Happy Valentine’s Day Week! Love is in the air….and all that!
I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s day, maybe because I’m Spanish and well into my forties, and in Spain, in a small village in the north and in the 80’s, we never ever heard of a special day to celebrate love. But I don’t want to be a party pooper here so I always get into my best mood to do an activity related to this special day in the Anglo culture.
On Monday , Gotye’s song “Somebody that I Used to Know” was awarded a Grammy for the record of the year. Needed a better excuse to play the song? Yes, but I’ve got it!! It contains irregular past verbs, something I am currently working with and also a great opportunity to introduce “used to”. … the only catch is that the song is about breaking up and not about perfect love… but you can’t have it all guys! So, off we go!
I love teaching reported speech. I don’t know if students can feel when a teacher enjoys teaching something though I have the impression that somehow it shows. Here are some ideas to get my students “love” (well, maybe I’m getting a bit carried away) reported speech. Hopefully, some of them will do the trick.
This video is great to practise statements, questions, orders and suggestions!
Setting the context: tell students they have had a big argument with their boyfriend or girlfriend and they are going to meet their closest friend to tell them all about it. Divide the class into “girls” and “boys” and ask each group to focus on what the girl or the boy says in the video. Ask them to write down as much as they can using the exact words said in the video. Working together within their groups, they’ll need to report in as much detail as possible the conversation to their closest friend (the teacher).
For weaker students I would do the whole lesson plan as presented by the British Council. Click here
♥ Song: My name is Luka by Suzanne Vega. A song about child abuse. It tells the story of a frightened boy who is forbidden to talk about what he’s going through.
The idea is the same as above. I´ll let the students do all the work (we, teachers, need a break from time to time, don’t we?). The song is quite easy to understand and though they might not pick up everything, they will still be able to come up with some good reported statements. The idea is:
Students listen to the song once and write down whole sentences. (ex. My name is Luka, I live on the second floor…)
Students in pairs share with their partners.
Students listen a second time and pair again one last time.
Correct using the video+lyrics and ask students as a class to report the sentences one by one. (For ex. He said his name was Luka)
♥ Gossiping about the teacher (from Begem Tonyali -original post here)
Students think about 10 things they want to know about their teacher and ask the questions, which are written on the board. The class is divided into 2 groups. The first group leave the class and wait outside. The first group members take turns in asking the teacher the questions and write down the answers. Now, they leave and the second group does the same thing. However, what they do not know is that the teacher is honest and gives correct answers to only one group, but lies to the other. It’s a good idea not to tell them beforehand. Then, students pair off as 1st and 2nd group partners. The activity goes like this and one of the students tells his partner “I asked the teacher how old she was and she told me she was 16.” Then the other partner goes “I asked the same question, but she told me she was 36.” etc…until all the questions are reported. Here they have to pay attention to the usage of the reporting verbs and have fun in finding which group the teacher lied to.
Preparation: before the game, students have been taught the following reporting verbs: ask, tell, warn, advise, suggest and offer.
Students are given some scrap paper and asked to write a yes/no question, a Wh-question, a request, a warning, a suggestion, a piece of advice and an offer .
When they finish, they are asked to make balls from the papers. And the fun begins….Time to play snowballs!! Allow them to play snowballs for some time and play some music. Tell them they can play snowball for as long as there is music. Stop the music and ask students to open the ball of paper and report the things written on it. Remember, the bigger the ball, the easier it will be to catch it! You don’t want to be looking for missing balls!
♥ Indirect into Direct Speech Cards.
Not so funny, maybe, but still worth doing! Students love competitions- me too, if you want to know the truth- so I’m planning to disguise this exercise as a competition with the students getting the card and scoring points for each correct answer. Now, this activity requires some preparation on my part, namely writing on one side of a card reported speech and, on the other side, direct speech of the same sentence. I’m planning to include statements, questions, commands, suggestions, offers…etc. Show the students the reported speech side of the card. The student who guesses the direct speech sentence, gets the card and the point.
Happy Thursday to everybody! Yes, Ok, in Asturias we have rain, clouds, and cold but I’m trying to keep my spirits up!
Next week I’ll be focusing on Reported Speech and I thought this could be a good way of getting their attention. I have chosen a few quotes from some famous people and created a Power Point Presentation Hope it’s useful!!
Visit my Intermediate Section for more exercises on reported Speech and also read another article (Reported Speech: questions and Orders) I published some time ago with more ideas here
If you’ve been reading me for some time you’ll probably have guessed that I favour kinesthetic learning.The activities where students take an active part and enjoy while learning are my favourite.I like them getting up and moving around the classroom and I even welcome the noise because they are using English.
And you cannot even begin to imagine how proud I feel when I see that they have been able to overcome their natural shyness at making mistakes and just concentrate on using the language and having fun.
These are two of my favourite activities to orally practise present continuous. Hilarious, trust me!
♥MIMING
I divided the class into two groups Group A and Group B; one student from Group A comes up to the front of the class and is given a card with a sentence containing the Present Continuous, like for example, I am watching TV. The student has to mime this activity and the members of his group have to guess, exactly, the same words written on the card. The student is given one minute to mimic as many sentences as possible.
Suggestions
I’m cleaning the house
He’s cooking an egg
She is dancing in the disco
I am playing the guitar
He is drinking a coke
He is reading a novel
I am thinking about my teacher
My mother is working now
He is walking to school
He is painting the house
I am studying History
I am not sleeping
I am playing tennis now
She is reading a newspaper
She is eating chocolate
I am riding a blue bicycle
♥DESCRIPTION OF A PHOTO
For this activity, the students are sitting in pairs, one student facing the board and the other with his back to the board. Using the OHP, a picture of people performing something is displayed. Now, the person seeing the picture has to describe it in as much detail as possible and the other person has to draw the picture. Allow them four or five minutes and then choose the best picture. Below are two of the pictures that I used:
I don’t really think I have ever studied lists of verbs followed by infinitive and/or gerund but I really don’t think I should be telling this to my students.
I always claim that English grammar is easy, especially when compared to the Spanish grammar, but it gets a bit messy when it comes to verbs followed by infinitive or gerund.
You see, the easy thing to say is that some verbs are followed by infinitive (promise to go) and some verbs are followed by gerund (can’t stand ironing). But then we find that, some other verbs are followed by infinitive or gerund with no change of meaning (start to study/start studying)and some others are followed by infinitive and gerund with a change of meaning (stop to smoke/stop smoking) and if this were not enough, some verbs are followed by infinitive with to (offer to help) and some others by infinitive without to ( make me study). Some verbs are followed by gerund but if there is an object pronounin between the verb and the gerund, then the gerund becomes infinitive (recommended reading / recommended her to read) … amazing, isn’t it?
Now, you can begin to understand why I have never studied lists of verbs but relied on my intuition when trying to decide on the right structure.
I hope these exercises will help my students.You are welcome to do them.
Happy Valentine’s Day Week! Love is in the air….and all that!
and ask the questions, which are written on the board. The class is divided into 2 groups. The first group leave the class and wait outside. The first group members take turns in asking the teacher the questions and write down the answers. Now, they leave and the second group does the same thing. However, what they do not know is that the teacher is honest and gives correct answers to only one group, but lies to the other. It’s a good idea not to tell them beforehand. Then, students pair off as 1st and 2nd group partners. The activity goes like this and one of the students tells his partner “I asked the teacher how old she was and she told me she was 16.” Then the other partner goes “I asked the same question, but she told me she was 36.” etc…until all the questions are reported. Here they have to pay attention to the usage of the reporting verbs and have fun in finding which group the teacher lied to. 
that I favour kinesthetic learning.The activities where students take an active part and enjoy while learning are my favourite.I like them getting up and moving around the classroom and I even welcome the noise because they are using English.
to the Spanish grammar, but it gets a bit messy when it comes to verbs followed by infinitive or gerund.