Tag Archives: C1

Life Begins at 70: a Future Perfect and Future Continuous Lesson

Grammar, Lesson Plan: Advanced, Speaking, , , , , , , ,

“To me, old age is always ten years older than I am”  John Burroughs

In this engaging lesson, students will consolidate the use of future perfect and future perfect continuous through some engaging activities.

WARM UP

Show them a picture of how you see yourself when you are 70 and explain why you see yourself like that. (below you’ll see the picture I showed my students). After some laughs and a bit of explaining, ask students:

How do you see yourselves when you are 70? Do you look forward to getting old?

Ask them to talk in pairs for two or three minutes and get feedback.

THE POEM- WARMING by Jenny Joseph

This is a nice opportunity to introduce poetry in class.

Explain that the poem they are about to listen/read, written by Jenny Joseph, goes hand in hand with the picture of yourself shown above. After listening to the poem, ask students whether they think the author is looking forward to getting old and why.

It seems the poetess is rebellious, but she is only comfortable to ‘break the rules’ when she has the excuse of old age and senility. Ask students what they think about her attitude.

GALLERY WALK

  • On the walls of the class display pictures of elderly people reflecting different attitudes towards life when they are old.
  • Ask students to stand up, have a look at all of them, and decide which one will best represent their attitude to life. They now return to their desks.
  • Ask them to write two sentences using the future perfect and two sentences using the future continuous, based on the picture they have chosen.
  • Get students in threes now and ask them to explain their choice to their partners and use the 4 sentences they have written.
  • For example and based on my picture
  • I will have tried parachuting when I am 70
  • I will have probably written a recipe book.
  • I will probably be living in Bhutan
  • I will be living life to the fullest

I have used these pictures to display on the walls.

SPEAKING

Students now work in small groups and answer the following questions about the future. Remind them that they need to elaborate on their answers, giving reasons and using different expressions to give opinions. All the questions contain either a future perfect or a future continuous form; encourage students to use these tenses in their answers.

You might find this handout useful

Looking Forward to the Future

Write your CV or Resume with Free Editable Templates

General, , , , , , ,

Do you dread having to write your résumé or CV?

I’m dropping in right quick to show you something that could be really interesting if you need to write a résumé or a CV.

A few days ago, one of my students asked me a favour. She was considering applying for a job outside Spain and wanted me to “have a look” at her résumé.

The truth is that it’s never easy to write this kind of document and even less if it needs to be written in a language that is not your own. So, a bit of help, guidance and a model to copy is always welcome.

Canva is a free graphic-design tool website I have been using for about two years to create beautiful engaging posters for my class, but Canva collection of content types is continually growing and among other content types, they have recently introduced templates for résumés which are fully editable. Make sure you choose the free templates unless, of course, you don’t mind paying a small fee. And remember you can change colours, fonts, insert text, images…etc. Below you can see a small tutorial I have created to help you get started.

You Have an Email! An Interactive Writing Activity

Writing, , , , ,

It’s true that although I’m a technology enthusiast there are still some things that I want to see written in paper. Especially when I’m studying I want to be able to underline, highlight, mark as irrelevant or write side comments in the margins.

So, for this activity, and despite finding lots of beautiful online presentations explaining the art of writing informal emails or letters (does anyone write letters anymore?), I have decided to stick to the traditional handout.

Level: B1 and above

Materials: checklist and handout (I have slightly modified it to adjust to my students’ needs)

Aims:

  • To teach students how to write informal emails with different purposes
  • To give students practice in writing some of these emails
  • To help students self-correct their own writings
THE THEORY

As explained above, I gave my students this excellent handout and we went through it. To make this process a bit more interactive, before each section we did a bit of brainstorming on the board tapping into the students’ prior knowledge. It is amazing to see how much they already know when you just take the time to ask them. After these brainstorming sessions, I always tell my students “Now, a bit more”. This “Now, a bit more” is based on the idea that new knowledge is constructed from old knowledge and I firmly believe this approach really makes it easier for students to learn and improve.

THE PRACTICE.

In this part the students will have to write two emails: a short one (50-60 words) and a longer one (140-160 words) in reply to a short one.

ONE. On the board write the following

  • Giving news
  • Apologizing
  • Inviting
  • Requesting
  • Thanking
  • Congratulating

 

TWO. Ask students to choose one. Make sure there is variety. They will find useful expressions for the email they have chosen to write in the handout provided.

THREE. Explain that they will need to write, on a clean sheet of paper, a short email to someone in the class. Tell them to follow the “salutation/body/closing structure. They will need to refer to the purpose of their email and then ask 2 or 3 further questions, related or not to the reason for writing their email. Remind them to keep this email short. Allow 10 minutes for this part.

FOUR. Once they have finished, ask students to swap emails with the person sitting behind them making sure they have not written the same kind of email. In that case, help them find someone else to swap emails with.

FIVE. Students will have to write an email in response to the email received, answering any questions asked. Ask them to refer to the handout and use a variety of expressions and a good range of vocabulary and structures. Allow 25 minutes for this part. They should aim to write between 140-160 words.

SIX. Students swap emails again and read the reply to their email.

SEVEN. Ask students to use this checklist to correct their partner’s email and give it a mark taking into account the following:

  • Content: Has he fulfilled the task? Has he answered all the questions?
  • Communicative Achievement: Has he used the right register or is it too formal? Does it sound natural?
  • Organisation: Is it well-structured? Is it logical and ordered? Has he used the right punctuation?
  • Language: Has he used a wide variety of vocabulary and structures? Is it adequate to the level? Are there spelling mistakes?

Correcting each other’s emails is not something the students feel confident about, but if before they start correcting, you write some repetitive mistakes on the board they’ll feel more confident correcting them. Ask them to underline anything that sounds incorrect to them and offer help.

EIGHT. The final step would be pairing up senders and recipients to comment on mistakes and marks awarded.

Guardar

Guardar

3 Activities for Bringing Reading Comprehension Texts to Life

Reading, , , , ,

I have to admit that my least favourite activity to do in class is Reading Comprehension. I have the feeling that doing reading activities, as suggested in textbooks, somehow disconnects students from the interactive aspect I struggle so hard to maintain and promote during the whole session So, I’m always balancing two options. Either I set the reading task as homework or I try to devise an engaging activity that brings a bit of creativity and engagement into the reading process.

The activities you’ll find below aim at improving the most basic level of reader response, which is the oral retelling of the texts. Oral retelling exercises demand that students recall as many details from the text as possible therefore encouraging communication, oral language development and reinforcing students’ vocabulary.

So, here are three activities to bring Reading Comprehension texts to life.

 

Activity 1. Using word clouds. No preparation required.

Introduction: For this activity students will be working in pairs retelling the story in as much detail as possible with the help of word clouds to actively use vocabulary.

To create the word clouds I have used the cloud generator Wordle (it works better with Firefox), but you can also use Tagul or any other. Alternatively, you can just create your own word cloud on the board without using any technology.

Procedure:

Choose a text that can be easily split into two and divide the class into As and Bs.

Ask As to read the first part and Bs the second part once.

Tell students to underline any difficult words. Write them on the board. Explain meaning and drill pronunciation.

Explain that the aim of the exercise will be retelling their part  in as much detail as possible so they will have to read it several times. Give them some more minutes for this task

Display the word cloud text box and ask them to tell you what keywords will help them remember the text. Type the words they suggest and create the cloud ( to keep words together for phrases, use ~ between each word). The idea is to retell the text in as much detail as possible with the help of key words included in the cloud

Open a new tab and repeat the same procedure with Bs

Retelling. Display word cloud 1 and ask As to retell the text using as much vocabulary from the cloud as possible. Display word cloud 2 and repeat procedure with Bs.

(Wordcloud Student A)

Activity 2. Retelling Competition. No preparation required

Introduction: For this activity students will be competing in teams retelling the story in as much detail as possible and the teacher will guide the competition by monitoring the time each team speaks and by making sure the development of the story is as close to the original as possible.

Procedure:

 Ask students to read the text once and underline any difficult words. Write them on the board. Explain meaning and drill pronunciation.

Explain that they will need to retell the text giving as much information as possible. Ask them to read it slowly several times.

Divide the class into two teams and ask them to close their books. Explain that they’ll need to retell the story in as much detail as possible. The winner will be the team who ends the story.

Decide which team starts telling the story. Ask this team to choose one of their members to start.

Rules:

  • Each team can only speak one minute and only one person at a time. At the end of this minute, the other team will continue the retelling of the story.
  • The other team can interrupt the team doing the retelling if
  1. The information is not correct
  2. If they have missed something important

The winner is the team who manages to tell the end of the story.

Activity 3. Using pictures. Some preparation required.

Introduction: For this activity students will be working in pairs or in small groups retelling the story in as much detail as possible with the help of pictures and some selected vocabulary.

Before the class, you will need to find some pictures to illustrate each part and select some vocabulary you want your students to use. There will be as many students in the group as parts you have split the text into.

Procedure:

Choose a text that can easily be split into meaningful paragraphs (a story or a biography are excellent for this kind of activity)

Ask students to read the text once and underline any difficult words. Write them on the board. Explain meaning and drill pronunciation.

Explain that they will need to retell the text giving as much information as possible.

Put students in small groups and split the text into meaningful parts assigning each student a part. Their aim will be to retell the story using the pictures as prompts and incorporating the vocabulary shown next to the pictures. Ask them to read their part slowly several times.

Display the pictures for the first part and ask students to start the oral retelling. Encourage them to use the vocabulary accompanying the pictures. Repeat procedure.

Tools used : befunky and playbuzz

Below, example of the activity with a text from File Intermediate

The Article in English: Explanation, Exercises and a Challenging Quiz

A word on Grammar, Grammar and Exercises, , , , , , , , , , ,

Although the use of the article in English seems a priori an easy subject to teach, the truth is that some students struggle with the use and omission of it.

What can you find in this post?

  • Intermediate level:
  1. Animated video with some rules on the use and omission of the articles “the, a/an”
  2. Some links to exercises from around the web to consolidate knowledge.
  • Advanced Level:
  1. An engaging quiz with feedback notes featuring some difficult cases related to the use and omission of articles.

 

Grammar. Watch the presentation. Pause it as often as necessary to understand and assimilate the rules.

Exercises: Links to interactive exercises  from around the web to consolidate knowledge.

 

The quiz