Tag Archives: AI

Confession Time: I’m Useless With Names (So I Invented a Game That Reviews Vocab and Grammar Too)

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Okay, I’ll confess: we’re in the first days of the new course and I, the teacher, cannot for the life of me remember half my students’ names. Does this happen to you too? That moment when you point at someone and go “hey… you, yes, you, the one in the blue hoodie” because the name has completely vanished from your brain. A classic September moment. Well, and in my case, February moment, too.

So I started turning it over in my head (because yes, I have that habit of mine of turning any everyday problem into a classroom activity, it’s a blessing and a curse in equal measure) and I came up with something that kills two birds with one stone: we learn names AND we review grammar and vocabulary. Yay! Because why settle for one thing when you can have both, right?

And guess how I’m going to run it? Exactly how I like it: mixing tech and old-school tradition. Not fully digital, not fully analogue, a bit of both. But hey!!! You don’t like tech. It can all be done in the traditional way.

VOCABULARY ACROSTIC DUEL

Objective: learning students’ names and revising grammar and vocabulary.

Setting it up

  • A WordCloud. Split the class into two teams and create two word clouds, one per team, with the names of their members. You can do this by hand on the board or you can bring in the tech like I do (because for this bit, I admit I’m a little lazy) and use Wooclap to generate the cloud on the spot. Well, two clouds, one per team,
  • A buzzer. Some noise? Yes! Each team needs a buzzer within reach. A real buzzer, one of those that goes “ding!” and gives the whole thing that game-show feel that hooks everyone instantly.
How to play

(click on the image)

  1. Pick a student’s name at random from either word cloud (it doesn’t matter which team they’re on).
  2. Assign a challenge or if you use my wheel above, spin the wheel: for example, each letter has to be a past tense verb, or a descriptive adjective. You’ve got total freedom here to adapt it to whatever grammar point you’re working on.

An example with the name LUCAS and past tense verbs

  • L – Learned
  • U – Understood
  • C – Called
  • A – Asked
  • S – Saw

3.  Within each team, students can work solo, in pairs, or in groups of three, whatever       they prefer.

4. As soon as someone finishes the acrostic, they hit the buzzer.Let’s say it is a student from Team A.  If it’s correct, their team wins the round and  crosses out a name from Team B’s  cloud,  and picks the next name plus the next grammar or lexical category.

NOTE: If the student from Team A makes a mistake, then the other team wins (Team B) wins and crosses out a name from Team A’s cloud

And so, round after round, and without even realizing it, they’re repeating names over and over while working on structure and vocabulary. By the end of the class, I promise even I’ll have picked up a few more names.

Verb Tenses: The TV Show That Became a Grammar Game

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My brain doesn’t switch off. Ever. I’ll be watching TV and — boom — I’m already thinking, “How can I use this in class?” Is it a blessing or a curse? Honestly? Both. But mostly a blessing, because sometimes it leads to something really cool. Like this.

There’s a programme on Asturian TV called El Picu — and picu means “peak” or “mountaintop” in Asturian. The concept is simple: contestants answer questions, and with each correct answer, they climb a little higher up the mountain. First team to reach the summit wins.

I watched it and thought: my students would go absolutely mad for this. 

I have the idea, Gemini builds the app

 I have zero coding skills. But I do have Gemini, and  that’s all I needed.

I won’t pretend it requires no preparation at all — you do need a bit of know-how about how to prompt it effectively — but the process itself is surprisingly straightforward. I described what I wanted, iterated a little, and before long I had a fully functional classroom game called The Picu: B2 ESL Alpine Expedition.

How to play

Here’s the game

I show the game  on the interactive whiteboard and the moment students see those mountain tracks, something shifts. Smiles appear. Someone always goes “Yuhuuu, we’re playing today!” — and yes, we are. But we’re also learning. That’s the whole point.

Here’s my low-tech twist on it:

  • I divide the class into 4 teams
  • Each group has paper and a pen
  • When the sentence appears, they discuss and write their answer. They have 30 seconds for this.
  • At my signal, everyone holds up their paper at the same time (no copying!)
  • Groups that got it right? Their climber moves up the mountain
  • First team to reach the Picu wins

What I particularly love is that multiple teams can be awarded points in the same round  And if a question is too hard? Just hit Skip and move on. No fuss.

Cool Speaking Cards, Indirect Questions, a Spinning Wheel and Speed Chatting: One Lesson, Endless Engagement

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Remember those awful photocopies? You know the ones. A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, with a blurry black-and-white image that was somehow supposed to inspire deep conversation in class? Yeah… same. And honestly? The students’ faces said everything before the activity had even started

Lately, I’ve completely transformed the way I approach speaking activities, and AI has become a huge part of that process. But probably not in the way people imagine. It’s not about clicking a button and magically producing the perfect lesson. I wish! It still takes creativity, tweaking, experimenting, and sometimes a lot of failed prompts along the way. But the process itself? It’s fun.

GENERATING THE QUESTIONS

I could explain but I’d rather you watch the video and see for yourself how easy it is to generate some cool cards. And for “free”.

You will find the prompt I used to generate the cards, in the first comment of the video. And please, leave a comment , I love hearing from you!
AND THE GRAMMAR: INDIRECT QUESTIONS

Once we have our conversation questions, I like to use them to revise indirect questions — it’s the perfect excuse. The questions are already there, they already have context, so why not squeeze a bit of grammar out of them too?

To make the revision more engaging, I built a little website — also with Gemini — where students can practise the structure interactively. First we revisit the rules, then we activate.

Spin the Wheel. Then Speed Chat.

After the grammar input, we present the first question and… spin the wheel — built with AI, loaded with examples of indirect questions.

  1. Show the card with the question they need to answer
  2. Spin the wheel

Example: I was wondering … (do you believe that online shopping will completely  replace…?) if you believe that online shopping…

And to wrap it all up? Speed chatting. Signal sounds, they rotate, new partner, new indirect question, new conversation question. Dynamic, social, and it always gets a smile out of them.

What more can you ask from one single activity? Give it a go and let me know. 👇shopping

Teaching How to Write a Report. Create your own Worksheets and Make it more Palatable for your Students

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It’s Sunday evening, I’m prepping for the week, and I open my B2.1 students’ textbook to the report writing unit. Five seconds in, I want to close the book, pour myself a glass of wine, and pretend it doesn’t exist.

You know the kind of page I mean. Dense. Overwhelming. A chart nobody asked for. Vocabulary that even I have to look up. My students wouldn’t read it — they’d survive it. Barely. And I’d spend the entire lesson firefighting confusion instead of actually teaching anything useful.

So I did what any self-respecting language teacher does: I refused to accept it and went rogue.

Step 1: I Went Textbook Shopping

Before I even thought about creating anything, I did a little research mission. I pulled out a few different textbooks — because no single textbook has all the answers— and I started gathering:

  • The core structure of a report
  • Realistic vocabulary my students can actually use without sounding like a lawyer
  • Task types that make sense for where my students are right now

Step 2: Hello, Gemini and Hello ChatGPT

1. Generating the Text

Once I had my notes, I headed over to Gemini and copy/pasted my notes and asked it to generate clean,  level-appropriate content. Exactly the kind of thing I wished was in the textbook in the first place.

2- Generating the worksheets

So now i have the text; but, in the era of AI, why give them a boring document when you can give them a beautifully structured worksheet? Because — even well-written content, if it looks like a photocopied page from 1998, is going to kill the vibe before we even start.

So I took my Gemini-generated content and went straight to ChatGPT — a if you haven’t tried the new image generation model in ChatGPT yet, close this tab and go do that first. I’ll wait.  It is genuinely the best option out there when your worksheet involves formatted text, tables, or any kind of visual structure.

I want you to create a worksheet with  the content pasted under these lines. Include all the information pasted. Title “Writing a report _ B2 www.cristinacabal.com” . Use images related to the content to make it more visually appealing. Clean design.

And the result? A worksheet my students actually picked up and looked at. With curiosity. Not dread.

To get the worksheets, Right click on the image and Save as…

It has everything they need:

  • A model text at the right level
  • Guided vocabulary in context
  • A clear framework they can replicate
  • A writing task that feels achievable

 

Step 3: And why not an interactive website for those who prefer interactive content?

Because apparently a gorgeous worksheet wasn’t enough for me, I also went ahead and built an interactive website to go with it with a Drag and Drop exercise

Step 4. They Know the Theory. Now They Need to Write.

Knowing the structure is one thing. Producing it under exam conditions is a completely different story. Report writing doesn’t come naturally to B2 students — it needs practice. Lots of it. And they can’t do that without me in the room, monitoring, nudging, redirecting. What works for me is collaborative guided practice: students work together within a clear framework, which lowers the anxiety AND means I can actually see what’s happening before they write a single word. The activity below is exactly that. Does it guarantee a perfect report? No. But it gives them a fighting chanc

Note: Click here for a more user-friendly view of the webpage with the step-by-step  activity

 

How to Get the Transcript from an Audio or Video in Seconds and 6 Ideas to Use the Transcript

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Can we talk about the hours we’ve spent? You know exactly what I mean. Whether it’s that perfect YouTube video or an audio file sitting in a folder on your computer, you find the ideal clip but then realize you need the transcript to create a gap-fill, a listening comprehension, or just to highlight some “juicy” collocations. It used to take forever, but those days are over!

For years, I’ve been the one hitting play, pause, type… play, pause, type. It’s exhausting! But as I always say, if I can embrace the tech, you can too. Those days of manual labor are officially over because Gemini is about to become your new best friend..

How to Get That Transcript in Seconds

Here’s how to get the trasncript without breaking a sweat:

  • The Direct Link Method If it’s a YouTube video, it’s “easy peasy.” Just paste the URL directly into Gemini and ask: “Can you provide a full transcript for this video?”

  • The File Upload  If you have an MP3 or a video file on your computer, just click that little Plus Sign (+)  and then, the Upload icon. Upload your audio or video and tell Gemini: “Transcribe this audio for me, please.”

    TIP:  If the transcript comes back as one giant block of text, ask Gemini to: “Break this into paragraphs and add timestamps every [30 seconds].”

    Video: Step by Step

    To see exactly how this works, I’ve recorded a short video for you. Even though it’s in Spanish, you won’t have any problems following the steps—it’s very intuitive!

Making the Most of That Transcript

Getting the transcript is just the beginning, but  I am afraid turning it into a solid exercise takes a little more than just a “copy-paste.” If you want a listening comprehension exercise that isn’t totally predictable, you’ll need to put some work into your prompt. That’s where the real magic happens! But don’t worry, we’ll dive deep into those prompting secrets in a future post. Keep posted!

6 IDEAS TO WORK WITH JUST THE TRANSCRIPT.

If you think a transcript is just a boring piece of paper, think again! Once you have that text in your hands, you have a goldmine for active learning.Here are a few ways I love to use transcripts to keep things spicy in the classroom:

  • Grammar Focus: Remove all the prepositions, articles, or a specific verb tense (like the passive voice) and have students try to “restore” the text before listening to check.
  • Vocabulary Focus: White out 5–10 “juicy” words and have them guess the words based on the context.
  • Before they even see the whole transcript, give them just the first paragraph or even just the title. Ask them: “What’s going to happen next?”.
  • Try a Jigsaw: Cut the transcript into sections and give one to each group. They have to summarize their part and then work with the other groups to figure out the correct order of the story.
  • The “Summary Challenge”:  Give them 3 minutes to read the transcript and summarize it in exactly 20 words. No more, no less! It forces them to prioritize the most essential information.
  • The “Shadowing” Technique: This is brilliant for advanced grammar and flow. Have students listen to a small snippet of the audio while reading the transcript and try to mimic the speaker’s exact rhythm and intonation.