Entries from June 2006 ↓

If you feel that the current speaking task (Famous Person Interview) may be too difficult for your students, or that there may not be time to set it up properly, please consider this alternative topic for the task. It keeps the interview format, but instead focuses on a topic covered in unit 6.

Vacation Interview

More information about the task

Grading rubric

Student Worksheet

As part of most writing courses, there are a number of technical writing terms that students need to be aware of. However, few of the first year students are familiar with these words at the start of the year. To help them review these words, I’ve been using a few vocabulary related warm-up activities. The crossword is self-explanatory, but there are teacher’s notes for the pelmonism activity. I’ve focused on the vocabulary, topic sentence, transitions, details, draft, mind map, paragraph, sentence, and indent, but you can easily adapt the materials to anything you want.
Writing Vocabulary Crossword.doc
Vocabulary Pelmonisms.doc
Teacher Notes - Pelmonisms.doc

This is a writing rubric that Peter McDonald and I have been working on, and using with our Level 2 classes. It focuses on 3 main areas, content (whether the essay uses clear topics, and has contains ideas that are well supported and developed), presentation (spelling, indenting, sufficiently long and with enough paragraphs, etc.), and grammar/vocabulary (clarity, accuracy, and complexity). It is pretty broadly-based, so we’ve been able to use the same rubric with all of the level 2 first semester essays.
Level 2 Writing - Alternative Rating Rubric.doc

This is a sample activity to give students practice in using editing symbols to correct sentences generated for the “Meet Your Teacher” (Level 2) activity (submitted by Damon Brewster).

Download Meet Your Teacher Editing Practice activity here.

A simple “Find someone who” activity for unit 4 of English Firsthand 1. It’s a Word file so you can change the items as you like.

Find someone - room

Of course it is entirely up to you how you prepare your students for this task - and this is especially true when it comes to deciding what they should talk about.

The suggested structure is:

• General information about the area where you live
• Detailed information about the area where you live
• Interesting things in the area around your home
• Question time

The presentations will only be 2 or 3 minutes in length, so students need to be quite selective about what they talk about.

These worksheets will help your students prepare something to talk about for each section.

General information about the area where you live

Detailed information about the area where you live

Interesting things in the area around your home

I would like to stress again that students should choose what they talk about. It would be impossible to cover everything on these worksheets in 2 or 3 minutes. OK … not impossible, but certainly inadvisable! 

Depending on the level of your students, and on how much prep time you have, you may wish your students to work on some basic presentation skills.

The Resources web site (Speaking skills section) has some very short video clips about posture, eye contact and gestures. The videos were actually made to supplement an extensions course - but they have been extensively used with elementary (level 1) students in the past, so they should (might!) work for you. :-)

Presentation skills videos

Thanks again to Peter B for being my model…
and yes … that is my bedroom

This checklist was adapted from the Oxford University Press video: Making Effective Presentations.

Download Presentation Checklist

Level 2 Speaking Task 2 Units 5 - 8

As this is a Listening and Speaking course, it is important that students be able to communicate with each other in a meaningful way using language covered from the text Let’s Talk 1. Since ability levels may differ from class to class throughout level 2, we will continue to provide different testing scenarios and rubrics for teachers to chose from in order to best evaluate their classes.

Speaking Task 2

This is a more communicative speaking task than Speaking Task 1, which will allow students to exercise more conversational initiative. The student notes contain 6 possible speaking topics that they should practice intensively prior to the testing day. As a teacher, you can decide if this is too much, or not enough for your students to handle. You are free to limit the possible number of topics to what you feel is appropriate for your class’s level of ability. There is also an optional Student Notes page that teachers can give to classes that may need more help in thinking through the various topics, their potential questions and answers.

The topics are:

1. Talking about something you have recently bought.
2. Describing a place you like to go shopping.
3. Talking about your favourite foreign (or Japanese) foods.
4. Talking about a place where you would like to take a vacation.
5. Describing a really good movie that you have seen.
6. Talking about a trip or a vacation that you took.

Contents:

• Teacher Notes
• Student Notes
• Activity Explanation
• Easy Conversation Skills Guide
• Speaking Task Preparation Translation
• English Greetings and Responses
• Conversation Skills Cards

Preparation:

Students should be made familiar with ways of starting and concluding a conversation, as well as other skill areas such as asking for clarification, showing interest, reacting appropriately to information, as well as the use of follow up questions and providing extra information. There are materials available in the binder and on OEKS to build and reinforce these skills. There is also a good deal of structured practice in the text that should be used. However, as this is a communicative task, students will have to be prepared to go beyond the target structure. In this situation, it is natural to expect some grammatical deviation. However, as developing communicative confidence and fluency is the goal of this task, teachers should be somewhat forgiving when assessing students.

*A variety of rubrics can be found in the Level 2 red binder.

Level 2 Listening and Speaking Task 2 (All Documents)

A vocabulary challenge is a good schema building activity that can get individuals, pairs or groups going on a topic.
I prefer to put students in pairs or small groups, requiring all of them to have the same answers on their sheet. Be prepared to circulate around the classroom a lot, as students often have questions about what is being asked for.
When the students have finished, you can mix the groups up and have them compare answers, or take it up as a whole class.

Let’s Talk Unit 8 Entertainment Vocab. challenge

A vocabulary challenge is a good schema building activity that can get individuals, pairs or groups going on a topic.
I prefer to put students in pairs or small groups, requiring all of them to have the same answers on their sheet. Be prepared to circulate around the classroom a lot, as students often have questions about what is being asked for.
When the students have finished, you can mix the groups up and have them compare answers, or take it up as a whole class.

Let’s Talk Unit 7 Travel and tourism Vocab. challenge

This is a kind of “find someone who…” activity that is based on Unit 6 “Food and drink”. However, it could be used at any time during the year as a warm up or as review. it can be used as a find someone who activity, requiring students to speak to 20 of their classmates, or you could have students interview 5 students and have them ask four questions each.
Because of the amount of time involved witht this activity (20mins. or more), I don’t require students to write the names of the students they talk to, nor the extra question that they think of themselves, just the answers.

Let’s Talk Unit 6 Activity (20 Questions)

A vocabulary challenge is a good schema building activity that can get individuals, pairs or groups going on a topic.
I prefer to put students in pairs or small groups, requiring all of them to have the same answers on their sheet. Be prepared to circulate around the classroom a lot, as students often have questions about what is being asked for.
When the students have finished, you can mix the groups up and have them compare answers, or take it up as a whole class.

Let’s Talk Unit 5 Vocab. challenge Money

This activity can be used in the FLSC, or during a computer class. Prior to going to a computer room, have students brainstorm cities in the USA, Canada and around the world. (As this is a MS Word document, you can change the countries).
In the computer room, students can work by themselves exploring the site and making notes.
At the time of writing, accuweather listed the weather as current, tonight, and tomorrow. That web page format may change.

Weather on the Internet

This is a 3 page information gap requiring students to ask about a variety of weather conditions around the world. Students are required to speak to 10 different students in order to complete their paper.

Let’s Talk Unit 4 Weather

This is a kind of “find someone who…” activity that is based on Unit 3 “Free time”, interests and sports. However, it could be used at any time during the year as a warm up or as review. it can be used as a find someone who activity, requiring students to speak to 20 of their classmates, or you could have students interview 5 students and have them ask four questions each.
Because of the amount of time involved witht this activity (20mins. or more), I don’t require students to write the names of the students they talk to, nor the extra question that they think of themselves, just the answers.

Lets Talk Unit 3 20 Questions.doc

This activity contains a map of the major lines found on a person’s palm as well as as a page of explanations. Much of the vocabulary used comes from the text unit.
Palmistry, or “teiso” is popular in Japan, and most students are familiar with the concept. The hand that is read is found by having the students put their hands together and interlocking their fingers. The hand that has the thumb over top of the other is the correct one to be read.
This activity can be used in a variety of ways. Students can examine their own hands and make written predictions about their future, or can do so with a partner’s hand. Another option is to have students trace the shape of their hand and draw in the lines that they find. Using names or student numbers, these papers can be passed around and other students can write their predictions based on the handouts. As this can be an anonymous reading, some of the predictions are often rather candid.
These are just a few suggestions of what can be done with this resource. Feel free to adapt and experiment with the explanation page provided. For now, the palm map is only available in the red binder. However, both pages are necessary for this activity.

Lets Talk Unit 2 Palmistry1.doc

This is a good activity to use with unit 1A “Let’s get to know each other!” However, it could be used at any time during the year as a warm up. it can be used as a find someone who activity, or you could have students interview 5 students and have them ask four questions each.

Let’s Talk Unit 1 20 Questions Activity

This worksheet consists of 2 parts:

Page 1 explains the task.

Page 2 is a listening activity based on the example mini presentation - which is on the Level 1 DVD and on the elpweb Resources web site. This could be done in the classroom, or in the computer room.

Note: the video on the web site has subtitles, which can be shown or hidden, which would make the task easier for lower level students.

There is no answer sheet - so you will have to try it yourself first!

Here is the worksheet: Launching the Mini Presentation

Here are some handouts I made to help Level 3 students who are finding the textbook passages difficult to understand.

Unit 2: Home Schooling
1) Students read the first and the last sentence of each paragraph to get the main idea of each paragraph and get a big picture of the whole passage.
Home Schooling.doc

2) Comprehension questions for each paragraph
Home Schooling Qs.doc

Unit 3: Get yourself Lost
3) Students read only the first and last paragraph to get the main idea of the passage before reading the entire text.
Get yourself lost.doc