Archive for the ‘Functional language’ Category
Monday, December 1st, 2008
… are exactly the same as Xmas ESL ideas 2007 (haven’t written any special lessons on seasonal shopping in a worldwide depression yet, although I could use my grandfather’s story about his pet rabbit being served up for an East End Xmas lunch if I did), but at least that means this year I can get all the links out of the way in one post and so not repeat the TEFL equivalent of 6 weeks of nonstop Xmas carols like we had here in 2007. And here all the articles, teaching ideas and photocopiable worksheets are- a veritable Xmas feast, stuffed stocking etc etc to bring seasonal cheer to the last few weeks before the holiday without the need for sipping brandy between classes:
Articles and teaching ideas
Christmas vocabulary you can mime
Combining Xmas with a young learner syllabus
Doing something with Xmas songs
Putting the grammar back into Christmas
Games and other photocopiable worksheets
Future Perfect New Year predictions
New Year action and state verbs
New Year resolutions adverbs of frequency - going to for plans and learner training
Xmas first conditional superstitions bluff game - a classic, hopefully not ruined in my version
Christmas Adverbs of Frequency- Present Simple and lots of lovely (not stereotyped) cultural information
Christmas traditions passives bluff game
Xmas guess the country modals of deduction
Christmas Present Simple and Continuous mimes- contrasting routines and things happening now, with lots of nice Chrimbo vocab
Christmas Past Tense mimes - Past continuous when they finish miming and then tense review as they talk about their own experiences of those things
Will for future predictions Xmas
Xmas trivia number pairwork - good for Business English, Technical English and other ESP classes
Business English Christmas cards Do’s and Don’ts - imperatives and important cultural information
Describing Xmas foods bluff game - good for students who want to explain food from their own country to foreign guests, e.g. Business English students who often entertain clients
Going to Xmas mimes - for predictions with present evidence
Xmas party negotiations - the best ever game for the language of meetings and negotiations, as there is a clear winner, and some good Xmas vocab
Video Worksheets
Friends Series One New Year episode
Edward Scissor Hands- cute, seasonal, the easiest film in the English language, and full of lots of lovely reference expressions
The Life of Brian - as mentioned on a recent Dave’s ESL Cafe thread, only for veeeery high level and open-minded students
Xmas Song worksheets
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
The Christmas Song (”Chesnuts roasting on an open fire” etc)
White Xmas song correct the mistakes
Posted in Adverbs of frequency, Business English and ESP, Christmas lessons, Cross cultural training in EFL, Cultural differences/ cultural training, First conditional, Food vocabulary, Future perfect, Going to for future plans, Going to for predictions with present evidence, Grammar games, Language of negotiation, Modals of deduction, New Year themed lessons, Passives, Past continuous, Photocopiable worksheets, Present continuous/ present simple, TEFL articles, TPR, Technical English, Vocab games, Will for predictions, pre-school/ kindergarten/ very young learners, state and action verbs, video | No Comments »
Friday, November 14th, 2008
Tags: psychology
Posted in Business English and ESP, Business English games, Business English textbooks, Classroom management, Complaints, Conditionals, Cross cultural training in EFL, Cultural differences/ cultural training, Ending lessons, Functional language, Future tenses, Grammar, Lesson planning, Market Leader, Modals, Modals of possibility probability, Needs analysis, Passives, Past continuous, Second conditional, Staging, Starting lessons, TEFL, Teaching, Teaching young learners, Trends language, Vocab games, Vocabulary, Will for predictions, links, past tenses, pre-school/ kindergarten/ very young learners, textbooks, video | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Backwards dialogues
Students write a dialogue and then read it out starting with the last line, then the second to last line and last line, then the last three lines etc- working their way towards the beginning of the dialogue until the other students in the class guess what the situation of the conversation is, e.g. who the telephone conversation is between or which kind of shop it is taking place in.
”Borrowed” from Clockwise Upper Intermediate Teacher’s Resource Pack, where it is explained much more clearly than this. Not much else to recommend that book (although the textbook is okay and the lower level teacher’s resource packs seem better), so keep reading here instead as I rip off every book in my new teacher’s room library and write up all the highlights here.
Tags: Reviews
Posted in Alternative teaching techniques, Clockwise, ELT publishing, Functional language, General English textbooks, Materials, Oxford University Press (OUP), Skills, Speaking, Speaking games, TEFL, TEFL games, Teaching, Telephoning, links, textbooks | No Comments »
Monday, September 15th, 2008
Posted in Becoming a Director of Studies, Business English and ESP, Business English games, CELTA, Complaints, Cross cultural training in EFL, Cultural differences/ cultural training, EFL management, Email, Error correction, Grammar, Grammar games, Language of negotiation, Needs analysis, Onestopenglish, Passives, Photocopiable worksheets, Present continuous/ present simple, Present tenses, TEFL, TEFL career planning, TEFL certificate, TEFL games, TEFL reviews, Teacher training, Teaching, Teaching qualifications, Teaching young learners, Telephoning, Text messages (SMS), Usingenglish, Writing, links, pre-school/ kindergarten/ very young learners | 2 Comments »
Friday, September 12th, 2008
Posted in Answerphone messages, Business English and ESP, Business English games, Delta Publishing, ELT publishing, Functional language, Materials, Oxford University Press (OUP), Photocopiable worksheets, Skills, Speaking, TEFL, TEFL games, TEFL reviews, Telephoning, Usingenglish, links | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
As mentioned in a comment or two below (and in every other sentence in my real life conversation), I am off on my reasonably well deserved hols from Friday and won’t even be looking at a computer screen for the next 10 days. For those of you who can’t live without an opinionated TEFL rant until I get back, I’m sure there must be something in my 458 posts over the last 14 months that you must have missed, so have a little trawl through the archives here- I’m sure there must be something there to entertain and/ or offend you!
For those of you still here for the serious stuff that I was supposed to have set this blog up for, here are the links to bits and pieces I have been involved in elsewhere in the world on TEFL. The top two are my own particular favourites from the last few months:
15 ways to help your students forget
15 ways to help your students dream in English
15 games for the language of describing people
15 real life situations for the language of describing people
15 typical textbook activities you can personalize
15 difficulties in teaching the language of describing people
15 ways to write a TEFL review
Office vocabulary compound noun stress
Why does my teacher make us work in pairs?
Talking about your job and company first class
Business English prepositions
Present Simple/ Continuous and Tense Review Guessing Game
Complaints prepositions practice
Posted in Business English and ESP, Business English games, Complaints, Compound nouns, Cross cultural training in EFL, Cultural differences/ cultural training, ELT publishing, Functional language, Grammar, Grammar games, Learner training, Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, Materials, Memory and language learning, Pairwork and groupwork, Personalisation, Prepositions, Present continuous/ present simple, Present tenses, Pronunciation, TEFL, TEFL games, TEFL reviews, TEFL.net, Usingenglish, Vocabulary, links | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
My first surprise was introducing students to the piece of ELT jargon “speech acts”, something I only vaguely remembered from my reading for my DELTA myself, but more about that when I get round to reviewing The Cambridge Grammar of English…
Some of the above were some I had never thought about, some are ones I still doubt, and the rest are just vaguely interesting (something that is worth celebrating when you are reading your way through a grammar book!) Any comments after testing these against your “native speaker intuitions” (also known as “TEFL teacher prejudices”) gratefully received:
“You must” and “you’ll have to” are often used to give non-specific invitations
“And you must come down to Barr at some stage or another”
“You’ll have to come round for a coffee”
What if…? is used for How about…? in “standard British and Irish English”
“What if I set the table?”
“What if we had it here?”
How’s about…? for How about…? in informal contexts in standard British and Irish English
Informal lexis softens a speech act:
“pop in” instead of “visit”/ “wee” in “a wee favour”
“Please” is usually used at the end of a question, but children often put it first:
“Please can I have some more bread?”
“so” and “then” are common in declarative clauses functioning as questions
“So you had a good day at work then?”
“Didn’t it just!” is part of a general pattern of interrogative structures used as explanations, like “Was I exhausted!” and “Hasn’t she grown!”
“Would you mind if one of our representatives comes and gives you a free demonstration?” Would you mind + present
“You want to sound-proof your room with egg boxes”- “want to” for advice in “standard British and Irish English”
Posted in Cambridge University Press, Corpus linguistics, Functional language, Grammar, Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, Materials, Speaking, Speech acts, TEFL, TEFL reviews, TESOL, Teaching | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
Posted in Business English and ESP, Business and ESP writing, Cambridge Advanced (CAE) Use of English, Cambridge FCE (First Certificate), Cambridge Proficiency (CPE) Use of English, Cross cultural training in EFL, EFL exams, Email, Financial English, Functional language, Grammar, Grammar games, IELTS, Materials, Medical and pharmaceutical English, Photocopiable worksheets, Pronunciation, Pronunciation games, Skills, TEFL, TEFL games, TOEFL, TOEIC, Teaching numbers, Technical English, Telephoning, Vocab games, Vocabulary, Writing, Writing games, presentation skills, video | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 18th, 2008
“My first two years in Japan were spent teaching English… The students… studied English- or should I say, English was taught in their presence. Nothing ever seemed to sink in. Years of classes and endless tests and still they couldn’t master the intricacies of a simple ‘How are you?’ When I tried to have the most elemental of English conversations with them they looked at me with blank expressions, shrugged their shoulders, and said ‘Wakaranai’ (’Huh?’) They did this, I believe, just to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, these teenagers were polite and studious and well-mannered, but they were still teenagers, and teenagers are pretty well insufferable anywhere you go on this planet.” (more…)
Posted in British Council, Business English and ESP, CELTA, Cultural differences/ cultural training, Diploma/ DELTA, ETJ- English Teachers in Japan, Eikaiwa, Functional language, JALT, Japanese education, Learning Japanese, Materials, Mixed ability classes, Pairwork and groupwork, Problem students, Rave Spelling's ESL Au Lait, TEFL, TEFL career planning, TOEIC, Teacher forums, Teaching, Teaching English in Japan, Teaching low levels, Working conditions, becoming a teacher trainer | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Hopefully it’s just Mayday bank holiday rather than my lack of effort TEFLtasticwise recently that has seen a sudden drop in my number of views, but if only to make myself feel better I thought I’d give a list of where I’ve been making much more effort elsewhere, with links:
TEFL.net Idea Thinktank
15 fun ways to switch students onto graded readers
15 fun gapfill tasks
15 fun job application practice tasks- CV writing, cover letter, interview practice, HR vocabulary etc.
TEFL.net articles
15 common misconceptions about Business English and ESP
15 cultural differences in the Japanese classroom
15 more cultural differences in the Japanese classroom
15 criteria for a good cultural training lesson
15 more criteria for good cultural training lesson
15 important cultural differences in the classroom
15 more important cultural differences in the classroom
Onestopenglish (Macmillan) articles
Motivating teachers whose Business English students miss class
UsingEnglish articles for teachers
Why your students overuse their dictionaries- with solutions
70 characteristics of a good grammar presentation- possibly the longest article on this subject ever!
Why your students don’t want to do pairwork- with solutions and some pondering about whether they might not sometimes be right
Why your students still make mistakes with grammar they know well- with solutions and a call to relax when there are no solutions
The advantages and disadvantages of peer observations- with how to exploit the advantages and avoid the disadvantages
Things to put in a Self-Access Centre or Student Library- with tips on how to do it on the cheap
Why do my students question me?- with solutions
Why your students have problems with listening comprehension- with solutions
UsingEnglish.com articles for students (teachers might also want to have a look at what I am writing about them)
Why does my teacher make me read silently?
Why doesn’t my teacher correct all my mistakes when I’m speaking?
Why does my teacher make me learn the phonemic script?
UsingEnglish photocopiable PDF worksheets
Travel English pairwork B and V
Business and technical English easily confused words
CAE Reading Part Two match the quotes
TEFLtastic worksheets (pain in the arse to print out but worth the effort)
English for job applications/ HR worksheets
Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes
Requests and offers functional language review
The Roots of Medical English LP and 4 worksheets
And that’s it for TEFL stuff. The other thing I’ve been busy with is my wedding speech for the day after tomorrow, which could well mean that May will be an even less busy month in TEFLtasticland. Anyone fancy writing a guest piece or feeding me a story to keep the 1700 viewers I get on a good day entertained until I get back into the flow? If so, try the “Contact me” link on the right…
Posted in Body language and gestures, Body language in the classroom, Business English and ESP, Cross cultural training in EFL, Cultural differences/ cultural training, Difficult sounds, EFL exams, EFL management, Error correction, False friends, Functional language, Graded readers, Grammar, Learner training, Lesson observations, Listening, Materials, Medical and pharmaceutical English, Online articles, Peer observations, Photocopiable worksheets, Problem students, Pronunciation, Pronunciation games, Reading, Requests, TEFL, TEFL games, TEFL.net, Taboo topics, Teaching English Abroad, Teaching English in Japan, Travel and tourism, Usingenglish, Vocabulary, links | 3 Comments »