Why write things on the board for the students to write in their notebooks when you can dictate them? Dictation gives your students a clear model of pronunciation and allows them to practise their listening and writing skills. Here’s an example: Imagine you have a few topic questions you want your students to discuss. You…
Category: Activities and Ideas
Last-minute Love Lessons
Whoops! You’ve completely forgotten that Valentine’s Day is round the corner and you haven’t planned anything with a romantic theme for your classes. Don’t panic – Here are 3 last-minute love lessons / activities for you to try which require very little preparation. TIP: Not all learners feel comfortable talking about their private lives and relationships….
Teach sentence stress with Bob and Julie
English is often termed a stress-timed language, which means that we pronounce content words (often nouns, adjectives and main verbs) more loudly and more slowly than grammar words like prepositions and articles. The beat or rhythm of the language is also determined by these stressed content words which means we ‘swallow’ the content words. Syllable-timed languages,…
Free ebook: Speaking Unplugged: 30 Activities for One-to-One Classes
Hi everybody, Finding interactive and communicative speaking activities for one-to-one classes can be difficult. Here is an ebook (download as a Word Document or as a pdf) which contains 30 fun activities which require very little preparation and no resources apart from a pen and paper and, most importantly, the imagination and creative abilities of…
5 Quick and Easy ways to use YouTube in class with the sound turned off!
YouTube is a wonderful resource for language teachers and learners. When I mention this to trainee teachers, many of them assume I am only talking about YouTube clips which have been specifically created for language learners. When this happens, I’ll show them a few simple ways to use authentic YouTube clips for speaking practice. These activities…
One-to-One Teaching: “Getting to know you” Questionnaire
Asking a series of questions to a new private student has many benefits as you get some idea of: their listening skills how fluent they are their ability to produce extended speech range of grammar and vocabulary common errors they make gaps in their knowledge pronunciation difficulties personal interests learning experiences ideas for future lessons…
Coffee, biscuits and the Past Participle
I’m sitting here, drinking a cup of coffee and eating a chocolate biscuit and thoughts pop into my head: As a kid, I adored chocolate biscuits. I reckon I had eaten hundreds of biscuits by the age of 5. An an adult, I have drunk more than my fair share of cups of coffee….
Rolling Dice: Speaking Games for TEFL teachers
All you need for these fun speaking games are some dice. I recommend you buy a few sets and carry them around with you all the time. Dice are a great resource for TEFL teachers because they are portable and suitable for adults and kids What I love about dice is that the options are…
The Pixar Pitch Lesson
What do these animated movies have in common? Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, Up, Ratotouille and Brave (The winner of the best animated film at the Oscars in 2013). All of these movies were made by Pixar, the animated film studio linked with George Lucas of Star Wars fame…
15 ways to use ‘post-it notes’ to teach English
Although they may not be great for the environment, the humble ‘post-it note’ is one of my favourite teaching resources. They follow me into every class I teach (along with their less eye-catching cousin, scraps of used paper) and they are always on hand, to help me engage and activate my students’ English. Post-it notes,…