Tag Archives: grammar
Lacking inspiration? 6 awesome resource websites to find stuff for your classes
I like to consider myself a creative person and I’m always designing and devising activities to step away from the course book with the aim of sparking students ‘interest. Unfortunately, I’m not always in that mood. No problem :)Luckily, there are plenty of websites offering free resources that can really save the day.
These are my favourite go-to sites when I am feeling kind of lazy or uninspired, but still want to shine in class.
Eslbrains. Great for listening comprehension
This website offers activities based mostly on TED Talks videos. It provides free downloadable students’ and teachers’ worksheets and you can choose the video by topic or level (B1, B2, and C1)
Print and discuss. Stimulating conversation questions
This site doesn’t probably offer an astonishing variety of discussion topics, but I find the questions in each set quite stimulating. Scroll down the page to find their selection of topics for your conversation classes.
EFL Magazine- Resources. Anything you need is probably here.
EFL magazine has collected a host of great resources from different sites around the world.
The site has an excellent collection of resources for teachers. There are sections for grammar, pronunciation, functions, business, tests, speaking topics, vocabulary and lesson plans.
Teaching English- British Council. Excellent for lesson plans and methodology
This is an excellent site. The section for lesson plans specifically offers well-designed lesson plans to suit adults and teens. It also provides downloadable worksheets for both teachers and students.
Highly recommendable is also their Facebook page where tips, ideas, practical advice and lesson plans are offered.
Road to Grammar. Awesome for quizzes.
Road to Grammar is the place to go if you want to find a simple interactive grammar or vocabulary quiz. Don’t miss the Games Section with my favourite online game Fluent. It’s addictive!
You might also want to have a look at Road to Grammar Junior
Busy Teachers. Also called “teacher’s paradise”.
Awesome compilation of resources for every level. On this site, you’ll find worksheets for grammar, vocabulary, speaking, reading, writing and pronunciation among other things.
My favourite section is the Listening Section, where you can filter the activities by level (from complete beginner to advancedd)
Blog de Cristina is also on Facebook. Click to follow!
What are favourite sites? Can you add to the list?
Life Begins at 70: a Future Perfect and Future Continuous Lesson
“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
2 Fresh & Fun Activities to Practise Both, Neither and Either
If you think that teaching both, neither and either is a bit boring, I have good news for you. In fact, I dare say great news! It can also be fun!
It’s no secret on here that I love having fun in my classes but what people may not know is that although flexible when necessary, my classes are carefully planned and games are not played just to keep my students entertained; on the contrary, they are carefully designed and used to improve certain abilities and with a clear goal in mind. If at the same time we can have a nice time, that’s the icing on the cake.
1.SOULMATES
This is a team game and it aims at practising the structures
- Both/Neither of them
- Both… and / neither…nor
Materials:
- 2 white cards with YES written on one side and NO on the other
- Teacher’s here
PROCEDURE
- Divide the class into two or three teams.
- Ask the teams to select two people to play for them and take the “hot seats”. These two students will sit facing their team.
- Decide which team starts the game by tossing a coin. Let’s say Team A starts the game.
- Explain you’re going to give each of the two members of the team a white card with YES written on one side and NO on the other. Tell them you’re going to ask them 10 yes/no questions.
- Their team will score a point every time these two students show the same answer to the questions asked, and the team provides a correct sentence containing the target structure.
- Repeat procedure for Teams B and C and give a big applause to the winners.
Example 1.
- Teacher asks: Have you ever scored 10 out of 10 in an exam?
- Student A: YES Student B: YES
- Team: Both of them have scored 10 out of 10 in an exam / Both Mary and Peter have scored 10 out of 10 in an exam (1 point)
Example 2.
- Teacher asks: Have you ever scored 10 out of 10 in an exam?
- Student A: NO Student B: NO
- Team: Neither of them have/has scored 10 out of 10 in an exam / Neither Mary nor Peter has scored 10 out of 10 in an exam (1point)
Example 3
- Teacher: Have you ever scored 10 out of 10 in an exam?
- Student A: YES Student B: NO (0 points)
2. CHANGING SCHOOLS
This communicative activity has two parts.
In part 1, students will have a conversation where the aim is to agree with their partner using the structures:
- So do I- to agree with a positive statement
- Neither do I or I don’t either- to agree with a negative statement
In part 2, students will report back to the class using:
- Both/Neither of us…
- We both…
- Both … and … / Neither … nor…
PROCEDURE.
PDF teacher’s here
- Ask students to work in pairs and give them Handouts A and B.
- Ask them to complete the answers.
- Explain the context. You have just changed schools and you don’t know anybody in the class. You want to make new friends quickly and the best way, if not the most honest one, would be to agree with whatever the student sharing your desks says. So, five minutes before the next class starts you decide to strike a conversation with the student sitting next to you.
- Start by introducing yourself and then ask your classmate some questions.
- Your classmate will introduce himself and also ask some questions. Make sure you agree with everything he/she says using the structures.
So do I- to agree with a positive statement
Neither do I or I don’t either- to agree with a negative statement
- Ask students to report back to the class using:
- Both/Neither of us..
- We both…
- Both … and … / Neither … nor…
Ex. Both of us have one brother/We both have one brother/ Both Peter and I have one brother.
Neither of us can speak Norwegian/ Neither Peter nor me can speak Norwegian
Example Handout Student A
You might also be interested in the following
Introducing Reported Speech Statements,Questions and Orders in a Different Way
This week’s post was not supposed to be a grammar post, it just so happened to turn out like that. Come to think of it, I have been teaching lots of grammar lately so I shouldn’t be surprised if my brain is filled with ideas for grammar teaching.
If I want my classes to be different from the ones I had when I was studying English at school (teacher-centred and book-centred), I cannot introduce all those digital tools I’m so keen on using and then go and spoil it all by asking students to read straight from a photocopy when it comes to grammar. I’m not saying it’s the wrong way to go about it, I’m just saying it’s not the way I teach or the way I’d like to be taught.
Admittedly, grammar is grammar, but can we make it a bit more appealing to our students?
Reported speech is probably one of my favourite grammar points and this is how I have introduced reported speech statements, questions and orders in my classes this week.
INTRODUCING STATEMENTS.
To introduce statements I often use quotes from famous people. The presentation you’ll see below is one I often use as my students, for the most part, are adults. But if you’re teaching teenagers, you can easily change the people in the slides and use celebrities they can relate to.
So the idea is to play the presentation, read the quote and then ask: “What did Marilyn say?” Guide students through the changes in reported speech and then show the second slide where the reported sentence is displayed.
INTRODUCING QUESTIONS.
I’ve been introducing reported speech questions in this way all my teaching career. The reason? Students collaborate from minute one and this is something I treasure.
I tell the students my son Daniel is 4 years old and he’s always asking questions. With all the drama I can muster I tell them that yesterday I got home really tired and wanted to rest a bit but my son Daniel had other plans for me and could not stop asking questions.
I draw on the board a boy and I call him Daniel and a woman and I call her Cristina- my name. I draw a big bubble next to Daniel and I ask students to guess what sort of questions he might have asked me. As they provide the questions I write them inside the speech bubble making sure there is a variety of wh- and yes/no questions and a variety of tenses. Once the questions have been written, I go on telling them that when my husband got home I was lying on the sofa with an ice pack on my forehead and looking dead tired -remember drama is important- and when he enquired why I was so tired I told him all about my day and how I couldn’t rest because Daniel had asked all those questions.
- He asked me why I was smiling
- He wanted to know if he could watch cartoons.
INTRODUCING REQUESTS AND ORDERS.
To introduce request and orders I write inside a circle on the board
First day instructions
and ask students to try to remember some of the instructions I gave them on the very first day in class. Encourage them to tell you the exact words I used. They will probably say:
- Use English
- Put your mobiles on silent mode
- Don’t be late.
- Change partners regularly.
- Don’t forget to bring your workbook
Write them on the board and choose a student who couldn’t attend that first day.
Tell students they now need to inform this student of the instructions I gave this very first day.
- The teacher told us to use English in class
- Cristina told us not to forget to bring our workbook
Hope it’s helpful! You might also be interested in this other post