Icebreakers !!!

August 20th

One of the most important/useful things for teaching a new language   are icebreakers. You just want to break down the barriers and engage with students immediately. I’m always thinking about and looking for good icebreakers. My favorite kind of icebreaker at the moment is what I think of as a “meanings” or “examples” icebreaker. This is great as the activity simultaneously generates lots of great ideas and clarifies the meanings of words or concepts. I can spend half an hour walking around a classroom (50 students generates lots of ideas!) asking students for situations that illustrate target vocabulary. It’s good fun.

21 Really! Practical ESL Classroom or Online Teaching Icebreakers

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Collocations and phrasal verbs

May 26th

It is essential that students  get a grasp of collocations and phrasal verbs if they want to achieve fluency in English. The problem with teaching collocations and phrasal verbs is that  they are quite slippery and  can  get too difficult for students really quickly. I think it’s best to introduce small sets of these kinds of verbs and verb-noun/adjective (etc.) combinations.

Collocations and Phrasal verbs

Working from home  vocabulary and comprehension

Prepositions and..business skills, problems, solutions and company activities

April 28th

Here are some new and improved preposition and business English vocabulary /speaking worksheets.

Elementary …but  cool…preposition activities

 Business English vocabulary and speaking

Coronavirus 2020

April 18th

This page had been updated with some new exercises too.

Coronavirus 2020 lesson 

Adverbs and the future

March 28th

I finally   improved some adverbs exercises I have been working on for a while. These elementary adverbs are very much for talking about NOW!  In contrast, I think these are some really nice speaking activities for the future tense. The common themes between these two topics is self-expression. I TRY to make that a component of every activity.

       Making adverbs beautiful

Future tense:speaking activities

Personality and parts of speech

March 6th

There have been some gaps in teaching materials that I have started to fill in recently. One of these is the topic of personality. Talking about personalities is quite easy at an elementary level (and any level) as you can use a lot of adjectives. And parts of speech for specific topics, including personality, has become a kind of a hobby. It’s quite fun and you can see the level of complexity of a topic for language learners when you focus on its parts of speech.

        Personality vocabulary and speaking

Parts of speech

Food and health vocabulary and speaking

February  22nd

These pages have been updated with improved vocabulary and speaking activities.

        Food, eating and restaurants

Health and illness

Expanding Business Vocabulary

January  26th

Business English encompasses a wide range of vocabulary. It includes academic vocabulary and more specialized technical vocabulary for different situations, tasks and jobs. As a teacher the challenge is to make the language  more accessible the students. Over the years I have found that a combination of vocabulary-picture matching exercises and relatable questions have made for a good communicative lesson

Expanding Business English vocabulary and speaking skills

 Comparative Adjectives and Airports

January  20th

This is an interesting juxtaposition of topics. And one thing I can say for sure. Teaching about airports is much more interesting than the tedious mechanics of comparatives.  But  understanding  comparatives is the more essential skill for most language learners.

Airport and air travel language and speaking exercises

               Comparative adjectives

 New Year and the Future Tense

January  2nd

I had never thought about it before but when coincidentally working on New Year resolutions and the future tense, I realized they complement each other really well.

 12 really! easy elementary ESL classroom icebreakers

3  exercises  for the future tense: plans, predictions and schedules

4 New Year resolutions brainstorming and language exercises

 Create-a-conversation exercises

Teaching large classes? 50 students? My average class size at the moment is 50 students. One of the most useful exercises I have stumbled into recently is create-a-conversation exercises. It is really useful on a number of levels.

5  elementary create-a-conversation exercises

  Shopping

Shopping is one of those topics that easily engages students if you have good exercises at the right level. I’ve found it works really well with pictures as the pictures give contexts which are very familiar to most students.

8 Speaking and Vocabulary Activities for Shopping

Sport

Sports and exercise is a  fun topic and and a good topic for speaking activities and  expanding students’ vocabulary.

6 Sport Vocabulary and Speaking Exercises

Likes and Dislikes

Elementary English language speaking activities generally focus on likes/dislikes, hobbies, interests and routines. These topics allow students to get used to practicing the present simple tense with topics that relate to their daily lives.

 2 Likes and Dislikes Speaking Activities (new)

Subject verb agreement can be pretty tedious to teach. Students really just need to practice.

5  Subject Verb Agreement Exercises

There  really  is quite an art to teaching extremely  elementary classes. Activities and exercises need to be really scaled back and minimalistic. If  you haven’t done it for a while, it can be quite a shock. This was my recent experience. But it can also be  quite refreshing to experiment with new ideas on Level  0 or Level 1.

9 Super Elementary Speaking Activities

5 Elementary Conversational Expressions Exercises

10 Adjectives Exercises and Worksheets With Pictures

Socializing includes many varied and unexpected but common everyday situations which require competent speaking skills. Students of a foreign language have to be prepared to encounter these situations and be ready with appropriate responses. Pictures help give context to these situations and help students imagine  how they might respond.

Socializing and Small Talk