  • subsidized
  • housing issues
  • cohousing
  • utility bills
  • to downsize
  • squatting/squatters
  • to rehabilitate /rehab, rehabilitation

 

Listening and Speaking. Video: Affordable Housing

Time to listen

Before watching the video, ask students to predict the answers to these questions. This will hopefully lead to some discussion where students will be encouraged to use some of the vocabulary above.

Play the video and ask students to check their predictions. Comment on the answers. Were their predictions accurate?

  • Making housing more accessible would help reduce…
  • What share of a household budget do you think is spent on average on housing?
  • Why has the price of housing risen so dramatically in the last decade?
  • What share of a household budget is spent on housing in low-income households?
  • In many countries, a large share of young people is still living with their parents. Predict: is your country one of these countries? Justify your answer

Reading and speaking

Divide students into pairs  for this activity

STUDENT A: cohousing

Cohousing, which is a form of intentional community, originated in Denmark in the 1960s Intended to recreate an “old-fashioned sense of neighbourhood” through resident participation in the design and operation of their communities, this type of community model allows families and individuals to occupy private homes while at the same time contributing both time and money to common facilities that are owned and managed by the larger community.3 Community members pay monthly or yearly membership dues and often help with tasks such as cleaning and repairing shared resources. While residents contribute to the financial responsibilities of acquiring and maintaining common facilities and resources, each member maintains an independent economy and personal income.

Source: https://ala-apa.org/

Summarize what you have just read and give your opinion

STUDENT B: Squatting

Squatting has a long history in Spain, often fuelled by high rates of homelessness. But there is now a darker phenomenon too – squatters who demand a “ransom” before they will leave a property. And this has led to the rise of private eviction companies, some of which use threats to achieve their goal.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/

Summarize what you have just read and give your opinion

Speaking: Conversations questions+ Board game

Driven by my obsession to make students use new vocabulary, I am constantly thinking and trying different ways to “force” new vocabulary into my students’ speeches. In this case, I have created a board game here using the vocabulary above. A dice, some counters and some conversation questions and they are ready to go. Students throw the dice and try to use the word/chunk in the square they have landed on. They can also try to use the word/chunk in the previous and following square. If they do so, they can move forward one square.

  • Is giving homeless people homes more effective and sensible than making them stay in shelters or on the street?
  • How much is Airbnb affecting the housing market in cities where rent is on the rise?
  • What can be done about rising homelessness in big cities?
  • Does it make sense to encourage homeownership through tax policies?
  • Should housing policy be more balanced, supporting rental housing and homeownership on a more equal footing?

Source https://www.nytimes.com/

 

Exam-oriented task using vocabulary

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In this case, I gave them this task and asked them to discuss the prompts in pairs. Needless to say, encouraging them to use the new vocabulary,

Exam-oriented: Oral Mediation Task

Here and Here

Here’s the PDF for the lesson.I hope you find this lesson useful.

Learning Chocolate: a Free Website to Learn Vocabulary and How to Pronounce it.

General,

It is not the first time I have written something about this great site to learn vocabulary but, it was such a long time ago, that I think it deserves to be brought to your attention again.

Learning Chocolate… that’s the name of the website. Hey!! I even like the name. I wonder why they’ve chosen this name for a website that helps students improve vocabulary but it certainly does so and in a very efficient way.

What do I like best about this site? It teaches vocabulary in a visual way but also, and this of the utmost importance to me, is that it teaches students how to pronounce the words they are learning.

How does it work?

The vocabulary is organized into categories, ranging from the easy  Numbers or the Seasons to the more sophisticated Insect Life Cycle.

How do you learn with this page?

First, on top of the page, you will need to choose your language and also, the language you want to learn.

Now, you are ready to start.

  1. Choose a category. The main categories are: beginning, around you, daily life, your society, your world and special series.

2. You will see words related to this category with the corresponding image and pronunciation.

3. The website also offers exercises to consolidate the vocabulary. For each category, you will find 3 match-up exercises, a fill-in the gaps and a dictation.

There are three different kinds of match up exercises:

  • Match up 1: you will find a list of words and below the words, a list of sound icons. Click on a sound icon and drag it and drop it to the corresponding word. When you finish, click Complete.
  • Match up 2: you will see the pictures and below the words to drag and drop.
  • Match up 3: same as match up 1, but in this exercise, you will see the pictures and not the words.

Also

  • Fill in: you will see several gaps and you will have to type the words that correspond to each image.
  • Dictation: you will find a list of sound icons. Click each of them and write the word you hear.

What I especially like about this site is that it uses visual aid to help students learn better and faster and, at the same time, teaches them how to pronounce the words.

The Climbers’ Challenge: a Game to Energize the First 10 Minutes of your Class

General

Back to the grind!!! First days are not first days without a game, are they?

Err scratch that, first days are not first days…  without a game that allows students to brush up their English and have some fun.

Well  I guess a game where they play in teams, gently competing against each other in an attempt to brush up the English learned before the summer, is a step in the right direction, right?

I have invented this game inspired by one I saw on TV called El  Picu (TPA) but, after all the variations I have introduced, I think I have earned the right to rebaptize it as  The Climbers’ Challenge.  As the name suggests,  teams will need to climb a mountain. How does it sound???

Context

Tell students they will need to climb a steep mountain and be the first to reach the summit to plant their flag. On the slope of the mountain, there are “camps” where they can rest. To hike from “camp” to “camp”, they need to win the “round”. You will need something to monitor 60 seconds, which is the time limit for each round.

Here’s how you go about it.

Step 1:

Ask students to form teams of 5ish and name a secretary in charge of writing. On the board, draw as many mountains as teams you have in the class. Ask teams to give themselves a winning name. Assign a mountain to every team.

On the slope of the mountains, decide and draw as many “camps”  – I would go for just 2 or 3 camps -where teams can rest.  To climb to the next camp, teams will need to win the round; the more camps you draw, the longer it will take teams to reach the summit, which is how they win the game.

Step 2.

Deal the first card and explain that teams will have 60 seconds to write at least 4 items of what is featured in the card. The minimum to start playing is 4 items but teams collaboratively can write as many as they know. Remind them that only the designed secretary writes the words.

This is the game we are going to play.

Step 3.

Decide which team starts the game: say it’s Team A. Digitally display the first card. When the time is up, ask Team A to shout how many items they have. Let’s imagine they say 6 items. Now, ask teams: Who can beat 6? Say Team C raises hands and says “we’ve got 9“. Ask: who can beat 9?

Step 4

Ask the secretary of the team who has the most items to say them aloud. If correct, on the board,  choose their mountain and move them upwards to the next “camp”. If for some reason, they make a mistake, they will climb down a “camp”: this will ensure that teams don’t rush and write things randomly.

Part 2. Extension. Speaking.

At the end of each round, write on the board some of the words they have written, work on their pronunciation and then, ask a conversation question asking students to answer it in pairs or in 3’s, using as many words as possible from the board.

For example, for the card Things you can turn on and off, they have probably come up with the words heating, TV, mobile phone, radio, modems and routers, chargers.. etc., I would ask a question like

Are people these days too wound up in technology?

It’s great to be back! I hope you have liked the game!!!

Summer Break Is Here

General

Ohh this year. I am not going to deny it’s been a hard one.

There was a period in my life when I could easily multitask and take care of my family and home, work as a full-time teacher, run webinars, travel the country training teachers and even managed to keep fit and go shopping. This year, I have to confess, I have concentrated on running webinars ( 68 and counting – thanks for your trust) to the neglect of some other duties and hobbies.

Anyway, I hope next year I will be able to publish more regularly, mainly because it makes me really happy to share with you all my ideas and experiments and read your feedback, but for now, the blog is taking its usual summer break.

Thanks for reading me. Thanks for your supporting comments and feedback. See you again in September/October. I’ll be taking attendance!!!