Ten ways to learn new words as a language learner Teacher and teacher trainer Svetlana Kandybovich, our latest TeachingEnglish blog award winner, shares her top tips for remembering new words. As a language learner, you work hard to expand your vocabulary. You plough through new words every day, make long lists of words and practise with flashcards. However, when it comes to speaking, the new words seem to fall out of your head, so you resort to your old friends – words you already know and have used many times – again and again. Remembering and using new words in speech is often a challenge for language learners. Here are ten strategies to help you make words stick in your mind and use them in conversation. 1. We remember what is relevant to us. Tip: The British Council LearnEnglish website features tons of interactive videos, games and podcasts. 2. We retain words better when we learn them in small ‘chunks’ (i.e. small phrases that combine several words) and ‘scripts’ (i.e. typical dialogues). 3. 4. 5. ‘career’ – car and beer 6. 7. 8.
EclipseCrossword - the fast, easy, and FREE way to create crossword puzzles in minutes Wordwall | Create better lessons quicker All Things Topics - Home Word frequency: based on 450 million word COCA corpus You can now freely download a list of the top 5000 words/lemmas from the 450 million word Corpus of Contemporary American English, which is the only large and balanced corpus of American English. Although there are many word and frequency lists of English on the web, we believe that this list is the most accurate one available (compare...). The free list contains the lemma and part of speech for the top 5,000 words in American English. It is also possible to download other lists that contain the top 20-30 collocates (nearby words) for each of these words -- which provides useful information on word meaning and usage -- as well as to see which words are most common in certain genres (e.g. spoken or academic). It is also possible to download highly accurate lists for the top 20,000 and the top 60,000 words in English, with their top collocates as well. If you want an eBook version of the 5,000 word list -- with collocates, genre information, etc -- you can purchase it for about $20 here.
Loom - Screencast on Chromebooks, Macs, and PCs Loom is a free screencasting tool that works on Chromebooks, Macs, and Windows computers. Loom is a Chrome extension. With Loom installed you can record your desktop, an individual tab, and or your webcam. Loom recordings can be up to ten minutes long. Applications for Education This is the time of year when you're likely to be introducing some new tools to your students and or your colleagues. Quizalize Conversation Questions for the ESL/EFL Classroom If this is your first time here, then read the Teacher's Guide to Using These PagesIf you can think of a good question for any list, please send it to us. Home | Articles | Lessons | Techniques | Questions | Games | Jokes | Things for Teachers | Links | Activities for ESL Students Would you like to help? If you can think of a good question for any list, please send it to us. If you would like to suggest another topic, please send it and a set of questions to begin the topic. Copyright © 1997-2010 by The Internet TESL Journal Pages from this site should not be put online elsewhere.Permission is not required to link directly to any page on our site as long as you do not trap the page inside a frame.
Game Word Generator - The Game Gal When I was putting together this site of games, I discovered that my printable word lists became very popular. I had word lists for pictionary, charades, and other games, and visitors seemed to really like them! So I got to thinking, what’s one step better than a printable list of words for playing pictionary? An online word generator! Here’s how it works: First, select a Game (the game menu also includes a Holiday option). My amazing husband also made an iPhone app with all the same content. Finally, I love feedback!
Grammar Auction: Turn grammar review into a game – tekhnologic This is not a new activity and you can find several descriptions of a grammar auction online. You may find these descriptions Grammar Auctions useful: Clare Lavery describes a Grammar Auction for teachingenglish.org.uk. Bjorn Norstrom describes a Grammar Auction for Dave’s ESL café’s idea cookbook. The other day, I was trying to find some inspiration because I was having a difficult time thinking of something to create for the website. Watch this video for an introduction to the template and instructions on how to edit it. After you have watched the video, continue reading to download the template and for a more detailed description about using it in the classroom. Watch the tutorial video to see how to edit and use the Grammar Auction template.Video run-time is 3 minutes and 26 seconds. Click on the image or the link below to download the template. Download the Grammar Auction template. The template consists of a title slide and one auction slide. Click on a ‘hammer’ button. Using Realia
How to Create Your Own Online Board Game Those of you who have followed my blog for a while probably know that Flippity is one of my go-to recommendations for anyone looking to make games, flashcards, and timelines with Google Sheets. Recently, Flippity introduced a new template for making your own online board game through Google Sheets. With Flippity's new board game template you can create a game that includes up to eight players, has up to three dice to roll, and interactive game squares. You game can also include videos, pictures, Google Drawings, and graphs. Key points from the video: You can customize the player markers and use pictures instead of the default markers. Applications for Education Flippity's new board game template could be great for developing a fun review activity for your students to play in your online or in-person classroom.
The Ghostly Shadow Question time! Who might the character in the picture be? Do the trees remind you of anything? Why do you think there are fences either side of the road? Where might the road lead to? What time of day do you think it is? What sounds might you be able to hear if you were there? Story starter! One second you saw it, the next you didn’t. The fog seemed to be alive. One second you saw it, the next you didn’t. She had come too far to turn back now. Sentence challenge! Verbs are action or doing words. I have tried to use interesting verbs in my writing. Once you have found them, can you write a sentence of your own using one?