Disappearing dialogues is a very much used language teaching technique

1. Elicit and write the dialogue. Or use a prepared dialogue.

This post was submitted by James.

Last year, I asked my students to do the following project: CREATE YOUR ENGLISH GAME! It was a hard task, but so REWARDING!!!!!!! Because of that, I’ve just decided to share this interesting useful IDEA with other students and teachers. Let me tell you what you need …

 
1. Students have to make up everything: the rules of the game, the title, the instructions, the small cards, token, dices, and so on.

2. The teacher can ask them to write questions, short English tests on every card, challenges, bets, etc. These cards will make them review all the grammar constructions, vocabulary seen in every unit, etc.

 
3. The most important thing is they are going to learn and have fun!!! So, I encourage all of you to carry out this project with your students, they’ll never forget this enriching motivating task.

 
I hope you’ll enjoy it! PLEASE, IF YOU MAKE THIS PLAN WITH YOUR STUDENTS, CAN YOU TELL ME SO AND SHOW ME THEIR GAMES?

I’D LIKE TO SEE THAT THIS IDEA IS WORTHWHILE AND HELPS OTHERS IMPROVE ENGLISH. THANK U!

This post was submitted by valme.

Our dearest playwright SHAKESPEARE wrote in his play As You Like It, this:

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages”.

Maybe due to his quote, maybe because I love theatre and performing plays, … I don’t know why, but I believe that if you are a teacher, you are a good actor / actress, don’t you think so?

Well, I strongly believe THEATRE is one of the best ways to encourage students to speak English, to memorise, to motivate them, to improve their pronunciation, to make them feel better speaking up, … and so on. You can find many plays thanks to Oxford, Burlington Ed. Perhaps you’ll have to arrange the numbers of characters, pages, … but it’s worthwhile.In my school, we have already performed wellknown plays such as ROMEO and JULIET, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Needless to say, that experience WAS UNFORGETTABLE, AMAZING for the students!!!

Moreover, if you don’t find a suitable play, you can ask the students to write their own plays, as if it was a role-play. It’s also a positive project, since they get more involved, they feel motivated and learn a lot.

I hope you’ll like it! 

This post was submitted by valme.

I usually engage everyone in a friendly chat, just to get them ready for the start of the lesson, then, when I know they are concentrated on me, I walk out of the classroom.

Seconds later (after the chatter has died down a little – ‘where’s he gone?’) I knock loudly on the door, then open the door, wave to the class, walk into the classroom, take a pen out of my pocket, write my name on the board, put the pen back into my pocket, scratch my head, sit down, cross my legs, cross my arms – and then I say “What did I do?”

From then you are listening for use of the past tense, giving you an idea of how much teaching is needed.  The fact that students call out the answers will help the weaker students.  If they miss an action out of the sequence, do it again.

I usually emphasise my movements so they remember them all.  

This exercise works just as well as “What am I doing?” (call out as do the action) and “What will I do?” (call out before I do the action – can be great fun if you change your routine).

This post was submitted by Tim Musgrave.

The Six Steps:

1. Look at the word

2. Hear the word

3. Say the word

4. Spell the word

5. Write the word

6. Find the word

Here is how I use Six Steps:

1. Write the word on the board, have students point to it

2. Students cup their ears with their hands, you say the word

3. The students say the word back to you

4. Students spell the word outloud

5. On a small slip of paper, the students write the word

6. Hand out a summary of the story/article that the vocabulary applies to that you will be reading in class. Students are to use a highlighter to scan the sheet for the word.

7. Erase the word then write the next word on the board and repeat the cycle.

My students love this activity because it gets them invovled in their own learning!

This post was submitted by Rachel.

This lesson is ideal for pre/intermediate classes to practice both future tense and comperatives/superlatives.

First start with a quick discussion on music and the Ss’s favourite singers or bands etc.

Then, tell them they’re going to organize their own music festival- a very special one to their own taste. Give them the following points to think about preferably in pairs. (the focus is on the future tense)

-What kind of a music festival is it going to be? (pop,rock, jazz?)

-Where and when is the festival going to take place?

-What other activities are you going to organize?(stands for selling food, drink or camping areas etc.)

-How much is the entrance fee?

-Are you going to organize TV or radio interviews with singers/bands?if yes, which TV channels or radio channels?

And find an original name for the festival!

As a second stage (where they focus on comperatives and superlatives), ask them to choose the singers/bands to be invited to the festival. Give them some options like Rihanna, Coldplay, whoever..

Ask them to choose from the options stating their reasons why they want to invite those singers/bands. Give a model sentence like “we are going to invite Coldplay because we think that they are more interesting than X.” etc.

Then, ask the pairs to present their festivals and ask others to vote for the most interesting/original music festival, giving them an evaluation rubric.

As homework, you might ask them to prepare the poster of their festivals.

Good luck

Didem Yesil

This post was submitted by Didem Yesil.

1. Write on the board “DON’T TOUCH ME”.
2. Have the class say the phrase with you one or two times to get used to it. Some may already know it.
3. Poke a student GENTLY on the shoulder or on top of the head. The student may need to be prompted to say “Don’t touch me.” Alert students will yell it before you can get anywhere close, which tends to be funny.
4. When the student says “don’t touch me” say “ok” and move on to another student.
5. Wander through the class attempting to poke students and make them use the target language.
6. After an adequate length of time, play this video:
7. Maybe even play it twice.

This post was submitted by Wondershot.

1. Find a section of an unfamiliar song that the students have probably never heard.
2. Teach lyrics to the class using a powerpoint or handouts. Either way, lead the class through the song line by line and make sure they understand it.
3. Divide class into teams and tell them they have 10 minutes to make a song and dance using these lyrics. Tell the class they will have a blind vote at the end to see whose song and dnace were the best.
4. Have the blind vote at the end.
5. As a bonus, you can show a youtube video of the song to see what the “real” version is like.

Keep the lyrics short and simple if you’re trying this on the class for the first time. If it goes well, you can always give them more.

This post was submitted by Wondershot.

      I’d like to share my idea to present reported speech for the first time in the classroom. It can be used with all level students. You just have to modify it according to the level.

     It is a fun way of teaching reported speech. Ideally it is the best if you present it on ppt slides. First introduce your characters on a slide: Jim, Jessica and Gossip Girl (as in the famous American TV serial). Jim and Jessica is a couple having a conversation over a coffee and talking about their relationship. Gossip Girl, as the name suggests, is the one who spies them and texts everyone, reporting what they have said to each other sentence by sentence.

      After the introduction, show Ss the speech bubbles of the couple on a seperate slide. Jessica might say: “Oh sweetheart, I love the wedding ring.” showing her ring. Jim might reply: “ Yes honey, it looks really great.” (You can change the context entirely if you think your Ss don’t like such romantic conversations, which is quite possible .

      Then, show the Gossip Girl and her “reported sentences” in a another speech bubble. This time it goes like Jessica said she loved the wedding ring and Jim said it really looked great. You can also use the verb “tell”.

The ppt slides go on like this, but each time you present another tense like “ I am looking forward to the wedding day” so that Ss can see several tenses and how to transform them.

      As you go on, encourage Ss to notice the rule and when the couple’s conversations is finished, ask them how the Gossip Girl is reporting the couple’s speech, meaning what’s the rule. Ss will say, deducing from the examples, they have to transform the tenses to past tenses.

      You might present more examples again related to the same context, or you can ask them to create their own dialogues as if they are Jessica and Jim, and choose a Gossip Girl for reporting.

After you make sure that Ss grasp the idea. As a follow up, ask them to write sentences as follows :

-         Gossip Girl told me that Jessica and Jim were getting married and I could not believe.

      Ask them to think of their own lives and create sentences about themselves like “ Gossip Girl told me that my best friend would go to the party without me and I got angry with her.

     It takes up a whole class hour. Especially at the end they have great fun talking about their own lives.

P.S: As a little variation, you can choose celebrities instead of made-up characters.

This post was submitted by Didem Yesil.

Objective – Depending on the level: Vocab. Building (Demographic Country Terms)

Describing a Country

Basic question formation

Procedure – Begin the class by drawing a big map of your country on the board.  Put some cities in, roads, mountains, etc (This should take less than a minute).  Ask the class what the country is called and what the thing you drew is (a map).  Write Country Name and Map at the top right corner of your board.  Now draw a really bad outline of your students’ country.  They should laugh.  Make a 2nd attempt.  It can be better, but should still be very flawed.  If a student hasn’t already taken the marker from you, give it to a student and have them draw the outline.

Now the lesson begins.  You want to elicit the words Capital City, Population, Language, Religion, Geography, and Climate.  Do this by giving examples.  For example, in America we have Washingting D.C.; in Turkey it’s Ankara.  What is this?  İn America we speak English, in Turkey you speak Turkish.  This is the…?  It should take less than 5 minutes to elicit all the words.  If you have a higher level class you can include things like Type of Government, Major Industries, etc.

Now tell the class that they are going to create their own country.  Demo this on the board.  I usually draw a big beer bottle and then label it Beeristan.  My capital city is Barsville.  My language is Beerish.  The religion is Alcoholism.  It’s a magical country where beer rains from the sky every weekend.  You get the point.

Put the students in groups of two and have each make their own country.  As an initial task give them 2 minutes to write a name and draw a map then stop.  This allows you to check for certain that they understand.  You wouldn’t believe how many students, especially at lower levels, even after the demo and CCQ’s will still start to draw their own country.  You can ensure they are making a new country.

After about 8 minutes come back together as a class.  With lower levels you will have to elicit the questions as a class and put the structures on the board.  With higher levels you can dive right in.  Have each group show their country and have the other groups ask questions about it.  With lower levels this will be rather formulaic although you should encourage extra questions.  With higher levels they will often run with it.  If they don’t, ask a few questions as examples such as, Where do alcoholics go to pray?  How do people get to work if everyone’s drunk all the time?  Is there a lot of tourism to Beeristan? Etc.

If this somehow doesn’t last an hour you can make some groups tourists and they have to go from group to group to hear about each country’s virtues and then decide on which one to go to for vacation.

You can also follow this up with a lesson on modals of permission and obligation by having them create the laws for their country.

- stolen lesson from Steal This Lesson post. Read about it HERE.

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.