March 5

Character Builds #3

In a previous post, I talked about how to set up a character build in the class and how they can be used to practise specific grammar points.  With my KET group, we recently looked at the present perfect with for, since, just, already, etc.

We did a character build in class and then the learners completed the following worksheet:

Character Build

It appealed to the more creative learners, both artistically and linguistically  and I allowed the learners freedom to answer the questions how they saw fit.  Our character, a lovely Swedish lady who lived in Madrid, had just stolen something from IKEA according to one learner!

September 21

Make no Mistake

I watched an OUP webinar by Robin Walker a while ago on errors and as I’ve been sorting through last year’s bits and bobs I came across my notes.

He divided the talk into three sections – Cause, Class and Classroom.

CAUSE

He identified six main causes of error: carelessness, L1 interference, teaching materials or method, overgeneralization, general order of difficulty and risk-taking and creativity.  Interestingly, during this section he also suggested that items which are similar and easily confused (such as past simple and present perfect) should be taught separately with a significant space between them and then compared at a later date.

CLASS

One of the key points I picked up from this section was classifying the errors as local or global: a local error is confined to an individual word or is an error which doesn’t impede understanding, whereas a global error makes the meaning unclear.  There’s quite a good flowchart on prioritising errors on the presentation which accompanied the talk.

CLASSROOM

In the final section, Robin suggested some easy activities which we can use in class to work on errors – a couple of my favourites are the 4-colour dictation and flavour of the month.

In the 4-colour dictation, they do the dictation first in one colour, then are allowed to check their work (using dictionaries or other resources) in a second colour.  Then their partner checks their work in a third colour and finally the teacher corects in a fourth colour.

In Flavour of the Month, you choose a specific error which you want everyone to pay special attention to that month.

March 6

Shark Attack…what happened next?

I’ve done the Shark Attack activity recently with a couple of groups and they really enjoy the task – it’s an easy, enjoyable, controlled practice activity of the past continuous.  However, I was doing a lesson today with past continuous and past simple and adapted the activity so learners would use both tenses.

The first part of the activity was the same: we brainstormed things to do at the beach and then I told them to draw the beach (I didn’t mention a shark) and then mingle to find out what their classmates were doing.  Once we had mingled and done some feedback, I told them to draw the shark and to think about what happened next.  There were some very inventive ideas:

Ana and Elena were swimming in the sea.  When the shark attacked, they died.

Or alternatively,

Álvaro and Carlos were playing football.  When the shark attacked, Álvaro jumped into the sea to save the girls and Carlos called the police.

And even…

Pepe was sitting under an umbrella.  When the shark arrived, he saw Pepe and they fell in love and moved to another country.

image

March 23

Shark Attack!

This is a fabulous activity for older Primary students, teens and adults which I picked up from Katherine Bilsborough’s session at the recent TESOL-SPAIN convention.

Firstly, ask students to draw the picture below – you could do this as a picture dictation, or project the picture and ask them to copy it.  You can see me in the picture too (I’m eating an ice cream!).

Students also draw themselves in the picture and then do a mingle activity to add more detail to their picture.  For lower levels, this could be, “What are you doing?”  or for higher levels, “What were you doing when the shark attacked?”  Students draw their classmates onto the picture and can then compare drawings, write a news report or report back to the class in whole group feedback.

This is a highly adaptable activity as by changing the original picture, you could use it for a variety of different topics and grammar points, e.g…

  • Students draw the playground and pictures of what they can do (What can you do?  I can play tennis.)
  • Students draw a house and after the mingle activity, the teacher could say that someone was murdered in the living room, leading to modals of speculation (It can’t have been Tom – he was playing football in the garden.)
  • Students could draw an object in a classroom to practise prepositions (The ruler is under the chair.)
  • And many more…
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January 19

Repeating and reviewing the past simple

I’ve recently been teaching the past simple (both regular and irregular verbs in positive statements) to my class of nine-year-olds.  There’s been lots of gesturing behind me to show that we’re thinking about something which happened in the past and I’ve been trying to think of different ways to review, repeat and recycle the material.  This week we did quite a fun activity which allowed them to focus on both the meaning of the verbs and also the different pronunciation in the present and past – especially useful with a lot of the regular verbs and some irregulars, such as read (/red/).

To start with, I asked them to give me some of the verbs we’d been studying in their present and past forms.  Then, when we had about fifteen on the board, I asked them to give me a sentence for each, using the past form.

We did some drilling of the sentences to check pronunciation and then I put them into groups.  One student had to say a sentence and the others had to say whether it was in the past or present.  I monitored and corrected, especially the problem -ed endings!