Making Decisions and Choices: Language for Critical Thinking in English
This page is dedicated to providing resources and exercises that will equip students with the necessary language and vocabulary to effectively use language for making decisions and choices.
1 Making decisions
This is a listening/speaking exercise exploring the language used when making decisions and choices.
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2 Verb-noun collocations for making decisions
This worksheet consists of a vocabulary-picture matching activity, listening exercise and speaking activity for making decisions and talking about life-changing decisions.
This is an introduction to a lesson about making decisions including: a classifying exercise; a “true/ false statement exercise” exercise; and a collocation exercise.
This is a more advanced critical thinking exercise about making decisions including: a ranking exercise; a “agree/disagree statement exercise” exercise; and a sentence starter exercise.
Welcome to an immersive journey through the language and concepts of Virtual Reality (VR). As a transformative force in the 21st century, VR plays an increasingly pivotal role in diverse fields – from gaming and entertainment to education, healthcare, and beyond. Mastering the language of VR not only expands your English vocabulary but also provides a deeper understanding of this cutting-edge technology shaping our modern world.
This page will help students navigate the complex, yet fascinating language commonly used when talking about VR technology.
Vocabulary Exercises: We’ll start with vocabulary exercises that are tailored to introduce students to the terminology used in VR. From ‘augmented reality’ to ‘immersion’, introductory vocabulary exercises will ensure students understand and remember these new words.
Expressing Opinions: After we’ve tackled vocabulary, we’ll move on to expressing opinions about VR. This section will provide phrases and structures that can be used to articulate thoughts on this cutting-edge technology.
Critical Thinking Exercises: VR is a rapidly evolving field with many facets to consider. Critical thinking exercises will challenge students to form well-informed views on topics such as the possible uses of VR or its potential impacts on users.
Listening Exercises: Next, listening exercises will help students improve your comprehension skills. These exercises provide examples of real-world language use and a chance to adapt to different accents.
1 Expressing opinions about virtual reality
Students complete each opinion with the vocabulary at the bottom of the page and decide whether they agree or disagree with each opinion.
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2 Virtual reality vocabulary introduction
Picture matching and multiple choice exercises to help familiarize students with the vocabulary.
This page focuses on helping students become more expressive by providing them with a variety of exercises and relatable topics for expressing opinions.
Through a combination of pictures, engaging listening exercises, dynamic speaking activities, captivating videos, and stimulating fill-in-the-blank exercises, students will not only improve their language proficiency, but also enhance their critical thinking skills.
Carefully curated images will help them grasp the nuances of expressing opinions, making it easier to come up with ideas.
The listening exercises (more to come) are designed to immerse students in diverse English accents and scenarios, allowing them to practice and sharpen their listening skills while understanding how opinions are expressed in real-life conversations.
Speaking exercises are an integral part of these activities, encouraging students to articulate thoughts. These exercises will boost confidence and fluency through expressing opinions in English.
Lastly, each exercise comes with a fill-in-the-blank exercise crafted to reinforce understanding of opinion-related vocabulary and structures, challenging and reinforcing students’ knowledge of vocabulary in various contexts.
1 Expressing opinions about sport
A vocabulary and discussion activity about playing and watching sports. This is a listening/speaking exercise for English as a second language students to practice expressing opinions about sport.
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2 Expressing opinions about careers
A vocabulary and critical thinking exercise for discussing careers. Students use the words at the bottom of the page to complete the sentences and then agree/disagree with the statements and give reasons for their choices.
This worksheet is designed to aid learners in mastering the English language, specifically focusing on expressing opinions. The exercises provided aim to immerse the students in various contexts where they can utilize different phrases and vocabulary to articulate their thoughts.
Exercise 1 is a multiple-choice gap fill activity, challenging learners to select the most appropriate words to complete given sentences, thereby familiarizing themselves with commonly used phrases for expressing opinions.
Exercise 2, a vocabulary matching exercise, helps students to comprehend the meaning and application of specific phrases used when forming and expressing viewpoints. This activity enhances their understanding of nuanced language and encourages more natural and sophisticated speech.
Exercise 3 is a fill-in-the-blank sentence exercise, crafted to enable learners to apply their acquired knowledge in real-world context scenarios. This exercise prompts students to use phrases from the previous exercises to articulate opinions about diverse topics, thereby practicing and reinforcing their learning.
Together, these exercises create an interactive and engaging platform for learners to effectively grasp the English language’s intricacies, specifically when expressing opinions.
This exercise explores common travel and intercultural issues familiar to anyone who has traveled abroad.
The activities encourage learners to explore cultural norms, travel experiences, and societal views.
The first activity, the ‘Picture Matching Activity,’ involves learners matching words to given statements and pictures that express a range of sentiments about travel and cultural encounters. The statements cover a wide scope, discussing preferences about travel environments, cultural learning, advice on first-time travel, and differences in social norms between cultures.
The second activity, the ‘Agree or Disagree Statement Activity,’ pushes learners to articulate their agreement or disagreement with the provided statements, prompting critical thinking and encouraging the use of English to express their views. This section allows learners to practice their language skills while also exploring their personal feelings about different cultural norms and travel experiences.
Overall, this activity offers an opportunity to enhance language learning through relevant, real-world topics. By engaging with these activities, students will further develop their English vocabulary and comprehension, while also broadening their understanding of global cultures and attitudes towards travel.
This worksheet aims to further expand learners’ ability to express opinions and engage in critical thinking in the English language. The document comprises three key exercises designed to provide learners with an understanding of how to convey opinions in English.
The first exercise requires learners to distinguish between statements that express an opinion and those that do not. By classifying sentences, students will gain an understanding of how opinions are formulated and expressed in the English language.
The second exercise encourages learners to reflect on their own views by determining the truth or falsity of various statements according to their personal opinions. This exercise emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and encourages learners to provide reasoning for their views.
The third exercise involves ranking different topics based on personal importance, further challenging learners to articulate their viewpoints and provide reasons for their rankings. This exercise underscores the concept that opinions are often subjective and vary depending on individual perspectives and values.
This is another worksheet designed to expand learners ability to express their opinions in English.
The first part of the worksheet, “Exercise 1: Collocation Practice”, aims to familiarize students with common collocations or fixed phrases used when expressing personal views. By matching beginnings of phrases from Column A with the endings in Column B, students will learn how to construct opinions effectively and naturally.
The second part of the worksheet, “Exercise 2: Reading Comprehension Activity”, presents learners with a text discussing differing opinions on fast food. The students are required to read the text carefully and answer questions about the main opinions presented, the reasons behind these opinions, and the author’s personal stance. This exercise will challenge students to comprehend and analyze the expressions of opinion in the text, thereby enhancing both their reading comprehension and their ability to recognize and understand opinion-based language.
Appearance, involving fashions, styles and trends is a pretty engaging topic.
This worksheet is designed to help English language learners explore the language used to express opinions about appearance. Similar to Exercise 1 above, it contains two primary activities – a picture matching exercise and an ‘agree or disagree’ statement discussion.
The first section, ‘Picture Matching Activity’, helps learners to identify common phrases and opinions related to appearance. These phrases include comments on fashion trends, professional attire, uniqueness, and the time spent on one’s appearance. Additionally, there are statements expressing views on tattoos, makeup, and the correlation between appearance and personality.
The second section, ‘Agree or Disagree Statement Activity’, offers learners a chance to develop their own viewpoints about the statements provided in the picture matching activity. It offers example responses to each statement, encouraging students to use English in expressing their individual perspectives on dressing comfortably, professionalism, standing out, spending time on appearance, first impressions, tattoos and piercings, makeup usage, appearance reflecting personality, and monotone dressing.
As above, the first activity is a word/picture matching task. This is an ideal starting point for learners to associate familiar shopping-related words with corresponding images. By doing so, they enhance their vocabulary retention and comprehension skills.
The second activity delves into the expression of agreement or disagreement with various statements about shopping. Each statement represents a common opinion or sentiment about shopping and fashion, such as the thrill of a good deal, the convenience of online shopping, or the enjoyment found in window shopping. This activity aims to stimulate dialogue and thoughtful responses, encouraging learners to construct and articulate their personal perspectives about shopping. Sample answers are provided to guide learners and offer a benchmark for their responses.
The first activity a word/picture matching task. The statements reflect diverse experiences and attitudes towards urban life, such as “I love the energy and excitement of cities,” or “The cost of living in cities is too high.” Through this exercise, learners not only enhance their vocabulary and comprehension skills, but also gain insight into how emotions and perceptions about cities can be conveyed in English.
The second part of the worksheet involves an ‘Agree or Disagree’ activity, as in the PDFs above.
Of course, people can talk a lot about housing and the various kinds of accommodation.
As above, the he worksheet consists of two main activities:
1. The ‘Word Picture/Sentence Matching’ activity, which encourages learners to match specific adjectives or phrases with corresponding pictures or sentences. The answers provided are aimed at broadening their vocabulary to describe various aspects of housing, such as ‘lots of space’, ‘convenient’, ‘cool’, ‘annoying’, ‘uncomfortable’, ‘inconvenient’, ‘simpler life’, ‘catch fire’, and ‘modern amenities’.
2. The ‘Agree or Disagree Statement’ activity, which gives learners an opportunity to practice expressing their personal viewpoints on different housing-related statements.
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2 Adjective sentence starters
An adjective sentence starters exercise for English language students to review and/ or practice expressing themselves with adjectives.
A topic sentence is the most important sentence in a paragraph. It tells the reader what the paragraph is about. If you don’t know how to write a topic sentence, your paragraph will probably be confusing. A well-written topic sentence can make your paragraph more interesting.
1 Introduction to topic sentences quiz
This quiz is a nice way to introduce topic sentences.
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2 Sentence starters for topic sentences
Sentence starters provide an easy and smooth way of getting students familiar with topic sentences.
Topic sentences are essential for summarizing the main idea of an essay. This worksheet can be used to test students’ understanding of topic sentences.
4 Writing topic sentences for essays and paragraphs (with possible answers)
In this worksheet students practice writing topic sentences by looking at the pictures, thinking about what kind of essay each picture might inspire, and writing an appropriate topic sentence.
6 Writing topic sentences for paragraphs or essays (with possible answers)
Topic sentences are essential for summarizing the main idea of a paragraph. Paragraphs often have topic sentences supported by three ideas. So in this worksheet students practice writing topic sentences by looking at the pictures and trying to summarize three ideas in one topic sentence.
Daily routines and schedules is a popular topic focus for teaching the present simple, adverbs of frequency and adverbial phrases of time. It’s also a fairly easy topic for elementary students, though it can be adapted for higher levels.
1 Daily routine of a skyscraper window cleaner
Each of these exercise get a bit more advanced. This is a day in the life of a guy who cleans the windows of skyscrapers.
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2 Write a conversation exercise: routines and daily activities with dialogue and audio for a listening exercise
Write-a- conversation exercises work really well for many topics including routines and daily activities. This present simple exercise focuses on the language used for talking about routines and daily activities.
6 Elementary daily routine reading comprehension: a boy
This is an elementary present tense reading/listening comprehension exercise about a boy’s daily routine. It includes basic prepositions for talking about time, and basic transition words for describing a routine (as do the other reading exercises below).
An older elementary ESL exercise for brainstorming language to describe routines & daily activities in the present tense. Students can brainstorm individually, in groups, or as a class. Students use the verbal and visual cues to fill in the worksheet.
10 Do or Make ?? collocations exercise for daily routines (with answers)
Students match the verbs “do” or “make” with the nouns in the center of the worksheet.Then they match the collocations to the appropriate pictures. Once they have done this they use the collocations and their own ideas to write sentences at the bottom of the page
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2 Online shopping brainstorm/icebreaker
This is a fun way to start a class, and I think, especially for this topic.
Import/export, logistics and supply chain vocabulary exercises
The language and vocabulary of importing, exporting, logistics and supply chains has often seemed quite boring but these days it is becoming more essential and relevant to understanding the economy and economic issues than in decades. Below are some vocabulary, listening/speaking and reading comprehension exercises to help students of Business English expand their language skills.
30th June 2024
1 Introduction to import/export vocabulary
Here are a couple of matching exercises to help introduce students to import /export vocabulary.
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2 Parts of speech for importing/exporting
This is an exercise exploring the parts of speech and language use when talking about the import/export process.
9 Logistics (and shipping) vocabulary worksheet (with audio and answers)
This business English ESL vocabulary and listening exercise aims to help students understand logistics and shipping vocabulary. Students match the vocabulary to the pictures and then listening to the audio and write short sentences at the bottom of the page.
Good engaging listening exercises are essential for good English listening/speaking lessons and classes. Listening exercises can be created in variety of formats and for a variety of purposes. With new technologies it’s possible to create listening exercises for almost every kind of teaching activity. I try to add listenings to everything.
Below are some of the different kinds of listening techniques I’ve been developing over the last year. Some of these exercises are just teaching techniques I used in the classroom and discovered that they were easily adapted to online learning. Not only that, I realized I could edit and improve them if I converted them into audio files. If you want to download the files, you have to play them through completely one time.
1 Dictation (past tense vocabulary)
This is a dictation listening exercise to introduce students to vocabulary. Students match vocabulary and phrases to pictures as the teacher dictates past tense phrases using sentences to give context. This exercise is a great icebreaker and introduction to any set of vocabulary. It works brilliantly in the classroom. It also works really well as an online listening assignment.
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2 Match the vocabulary to the pictures ( adjectives for describing people)
The students have two tasks for this exercise. First they match the items to the pictures. Then they match the vocabulary to the pictures.
This is an elementary listening and note taking exercise for lower level students. Students can complete the note taking template after listening to the audio files.
How to be happy and optimistic How to have a better memory
4 Note taking (advanced: controversial topics)
This is a listening and note taking exercise for controversial topics. It’s done in the a discussion format with the teacher asking students for their opinions Students listen to the audio and take notes on the worksheets.
This listening exercise is a gap fill dialogue for greetings and introductions. Students listen and complete the conversation with the vocabulary in the box.
8 Listening for vocabulary and common expressions (business English)
This is an ESL listening/speaking exercise for practicing common business English expressions by matching expressions and phrases to pictures and writing sentences. First, the students match the expressions to the pictures.
Reported Speech and Indirect Requests Listening and Speaking Exercises
Indirect questions and reported speech are two aspects of English grammar that can be a little tricky. Practice with pictures and listening using multiple intelligences can help make lessons more entertaining and engaging.
1 Reported speech listening/speaking (with audio and answers)
Reported speech is an essential but sometimes overlooked aspect of English grammar. This is a fairly elementary exercise. Students can try to complete the speech bubbles. Then they can listen to the audio to compare answers.
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This is an indirect questions listening and speaking exercise and activity. Students try to complete the invitations conversations using the pictures and the vocabulary. Or students can listen to the audio and match the vocabulary and phrases to complete the questions.
5 Celebrity interview: advanced reported speech with academic reporting verbs (with audio and answers)
This is a more advanced reported speech exercise for listening/speaking or writing students. I’ve noticed that even quite good students often have trouble using a variety of reporting verbs. In this exercise, students listen to a interview with a celebrity and write sentences using the specified reporting verbs.
This is an exercise for academic writing, or any kind of advanced writing. I’ve noticed over years that students just didn’t get “reporting verbs”. They had a lot of trouble introducing paraphrasing and quotations. I have never got around to doing anything about it before. But I’m pretty proud of this exercise. It makes a nice writing lesson to go along with essay writing activities that require doing some research. Bringing the research into an essay requires paraphrasing and quotations. Reporting verbs are often quite flexible and difficult to explain but this activity helps generate discussion and a better understanding of their various uses.
