Tag Archives: fun

Moving Up from ” I Made Tea” to” I made myself a nice, hot sandwich of low-fat blue cheese because I was starving”

Games, Grammar and Exercises, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Writing, , , , , ,

Subtitle:

Improving Writing Skills:  how to move up from the Elementary to the Intermediate Level using Adjectives.

If you are a teacher you would agree with me that helping students move from an Elementary Level to an Intermediate one takes time and practice. One does not acquire the level in one day, you need to go step by step and you’ll need to climb all the stairs to be successful, there is no lift here.

When I mark their compositions some students find it difficult to understand why a composition with almost no mistakes deserves a Pass whereas another one with more “red” ink gets a better mark. Although I explain to them that you’re not only marked for grammatical mistakes and they seem to understand I thought it might be a good idea to do an experiment so that they could clearly see my point.

The little experiment was carried out during the last 20 minutes of the lesson after having dedicated most of the lesson to working with adjectives. The aim was letting the student see for themselves the difference, in terms of adequacy, between two or three grammatically correct sentences by voting on the best one. By letting them be the judges of the best sentence, they also become aware of why essays with no mistakes might score significantly higher or lower.

Before starting with the activities dedicated to Adjectives, I told my students that my aim on that day was to improve their writing skills to help them move from an Elementary Level to an Intermediate one. In my opinion, this bit of information before starting is essential to get their full attention!

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STEP 1.  ORDER OF THE ADJECTIVES

Although not all grammarians agree on the order of the adjectives and the rules for adjective order are quite complicated, it is necessary to give them some kind of order they can stick to. I always use this sentence to help them remember

Important points:

1. Don’t overuse adjectives. While having two adjectives before a noun sounds natural, more than three would have the opposite effect.

2. Purpose adjectives go just before the noun: riding boots ( boots for riding), sleeping bags (bags for sleeping).

3. Numbers go before adjectives: three huge houses.

STEP 2. USING STRONG/EXTREME ADJECTIVES

Isn’t it true that  when you cross out things like very furious, students invariably ask … but, “why can’t you say very furious??”

1. I find it important to see the before and the after. So, prior to beginning with step 1, show them an example of what they normally write, well, a bit exaggerated maybe 🙂 .

Last week I went to a  very big beach. It was very hot and I was very angry because I couldn’t find a place to put my towel as it was very crowded. Finally, I saw one of my best friends and I managed to squeeze in next to her. We went for a walk but after half an hour I was very tired and very hungry so I bought a sandwich, but it tasted very bad. Oh My God !!!

1. Brainstorm extreme adjectives like angry-furious, small-tiny, big-enormous, dirty-filthy, happy-delighted, sure-positive…etc.

2. Point out you cannot use very with these adjectives, but “absolutely” or “really” -among others.

3. Practising intonation with extreme adjectives in dialogues is always an enjoyable activity! Even more fun if you give them the card and get them moving around the class and talking to different people. For this activity, I always use this handout from onestopenglish.com

4. That might be a good time to display the text above again so that they improve it using extreme adjectives.

STEP 3. WRITING GAME

Before the game: Write down on slips of papers, verbs that they have recently studied. For this exercise, I chose verbs with dependent prepositions. Put them in a bag or envelope.

Explain that this writing exercise is going to be a competition, where only sentences without grammatical mistakes are going to be shortlisted. These  sentences will be read  aloud and students will vote for the best one taking into account the length of the sentence, the use of adjectives before the noun and also the use of extreme adjectives

1. Students work in pairs competing for points against the other students in the class.

2. From the bag, ask a student -the innocent hand-to pull out a slip of paper containing a verb in the infinitive form.

3. Students have 2 minutes to write a good sentence containing the verb.

4. Quickly correct mistakes and put a tick to the ones being shortlisted.

5. Sentences are read aloud for students to choose the best one, which is awarded one point. The pair with the highest number of points wins.

At some point during the game, I make a point of telling students once again to reflect on why they feel some sentences are intuitively better.

Hope you find it useful!

A Guess the Word Game to Practise Relative Sentences and Paraphrasing

Create your own stuff, Funny Stuff, Games, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Slides, Speaking, Students' Corner, Vocabulary, Vocabulary Games, , , , , ,

What do you normally do when you are talking to a person in English and you don’t know the word? I guess you don’t tell the person ” OK, right, hold on! I am going to look it up on my mobile phone”. You might be tempted to do it, but know that the person you are talking to might lose interest in what you are saying.
So, the thing to do would be Paraphrasing.

How do we paraphrase?? There are some expressions you can use
It’s A KIND OF house
It’s THE OPPOSITE OF lazy
It’s LIKE cleaning but… trying to explain what you want to say but using other words you know. That’s calle
It’s SIMILAR TO book but..
FOR EXAMPLE, you do this when
It’s A SYNONYM OF..
It’s A PERSON/SOMEBODY WHO…
It’s a THING/SOMETHING WHICH…
It’s SOMEWHERE/A PLACE WHERE

It can also help to say “ It’s a noun, or an adjective…. “ If it’s an expression, you can also say “ It’s an expression and there are three words in it”

Right, now we are ready to play the game. It’s called WHAT’S THE WORD?

How we play the game:

  • Divide the class into two teams
  • Ask a member of Team A to sit on chair with his back to the whiteboard.
  • Display the first word on the screen
  • The members of the team have two minutes to describe the word but they cannot use any parts of the words on the screen. For example if it is “teacher” they cannot use the word “teach”.The aim is for the student to guess as many words as possible in one minute. Every word in black scores one point , the ones in red score two points.
  • Then, it is the other team’s turn to choose someone to take the hot seat.
  • Needless to say, you keep the score on the board for everybody to see. Have fun!!!

 

Get Students Out of their Seats with a Lesson on Gender Stereotypes

Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Speaking, Students' Corner, , , , , , , , , ,

My beloved father was a chauvinist doctor and my mother was an undercover feminist. I am sure you’ve heard the saying “opposites attract”and that appeared to be the case with my parents. It was not an easy combination to live with. My father was the main breadwinner and my mother was the housewife. These were their roles in the house and to be honest, I don’t think my mother had an issue with that arrangement. The problem was he expected us (three sisters) to fully cooperate doing housework while my only brother did nothing but smile when we complained it was unfair. My father, on the other hand, and contradictorily,  expected us to get the best marks at school ’cause we were expected to go to university and get a degree so as not be the housewife my mother was. Who understands men? 😉

Today I want to share with you a lesson I did with my Intermediate students about Gender Stereotypes. This is a lesson where common general stereotypes about men and women are challenged.

Level: B1/B2

Aim: Get students to discuss general stereotypes about men and women using different expressions to give opinion.

STEPS 

1. Give handouts containing expressions used to give opinion. Here. Encourage students to use a variety of expressions when they give opinion.

2. Ask   Do you know any stereotypes about men and women? Instruct students to talk for about five minutes and then ask them to give feedback.

3. Play the video  Differences between Men and Women to get students into the mood. It’s a funny little video. I hope nobody takes offence.

4.Using Blue-tack, stick the posters containing the statements they need to discuss on the walls of the classroom. Posters here

5. Ask students to, working in twos or threes, wander around the classroom and randomly choose the posters they want to discuss.

Sticking posters on the walls of the classroom enables students to get out of their seats and talk to different people. As always it is important to make sure they understand the importance of using English and only English.

Learn English and have fun!

Ororo.tv a good alternative to just watching TV

Audio, Listening, Resources, , , , ,

Oh my gosh! I just love this website. I bumped into ororo.tv quite by chance and I was like ooohh it has this one and aahhh and also this one. And needless to say, I have spent the little free time I have had these days- I am still doing oral exams in the morning and marking written exams in the afternoon /evening, not to mention the cleaning and cooking stuff- having a nice laugh with the boys of the Big Bang Theory, which I highly recommend.
So, what can ororo.tv do to help you improve your English? What will you find on this website??? An amazing number of TV shows and films in their original versions and with subtitles in English. Right now, I am hooked on the Big Bang Theory, a American sitcom, about four young scientists, but surely you’ll find attractive alternatives here to suit every taste and mood.

Guess What! Some cool things about the English language

The English language,

Would you like to know some cool things about the English language?

♥Guess what! The English language as we now know it began to emerge in the 14th century from a variety of dialects including Old Norse and Late West Saxon.

♥Guess what! Mandarin Chinese is the only language spoken by more people around the world than English. There seems to be , at  least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the Oxford English Dictionary.

♥Guess what! The English language grows at a rate of about one new word every two hours

♥Guess what! The oldest word in the English language is ‘town” followed by ” I” and “two”

♥Guess what! The longest one syllable word in the English language is ‘screeched‘ .

♥ Guess what! The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

♥Guess what! The word “queue” is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.

 

♥Guess what! “Rhythm” is the longest English word without a vowel

♥Guess what! The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

♥Guess what! “Go” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language

♥Guess what!  The sentence “He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas” has seven spellings of the sound [ i ].

♥Guess what! The “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.Give a try!!!

I hope you have enjoyed reading these facts about the English language?