It’s always a pleasure to share with you the work of my hard-working students.
The task was either talking or writing about their hometown and I have to say that I was gladly surprised when most of my students, who had never ever given a speech in English, decided to give a beautiful speech about their hometown. I had some beautiful contributions in written form (like Rodrigo’s and Carmen’s ) but most of them were given orally and sometimes even accompanied by slides like the one just below, given by Manuel.
These were the guidelines they had to follow and necessarily include in their presentation.
Name of their hometown
Population
Why it is famous
Good places to visit
Places to eat and relax
The best/worst about their hometwon.
To publish Rodrigo and Carmen’s work I have used Issuu
And Manuel’s beautiful presentation of Avilés shared in Slideshare.
Happy New Year to everybody! I am back!!! Hard to get started once again after this longish holiday. It’s been eight days now since we have let 2014 in and it is time we get down to some serious work, don’t you think?
Talking in class about food related things after some huge binge eating and drinking is not precisely what appeals to me most, but unfortunately I cannot choose.
This is an activity I am going to do with my Elementary students after some serious work practising food vocabulary.
The activity is simple. 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 a popular dish is displayed. Now, the person seeing the picture has to describe it in as much detail as possible, talking about its ingredients and the way it is cooked and the other person has to guess the dish. Allow them two or three minutes and then display another picture for the other student to do the same. Below are some slides with the dishes that I am going to use.
I’m really stressed now. Internet has been down for three days and I only had it serviced this morning after countless phone calls to the company.
Preparing exams, marking exams, preparing classes, publishing…. this is all part of who I am and what I do for a living …. but listen!, catching up on my email has been nothing short of a nightmare. Christmas is coming and it seems all the companies have got hold of my email address ’cause there were like 500 emails waiting for me. Most of them junk! Really, if I get one more email informing me that I can get a 40% discount in ( insert shop here) I am going to go postal.
Anyway, I am sure my students have been checking my site to see if I have published their last oral test as promised. Here it is guys! Sorry to keep you waiting !
The topic: Fashion and Trends
First of all, three nice pictures you need to use as an excuse to talk about the given topic
and now some questions to talk about. Time to show off, guys!
I am going to teach Elementary Level a lesson about shopping and I have found this very easy short video to get started. There are so many things to learn/revise when you are teaching about going shopping! Teaching Going Shopping gives me the opportunity to revise numbers and prices, the shops in a city, items of clothing and a variety of questions including offers and requests. There will be several steps ending up with the students, hopefully, being able to use interactional language in a role-play situation. An example here
Watch the video (if you don’t want to see the introduction, start 40seconds into the video) and answer the questions. Then, activate the subtitles to check your answers.
This is a lesson for intermediate students, which I thought would be interesting to share, mainly because of the video support, which I selected only after some wasted time listening to some very poor quality videos or perhaps good quality videos but which, unfortunately, were not appropriate for this level.
Step 1. What is a stereotype?
A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person related to their race, nationality and sexual orientation…etc
Step 2. Brainstorming Ideas.
Ask the class. What do you think of when you hear the word British? Give them one or two minutes to write down their answers, and then call on a few students to give you their answers. Play the video National Stereotypes, but don’t show the images, just the audio. How many have they guessed?
Step 3. Brainstorming
In pairs, students try to answer the same question but, this time, about Spain and the Spaniards. Embedded below are some of my students’ answers. Do you agree?
Step 4. Speaking: National Stereotypes
Ask students whether they agree or disagree with the following National Stereotypes
1. The British are violent mad football freaks
2. The Italians are good lovers but bad workers
3. The Chinese eat everything that moves
4. The Germans are very punctual
5. The Swiss love clocks
Have you ever wondered how we sound to speakers of other languages when we speak our native language? Some languages are easy to imitate, as for example the Italian language or the German one but I would never have guessed how a Spanish speaking native sounds to the rest of the world.
In this video the British Sketch comedian, Katherine Tate, volunteers to translate into seven different languages. Hilarious! And I hope nobody takes offence!
Step 6.Speaking. Students in pairs answer the following questions about stereotypes
♥What do people think of when they think of Spain and the Spaniards? Do you think these stereotypes are true or false?
♥Do you know of any stereotypes about British people?
♥What are some stereotypes you know of about women?
♥What are some stereotypes about men?
♥ What stereotypes exist about people who are blonde?
♥Do you think some stereotypes are true?
♥What stereotypes exist about religion?
