October 7th
Writing a dialogue/conversation exercises are pretty common in language classes. But they work best with particular topics and when students are encouraged to use specific or target vocabulary. I have gradually been building up a small collection of the ones that have worked best for my classes. Getting students to write their own dialogues and then perform them is a nice way to end a class.
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
Subscribe to get full access to the latest and best resources from eslflow.com. There are no ads in the newsletter and you will receive entertaining, high quality, and up-to-date teaching resources regularly. And, if you subscribe, you will be supporting the eslflow website.
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.
April 28th
Here are some new and improved preposition and business English vocabulary /speaking worksheets.
April 18th
This page had been updated with some new exercises too.
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.
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.
February 22nd
These pages have been updated with improved vocabulary and speaking activities.
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
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.
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
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
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.
