Entries from April 2006 ↓

This is a very simple note-taking task sheet which students can use while listening to “Jim’s Family,” the speech exemplar on the Level 3 DVD. In addition to listening practice, the two Family speeches on the DVD can give students a clear idea of how to structure their own speech, type of vocabulary which is expected, plus models of a memorized speech and a speaker using notecards.

Jim’s Family - Task Sheet

These files are to be used as preparation for the EAP timed writing activity “Changes in your hometown”. There are 2 files to download here:

1. A sample student essay with 2 outlining activities.

2. Hometown Changes Mind Map

More jazz chants to bring joy and laughter to your class…..(ha ha)

Numbers

Pronunciation Blitz:

1B Jazz Chant

This practice aims to make the difference between teen and ty explicit (a very common problem among our students wouldn’t you agree!)

Look below and you will see the ‘lyrics’. These numbers should firstly be practiced in rhythm. After this, get the students to write a bingo type grid of three by three. Have them fill in the boxes with numerals that are similar eg: 13 30 15 50 etc. In groups of four they can play a game like karuta/snap whereby the person who wrote the numbers calls out a number and the other two players have to try and touch the correct number first. This will give them both oral and aural practice with numbers.

A)
Teen teennnn thir thirteen
Teen teennn four fourteen
Teen teennn fif fifteen
Teen teennn six sixteen
Teen teennn seven seventeen
Teen teennn eight eighteen
Teen teennn nine nineteen

B)
Twenty twenty ti ti ti
Thirty thirty ti ti ti
Forty forty ti ti ti
Fifty fifty ti ti ti etc

The Alphabet

Do Activity 3 on page 5 with an adjective and a noun of that letter instead of just any word. For example, angry ant, beautiful banana etc. Silliness is encouraged.

Choose good examples from around the class and write them on the board. Practise as a Jazz Chant.
First practise just the adjective combinations and then do the whole phrase: ‘A as in angry ant’ etc.

The reason for doing the jazz chant is that it clearly shows which words are stressed and unstressed. A as in ANGRY ANT

If you happen to have Chinese students like I do, they also tend to have a problem whereby they don’t release the final consonants (especially plosives like t/p etc), making it hard to understand what they say. Encourage students to release final consonants- angry anT.

The following are a few jazz chants I made up to teach stress and rhythm patterns as well as correct pronunciation for language taught in Unit 1A. If you are looking for something that is ‘light and easy’ and that will help consolidate or review what you have taught, maybe this will be of use to you.

Clap out the pattern first and let students follow along. Then introduce the following questions to the beat. Please listen here:

1A Jazz Chant

What are you studying?
What do you do?
Where are you from?

I want to get to know you!
What’s your favourite song?

Where do you work?
What’s your address?
Tell me tell me please!

How many brothers do you have?
Do you like toast with cheese?

After students have had practice, try to speed it up. This will improve fluency and should be fun. Of course it will also help them learn the new question patterns relevant to this chapter.

As the first assessed Speaking Task looms before us, I have taken the liberty of putting together an alternate task. There is a great range of teaching styles and class chemistry across all of the sections of Level 2, so we may need several structures to complete the assessed speaking task.

Read on for more details Continue reading →

Level 2 Reading teachers are asked to give four or more quizzes each term. That may seem like a lot, but quiz is a highly elastic term. The publisher quizzes are quite good, but you may not wish to devote so much class time to them. So, I am working up some much shorter quizzes that you can do in 5 minutes at the start of class to review from the week before.

These quizzes are easy. Use them to balance out a round of low quiz scores or to give students a small achievable task. The main purposes of the reading quizzes are: to encourage all students to study more than twice a term, to recycle and review, and to prepare students for the questions on the mid-term and final tests.

Download all formats in a .zip file and use however you like. The .zip archive includes MS Word, PDF, and Apple Pages file formats. There are quiz versions A, B, C, and D for each unit.

More to come shortly, I hope!

This is a folder which contains crossword puzzles for Units 1 to 8 from Totally True Book 3. The crosswords target all the ‘New Words’ from the Glossary and use the (rather naff) definitions from the book. There are 2 files per unit, a student puzzle and an answer key.

These puzzles can also be done online by students on the elpweb.com site. Here is the link http://elpweb.com/resources/slevel2reading.php?id=menu

Toally True 3 Units 1-8 Crossword Puzzles

…in which students practice their reading comprehension by matching the texts to the correct picture while learning about some ever-popular inventions that never made it to mass production.

chindogu matching

See the Level 3 Teacher’s Notes for the rationale behind True or False Dictation. For convenience, I will add new files to this post as I make them. Though I have labeled them as Quiz and Practice, any could be used as a graded quiz or as a form focused listening activity.

Dictation Practice 1 - This one is based on the personality vocabulary and grammar structures from pages 2 and 3 of Passages. I used it to introduce the concept. Took about 15 minutes to grade 20 responses.

Dictation Practice 2 - Families - taken from the grammar focus on page 7 of Passages.

Dicatation Practice 3 - Education 1, from Grammar Focus on page 11

Dictation Practice 4 - Education II, from page 15 of passages.

Dictation Practice 5 - Cities I, from page 19 of Passages

Dictation Quiz 1 - This first Dictation Quiz draws material from the first two Dication Practices.

Dicatation Quiz 2 The second quiz drawas from the Education theme, Dication Practice 3 and 4

This is a very bare bones way of explaining the structure of an essay. There are many ways to use these materials, but a suggested plan is:

1 Hand out this worksheet and quickly go over it. (This is the corrected version!)
structure of an essay v2.pdf
2 Hand out this model ‘New Product’ essay, and get the students to identify the various ‘parts’ of the essay.

New Product Model Essay.pdf

3 Hand out these worksheets to help the students plan their own new product essay.

Planning your essay.pdf

This is a re-written and simplified version of the Structure of an Essay reading passage used for the 2004 and 2005 EAP course. I’ve simplified the language, but also made it a bit more prescriptive, focusing exclusively on how to write in the five-paragraph essay format. I’ve included a separate worksheet to supplement the reading, and a quiz to be given a week later. I plan to make a Moodle-based practice quiz to supplement it.

The Structure of an Essay - Reading

Structure of Essay Activity Worksheet (JS).doc

Structure of an Essay - Quiz

These web resources may vanish by this time next year, but in the meantime it might be fun to link to them from your Moodle course.

history of useless inventions
http://www.designboom.com/history/useless.html

Video
Chindogu Celebrating Weird Inventions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-0Xgx7GiYs

2 Within each group, each student chooses one invention.

3 Quickly read about the invention, and remember as much as they can.

4 Mixed-groups: exchanging information about the inventions they just read about.

Early days with Moodle, but this shows how I how wrote a lesson plan above the web page link. Click on this image to see how I included this resource into my Moodle course.

A worksheet to help your students to familiarize themselves with Totally True 1.

Word .doc version (you can edit it if you like) - Worksheet and Answer sheet
Totally True 1. Scavenger Hunt. doc

PDF version - Worksheet and Answer sheet
Totally True 1. Scavenger Hunt. PDF

This worksheet contains 9 questions about English Firsthand. To answer the questions students need to quickly scan the book.

After you have checked the answers you can get the students to work in pairs and write a few extra questions about the book. >> Followed by mixed pairs or a mingle for students to ask each other their new questions.

The worksheet:
get to know Firsthand.pdf

The answers:
get to know Firsthand Answer.pdf

In the first class you may experience problems getting the ‘umbrella holder’ text to your students, in order for them to paste it into Criterion.

To streamline this process I have put the relevant document online in a way that allows for direct copying and pasting from the document online. There is no need to download it first.

Just direct your students to this site:

http://randomhawk.com/eap/

Jigsaw activity – Meet Your Teacher

These activities introduce the teacher and lead up to a paragraph writing exercise (connected to Task 1 - Describing a Person) while practicing all four skills. Should be good for Lesson 1.

NOTE: You will have to alter the information with your own personal information (or it can be left like this, perhaps changing the name). Shouldn’t take long to knock out similar length paragraphs.

Process
• Put the students into pairs. Hand out Meet Your Teacher I to half the class and Meet Your Teacher II to the other half.
• Students work through the three steps (reading and comprehension questions, reading aloud and listening, writing a paragraph). The instructions are on the students’ handouts.
• During the reading aloud and listening task, I usually pre-teach a few interaction phrases to help students negotiate meaning (I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, What does ~ mean? Etc).
• To complete all the activities could take between 50~90 minutes, depending on how you want to run it (A lot of oral feedback from the students, correction of language on the board, vocabulary highlighting etc).
• I have also tried to include some of the vocabulary from the Reading thread of Level 2.
• The paragraphs can be used as models for the students as they work towards the first assessed task in week four/five.
Level 2_writing_jigsaw activity

Hidden deep in the official English Firsthand web site are some ‘Language Check’ activities for students.

• Each unit has a page for reviewing grammar and vocabulary.

• They are intended for self-study.

• Could be done in-class (with a laptop and projector)

• Could be done during a ‘Computer Class’

Link to web page:
http://www.efcafe.com/onyourown.html

Links to individual units are on the Resources site:
http://elpweb.com/resources/slevel1listspeaking.php?id=menu

The answers are actually given on each page, so students will have to discipline themselves not to to peek before answering!

Something for the first EAP lesson - here is the original “Get to know” sheet that Jim made with questions in the 3rd-person (eg: Does he/she?) …

Get to know (3rd person)

And here’s the same sheet slightly modified so that the questions are in the 2nd-person (eg: Do you? Are you?)…

Get to know (2nd person)

Guaranteed to make your drinks more intellectual

This is simple guide on the procedures for submitting content for the elpweb.com sites.

Please don’t email files to me!

Please make sure all files you drop in the Drop Box are clearly labelled! I will be deleting things with no clear purpose.

Please keep the originals of any documents or files you submit, as after I have added the content to the web sites I will delete the files from my computer.

I will add the content to the sites as soon as I can!

Just remember that I will do all the behind-the-scenes stuff to get it online.

Continue reading →