Archive for the ‘Roleplays’ Category

I really should put these in some kind of order of goodness, but frankly

(1) Whether they seem good, bad or indifferent to me depends more on my mood than anything else

(2) The extra five minutes it would take sitting in the virtually natural light free study of my new flat would drive me nuts

So, pot luck it is:

A childhood memory extended speaking (where they really have to listen to each other!)

Phrasal verb mimes (suitable as a first introduction to literal and idiomatic meanings of multiword verbs)

Everyday English social expressions mimes (because you can never have too much TPR!)

Present Perfect Simple and Continuous job interview roleplays (with amusing problems to work out by asking questions)

Present Perfect Simple and Continuous numbers guessing (with some nice personalisation)

Can can’t sports mimes (for young learners or lively adults)

Can can’t match find the best sport for your partner

How was your weekend? roleplays (because giving my students language to talk about their weekend is “my boom”- as we say in Japan)

Past continuous and used to bluff (although mainly past cont, so you could easily just leave off the last few and make it that)

Recommending countries to visit (lots of lovely functional language linked to place names that are different in English and most other languages)

Remembering and forgetting discussion questions (with common mistakes with “remind” etc)

Best of Japan trivia numbers (the best ever numbers practice, now polished up)

Second conditional ghost discussion questions

I’m teaching New Headway Pre-Intermediate (that’s the old New Headway, not the new New Headway!) and New Cutting Edge Intermediate plus Chit Chat 2 with the kids, so if you are too a look at those worksheets and others on the relevant pages of my worksheets bit should be especially worthwhile.

I’m going to write about how to use these in more detail later, but thought I’d give the links first in case this saves someone’s day:

www.xtranormal.com – students can make an animated “film” from the script just by typing in the dialogue and choosing characters, backgrounds, actions, sound effects etc. (hattip to Darren Elliot at Teacher Development Blog)

www.pimpampum.net/bubblr – students choose Flickr photos and add speech bubbles to them (hattip to the Macmillan English Campus blog Connect2MEC)

I’ll be giving some ideas of ways you can use Xtranormal for other things in my later post, but this example of a Bubblr picture story made me think that it might be a good first stage for writing with young learners and teenagers too.

Tips on how to do something similar if you can’t access the technology also coming, but any similar links or other ideas welcome here in advance too.

Managed to keep this up for two whole weeks so far…

Going to for plans and future continuous for predictions (the only way I have found to contrast these two tenses)

IELTS Masterclass history vocabulary (hopefully an interesting example of how you can add revision and speaking to going through the difficult vocabulary in a text)

IELTS Speaking Part One Past, Present and Future Version 2 (adding grammar to IELTS speaking and making sure they hear and use the right tenses)

IELTS Speaking on the past and history

Inside Out Upper Intermediate Revision Rotating board game (the best revision game, the best TEFL board game, and easily adapted for any class)

Travel problems roleplays and storytelling (one nice way of setting up the topics of colourful language and/ or anecdotes)

Academic vocabulary random pelmanism (another great vocabulary revision game that is easy to prepare, this time with useful language for talking about similarities)

150 typical IELTS Speaking Part One questions (the most appreciated worksheet so far this year)

Academic English language of concession (surprising how fun this EAP topic can be!)

Academic Word List Call my Bluff (ditto)

Academic Word List collocations pairwork

Academic Word List collocations dominoes

Advanced architecture vocabulary (designed for Inside Out Upper Intermediate, but maybe useful for ESP architecture and estate agent courses)

Just in case anyone thinks I am overdoing it on slagging off native speaker English teachers in Japan, here’s another reminder how being a TEFL teacher (even a shite one) isn’t the worst thing in the world. At least we don’t work for pharmaceutical companies:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/09/america/NA-GEN-US-Red-Cross-Lawsuit.php

Although, having said that, I actually have taught in two pharmaceutical companies in Japan. And it was exactly articles like this about dodgy business practices, dangerous drugs, marketing that doubles as bribery etc. that made my job so difficult. I simply could not find an interesting neutral article or book on the pharmaceutical industry, and nothing in Japan is more likely to produce blank stares than slagging off someone’s industry.

If anyone else is having the same problems, here are some links to my Medical and Pharmaceutical English materials here and elsewhere:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-medical-english-mimes/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-and-game-medical-breakthoughs-dominoes-passives/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-medical-english-difficult-sounds-pairwork/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-medical-moral-dilemmas-2nd-conditionals/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-medical-problems-and-symptoms-guessing/

Onestopenglish ESP Medical English section:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=58034&docid=144627