Archive for the ‘Photocopiable worksheets’ Category

“Sole Mates” from “The Grammar Activity Book”

Tie words that go together (such as collocations) to different students’ shoelaces. They then walk around putting their feet next to each other to try to match them up. If they make an incorrect pair, they have to take off their shoes and put them in the “lost soles” pile until (at that point I stopped reading…) Also useable (?) for dependant prepositions, verb patterns etc.

This was by far the nuttiest idea in the book, but certainly not the only one that made me go “What??” On the positive side, there are few ideas in the book that you would have seen anywhere else. On the negative side, there are at times very good reasons why no one had written those ideas down…

I have to fly away from my Yahoo BB internet connection now, and I may be some time. So while I am gone from cyberspace, you all have a chance to read the over 200 articles I’ve written elsewhere- starting with this month’s supply:

15 easy ways to bring change into the classroom

15 ways of dealing with students who pause before they speak

15 ways of dealing with pre-experience Business English and ESP students

15 ways to boost your teaching and lesson planning creativity

15 places to start getting published

15 ways to correct spoken errors

15 ways to bring lucky chances into your classroom and lesson planning

Done already? Well, I’m sure you’ve all been good and read the entire list of articles etc in the September list further down this page already, so the extra homework for the keen this month will be having a look at:

TEFLtastic articles (reorganised a bit to have more links to articles elsewhere on the same topics)

and

TEFLtastic worksheets (ditto)

15 fun ways of using pre-school storybooks

15 ways of preparing for ELT management

15 variations on a grammar auction

15 common complaints about TEFL workshops (and how to respond to them)

15 things to find out about a TEFL certificate course

15 criteria of a good needs analysis

How’s that for a minimalist blog post! To make up for the lack of text, here are even more links:

157 articles and worksheets of mine on UsingEnglish.com

onestopenglish.com (the Macmillan website, where you usually have to pay to see most of my stuff but which has some kind of special offer on at the moment)

New stuff in August, for those who have recently joined us (welcome!)

And brand new worksheets etc actually on TEFLtastic:

Business English rotating revision board game

Complaints sentence expansion game

Dealing with complaints guess the situation

Dealing with complaints pairwork- Amusing and odd excuses

Email and internet abbreviations

Email language definitions game

Email rules business meeting

Formal and informal email errors

Telephone and email spot the difference pairwork

“Punishment“- Passive voice and tense review

Table manners Present Simple and Continuous mimes

Describing people workshop

English for Telephoning/ Negotiating double book review

Updated, expanded and with many more links here:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets/telephoning/

Have done a bit more tedious reorganisation so that you don’t need to do so much tedious searching, and you can now find all the links to my stuff on said topics elsewhere on the internet as well as my exclusive TEFLtastic stuff here:

Teaching exam classes-articles and tips for teachers

and here:

EFL exam worksheets, lesson plans and tips for students

Comments or tips for other good sources welcome here:

I’m continuing to learn from and ponder on the information in the Cambridge Grammar of English, and as before testing the matters I’ve been chewing on against your native speaker intuitions would be appreciated (sorry for the very unpleasant mental picture from that metaphor first thing on a Monday morning!)

The (modern?) name for & is “and” (not ampersand)
{ } = chain brackets (they’ve always been squiggly brackets to me!)
< > = diamond brackets
 
American English uses commas before and or but more frequently than British English
 
“Subordinate clauses can be separated by a comma from a preceding main clause, especially when the relation between them might be obscured because the clauses are long.” (pg 842), so “We can get there for around six, if there are no problems with the traffic on the motorway” is okay with or without the comma, despite being in the reverse position of the usual first conditional with a comma
 
Colons are used to indicate subtitles, and to mark a clause in which reasons are given: “We decided against it: it wasn’t lightweight enough”
 
Single quotation marks are becoming more widespread in direct speech
 
Colons may be used to introduce direct speech when it is particularly long
 
There are apostrophes (becoming optional) in “for goodness’ sake” and “for appearance’ sake”
 
In informal writing multiple dashes may be used:
 
“Just got back from Mallorca— we really loved it.”

If punctuation is your thing, or really isn’t you or your students’ thing but should be, here are some links:

Wikipedia on the ampersand

Info on Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss- a funny book on punctuation!

A whole list of punctuation books on Amazon

Punctuation worksheets on ESL Printables.com

And that is all I could find of interest. For classroom activities, one thing that works well, especially with FCE and CAE classes, is for students to take a text that is correct and add spelling and punctuation errors for another team to find.

Another good game is to put a text on the board including punctuation and get them to read out the whole text (including punctuation) over and over as you delete it one word or punctuation mark at a time until they can no longer remember it or the whole text has disappeared.

The game above works well with kids too. A more physical game for kids on the same point is to write up a sentence with one piece of punctuation missing in large letters on the board, and get them to take turns throwing a sticky ball (= sucker ball) at the place they think the punctuation mark should be.

I’ve been reading through the new Cambridge Grammar of English. Not something I usually do for pleasure (honestly!), but got a free copy for TEFL.net reviews and so felt like I ought to examine at least some parts in detail- and now I am reading it for pleasure!

Maybe the most interesting thing is that the use of corpora rather than just common sense (otherwise known as native speaker intuition) means there are bits on almost every page where you go “Really?” Below is a list of the “Oh yes, I suppose so.” and “No, I really don’t think so” moments so far based on British and American English. Most good science throws out counterintuitive things like this. Unfortunately, so does most bad science, so I’d appreciate it if you would comment on how the things below match with your own experience and instinct- there are a few I have doubts on myself.

- In AmE, the score in “The Seattle Sea Hawks beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-O is pronounced” “seven nothing” or “seven to nothing” or “seven zip”
 
- “Four from nine is/leaves five” is okay in BrE
 
- The form in “Eleven hundred pounds” (rather than “one hundred one hundred”) is more popular in AmE than BrE

- “isn’t” (rather than ’s not) is many times more frequent in BrE than AmE

- Interrogative tags are about four times more frequent in BrE than in AmE
 
- The “do” in reduced clauses with modal verbs
“Are you going?”
“I might do”
is only used in British English
 
- She lives on/ in Leonora Street is a Br/ Am thing

- “Must” is much more frequent in BrE than AmE
 
- “Had better” is six times more frequent in BrE
 
- “Going to” often used for direction giving (finding your way) in AmE: “You’re gonna go two blocks…”
 
- “I suppose” is much more frequent in BrE

If you ended up here wanting to find more more traditional stuff about British and American English, try:

Wikipedia (of course) American and British English differences

The American’s Guide to Speaking British English

BBC America British American Dictionary

If you are interested in worksheets for classroom use on British and American English, look here:

How British is your Financial English?

ESL Printable British and American English page

British and American English elesson from the (recommended) textbook Inside Out

British and American: The main differences from the (equally recommended) vocab book Word for Word

And if you’d like your own shiny new TEFL book hot off the press for free, see here.

All that TEFL International stuff below is not only depressing, I’m starting to think it is actually quite pointless. For example, if we compare the number of teachers who have paid money to TEFL International, let alone the number of people who felt unhappy afterwards, how does that compare to the number of teachers who need some new games for the Present Simple? One percent? Less? Not forgetting of course that 99% of English teachers in the world are not native speakers and have never heard of the CELTA or any of the “equivalents”.

Luckily, I have found time between training to be a TEFL boxing referee to continue writing some practical ideas that anyone should make teachers’ lives easier. You can find them here:

Usingenglish.com (which seems to be active again after going veeeeery quiet)

Business English Present Continuous Sounds and Mimes- contrasting with the Present Simple, and with loads of useful office and other Bus Eng vocab

Why does my teacher skip exercises in the textbook?- article for students, but could also help teachers answer their questions and think through their classroom activities

TEFL.net Idea Thinktank

The 15 stages of using pre-school English songs

The first 15 stages in using worksheets in pre-school English classes

15 ways to personalize your young learner classes - also suitable for very young and very low level learners

15 criteria for a good kindergarten English song- how to choose and use them

15 techniques for calming down a pre-school class

15 variations for large pre-school classes- the best games with small classes and how to make them work with 50 or more kids

15 fun sit down activities for pre-school classes- to save both your energy and theirs!

15 flashcard activities for any pre-school English class- simple, cheap and exciting!

TEFL.net TEFL Articles

15 criteria for a good TEFL workshop

TEFL.net Reviews

Teacher Language Awareness book review

Telephone English (Macmillan) book review

Lessons from good language learners book review

If that ain’t enough for you, here is the same for new stuff in May:

New Worksheets and Articles May 2008

For those of you who haven’t been on the Worksheet pages yet (although surely no one would waste their time reading the blog when they could save planning time by using the worksheets??) and the many more of you who are going to end up here after the error messages because I’ve shortened lots of html names (because good names are good apparently), here is where the worksheets are now:

Medical and Pharmaceutical worksheets

Business English and ESP Games and Worksheets

Telephoning Games and Worksheets

Technical English and Numbers Games and Worksheets

EFL Exam games and worksheets- IELTS, TOEIC etc.

Travel English, Tourism and Study Abroad worksheets

Writing Games and Worksheets

Vocabulary Games and Worksheets

Functional and Social English Games and Worksheets

Video worksheets

Song worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Grammar games and worksheets

Jonnyboy is the cartoonist behind the often amusing Langwich Scool (if you think that is faint praise take a look at how much I’ve struggled and repeated the same jokes in my own attempts at TEFL humour) and the author of the life saving books At Last, Photocopies You Can Give Your Kids’ Classes Without Them Groaning. And now he’s released a book that makes IELTS fun. No, that is not another failed attempt at TEFLtastic humour- it really is so. Check out the book IELTS Resource Pack with free samples hereon the Delta Publishing website. I’ve only tried out a few pages, but as a certified photocopiable materials sommelier I can guarantee it is going to be full of all kinds of fun stuff. Quite a lot looks useful for EAP and Technical English classes too.

What is perhaps even more surprising about Jon Marks is that he has become a Delta Publishing regular author without being, to my knowledge, a member of the Pilgrimsmafia. Or at least if he is, he seems to have a bs detector that stops any of his games getting self indulgent and silly.