EFL Teaching Recipes

This is a great way to practice the future tense and learn about each other. Adapted from Jill Hadfield’s “Communication Games”.

1. Ask students about their resolutions. Put the target language on the board – “This year, I will / … Read More ....

This is a pair activity for practising giving advice. Make ten problem cards. Choose ten students who will tell their partner about his/her problem. Then the partner will give them advice.  

These cards  can be used for practising second conditional … Read More ....

Teaching the alphabet can be fun.

A great activity for YLs – learn the alphabet by making the letters with your body or hand signs. See how these YLs did it.

Use this ELT Buzz presentation.   View all the alphabet … Read More ....

A simple video that makes a powerful lesson for talking about the future, resolutions, making lists.

This video is a nice compliment.

Ask students to brainstorm a list of 10 things they want to prioritize. Then play the video and … Read More ....

I had a nice time in a teacher training session with this video chant commercial. Just play and stop between the parts of the man/woman.  Divide the class in half with the woman / men repeating the line each time … Read More ....

Writing Activities

Paint Chip Essay Writing
I had been experiencing trouble with teaching essay writing for some reason this year. I had seen a video from “TeachingChannel” about using paint chips from the hardware store to teach suffixes, prefixes and … Read More ....

This is a fun follow-up speaking activity for practising superlatives. Make cards with superlative form of personality adjectives. The number of cards depends on the number of the students in the class. Distribute the cards so that each student has … Read More ....

This is an easy “video” lesson. Get extra resources for teaching with it here. 

Ask students to brainstorm all the things / buildings that could be called “home”. Then show the video and see how many they got correct. Show … Read More ....

A good game for large classes and for reviewing vocabulary lessons.

1. Prepare a list of review vocabulary words.
2. Write each word on two small pieces of paper. That means writing the word twice, once on each paper.
3. … Read More ....

This activity is used as a “getting to know you”, icebreaker on the first day of class.

1. Teacher takes the toilet paper roll and takes several squares of toilet paper, then hands the roll of toilet paper to a … Read More ....