January 22

Verb patterns four-in-a-row

Verb patterns are tricky for English users because many languages do not have a similar construction, often using just the infinitive. The activity below provides students with controlled practice of the verb patterns and can then be used in a subsequent lesson to review the language and provide a basis for freer speaking.

A number of the questions are specific to my current environment (a naval base) but could easily be adapted to suit your learners.

Playing four-in-a-row

Divide the class into three teams. In order to win a square, the team must correctly complete the question. If they do so, stick a coloured Post-it note over the square (one colour per team). The objective of the game is to get four squares in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally). This version is suitable for B2 and above.

January 12

Snowball

Some shameless fun yesterday with my adult group!

1) Brainstorm the topics which can come up during the speaking exam, e.g. family, education, holidays, food, music, etc. Get a list of about 15.

2) Give each student a piece of paper and have them divide the paper into 6 squares. Tell them to write a different topic in each square and a personal information question for each topic.

3) Have them scrunch their paper into a ball and divide the class into two groups – half them stand on opposite sides of the classroom. Have a 20-second snowball fight.

4) After the fight, tell students to grab a snowball, sit down and interview their partner using the six questions.

5) After they chat, tell them to write a second question for each of the topics on the paper. Again, have a 20-second snowball fight, then have students interview their partner with the new snowball they pick up at the end.

My students really enjoyed it – as they are on the naval base, they are under a lot of pressure with exams, routines and duties and so they enjoyed a bit of silliness. Plus, it practises question formation as well as getting them to think about the typical topics of the exam. It’s really easy to adapt this activity to different levels as well, as the questions can vary from using very simple tenses and structures, to using conditionals and encouraging a wider range of structures in their responses.

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March 20

Phrasal Verb Jeopardy

This is a really easy game to play to practise phrasal verbs with B2+ learners. You can use Powerpoint to create a board and then use the fill option to highlight when a team wins a square or alternatively, just draw the table on the board and use different coloured pens to show which team wins a square.

Here’s the one I played with my group – I gave them the list of particles to help.

LOOK TAKE GET PUT GO GIVE after

aside

away

for

forward to

into

like

off

on

out

over

up

100 100 100 100 100 100
200 200 200 200 200 200
500 500 500 500 500 500
1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000

And here are the clues for each square.

LOOK TAKE GET PUT GO GIVE
forward to

be excited about a future event

up

start a new hobby

up

get out of bed in the morning

on

get dressed

off

explode

out

distribute paper or other materials

like

be similar in appearance

after

be similar in personality

away

escape, e.g. after a bank robbery

off

delay doing something

for

choose from different options

up

stop doing something

after

take care of

away

buy a meal to eat at home

over

recover from an illness or shock

up

erect a building or tent

off

become old and inedible

off

produce a sound, smell or aura

into

investigate

out

remove or invite someone on a date

into

become involved in a book or film

aside

save something for later

on

continue doing something

up

surrender

To play, divide the class into teams – for this activity you can just have two teams – and ask a learner to choose a verb and an amount. Read out the definition and the team has to give you the correct phrasal verb to win that amount of money. If they get it incorrect, play simply passes to the next team.

February 15

Engaging Exam Exercises

Here are the slides from the talk I gave at the FECEI annual conference, held in Madrid last weekend. If there are any questions about any of the activities, leave a message in the comments below or feel free to email me.

Engaging Exam Exercises from verybouncyperson
***UPDATED***
Thanks to the wonderful Sandy Millin for reminding me that I was going to post links to the activities from the slides:
Spot the difference
Ask the Experts
Phrasal Verb Jeopardy
Dice Games – these can be downloaded from my Activities page
Word formation 4-in-a-row
You can find an explanation of SPRE in this blogpost  and there’s a bit about using guided visualisations in this blogpost. The idea of the final activity was to helo learners with creative writing – by doing a guided visualisation and using the SPRE format for story-writing, we can help our learners become more effective writers, especially when they’re trying to do so in the pressure of an exam