Archive for the ‘Photocopiable worksheets’ Category

It’s got “going to”, it’s got countable and uncountable, it’s got Travel English, miming, grammar discovery… what more could you possibly ask for?

Countable uncountable travel English going to mimes

See the Travel and Tourism worksheets section and the Grammar games and worksheets section for more of the same TEFLtastic thrills.

Putting the seasonal cheer back into grammar (and putting the grammar back into Xmas)

Some of you might be thinking that the problem with Xmas today is an excess of commercialism or the lack of real religious feeling, but the way I see it the problem is an excess of worksheets teaching students vocabulary like “holly” that they will have forgotten by the same time next year (if they even understand the concept of holly anyway) and a lack of tie ins between those seasonal worksheets and everything else students do in the classroom. For those that agree with me that what is needed to make your Xmas complete is lots more grammar, here are some ideas on how to tie in your Xmas lessons with whatever grammar point you are studying at the time (the ideas should work with other major festivals and celebrations too)…

See below for not only shed loads of good grammar ideas in the continuation of this article, but also a whole stocking full of other ideas for Chrimbo-themed lessons for kids (from pre-school) to adults- “Christmastastic fun for all the family” (R)

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Sorry there hasn’t been a lot going on the blog page of my blog. It’s all going on elsewhere though: (more…)

Have got plenty of new worksheets up at Usingenglish.com  , have added a whole bunch of TEFLtasticly multimedia song worksheets for teaching and practising grammar to my video worksheets (more to come of both of these), and have been rearranging the mini reviews on the reviews page so that they are a little easier to find. Have also somehow found time to teach my classes, in fact sometimes it’s a nice break to get away from the computer screen and into class! That is, until I think of another nice worksheet I could type up for the next class…

I think I feel another spurt of worksheets coming on, this time starting with a whole new page of EFL video worksheets. Feedback gratefully accepted, apart from on sorting out the fact you have to copy and paste into Word to use them, as the technicalities are beyond me…

If any of you guys are feeling as tired as I am this morning (even those of you who didn’t discover a reasonably priced source of German beer last night), I can see why the page hit stats take a dive on a Saturday. The great thing with this writing lark is that, unlike teaching, you can put all the effort in when you are feeling energetic and then when the mood leaves you just read Dibert .com and pretend that it could be useful for Business English classes.

Anyhoo, all my efforts recently have been going into what I hope will be a very productive future partnership. I’ve been writing a whole bunch of worksheets and lesson plans (more…)

It’s all getting a bit “TEFLtastic with no irony intended” round here with all these fun and games I’m putting up. Maybe I’m too tired to even be sarcastic…

 Anyway, here is my latest attempt to make none of us fall asleep during Business English classes. I’ve slipped in lots of emailing vocab and have tackled some common Japanese mistakes such as confusing “memo” and “note”. It also includes the most important factor for any classroom speaking exercise, which is to give the other people a reason to listen- in this case to decide if they were successful in solving the problem. The board with rules is below. A link to a full version with rolecards is also given, but please note that this is for quite a high level class that have covered most of this language before so you might need to make a different version of the cards for your class.

Business Problems Mini Roleplays

Rules of the game
Shuffle the pack of cards and put them face down on the top left box. The first person takes the top card and chooses how they are going to communicate and who they are going to communicate with to solve the problem. The options are to:

·          Write an email

·          Send a text (= a text message= an SMS)

·          Phone someone

·          Pick a time when you know someone is not available and leave a phone message

·          Go and see the person and speak face to face

·          Leave someone a note (e.g. put a post it on their computer screen)

·          Write a memo for your whole team/ section/ department/ company to read

They should then tell their partners what they are going to say or write, or roleplay the conversation with someone. After that the other members of the group decide whether they managed to find a successful solution. If so, they can keep the card and score one point. If not, their card goes to the bottom of the pile. Play passes to the person on their right. The person with most cards when the teacher stops the game is the winner.

Useful language to play the game
“Who’s next?”= “Whose turn is it?” “It’s your turn”= “Take a card”

“Who are you going to contact (to solve the problem)?”

“How are you going to contact them?”

“What are you going to say/ write?”

“Who is going to play the other role?”

“I think that would work because…”

“I don’t think that would work/ I’m not sure that would work because…”

 “Let’s ask, shall we?”= “Shall we check with the teacher?”

“Who has the most cards?”/ “Congratulations, you are the winner”

Mondays are not a day for pontificating, and anyway Im a bit ponficated out at the moment, so here are some fun and games instead-

This is one that fits into my ultimate TEFL desert island survival game kit. It is personalised, it produces lots of language, it is controlled practice of the focus point but free in other ways, it is loads of fun, it practices a range of skills and it is adaptable for a whole lot of other grammar and vocab points. And here it is-

 Guess me!

Before the lesson, write a whole bunch of sentence stems or sentences with gaps including the target language (see below for examples). After a warmer that links in with the grammar, topic or exercise type (e.g. tell each other things about your weekend but with gaps and give hints until they guess the missing information- I ate _____ for breakfast on Sunday etc.), give out one photocopy per student and get them to fill in at least half of the sentences to make true sentences about themselves. When the first one or two students have finished all the sentences, stop everyone and get them to take turns reading out only the parts they have written and guessing which sentences it has been written in.

Example- Verb Pattern Guess Me!

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First of all, just because it’s funny, here’s a native speaker who wouldn’t pass the IELTS Speaking Part Three:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

To make sure your students aren’t reduced to such levels of incoherence, here is a whole stack of IELTS speaking materials:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets/efl-exam-worksheets-ielts/

I’ve also got a whole stack of Part Two and Part Three exam questions on various topics if that is of interest to anyone. Just put a request in the comments box and I’ll put them up: