Oxford Christmas Corner | OXFORD CULTUREMANIA Is your stocking hanging above the fireplace yet? Are you impatient for Christmas to arrive? Then unwrap this early gift courtesy of Oxford and share it with your class. We have new activities for 2015! Just choose the level you teach to access your free resources. Season’s Greetings from the team. Secondary NEW! Dictionary Activity Treasure Hunt Speaking and Listening Writing Upper Secondary NEW! Dictionary Activity Treasure Hunt Reading Speaking and Listening Writing Official Languge Schools Dictionary Activity – Basic Cycle Writing – Basic Cycle Speaking – Basic & Intermediate Cycle Treasure Hunt –Intermediate Cycle Dictionary Activity –Intermediate & Advanced Cycle Speaking and Listening – Intermediate & Advanced Cycle Writing – Intermediate & Advanced Cycle Reading – Advanced Cycle Treasure Hunt – Advanced Cycle Levels shown for guidance.
Present perfect progressive | Doctors Speak Up AIM: To consider how different verb forms have different meanings. INTRODUCTION: The verb form we choose affects the meaning of what we say. Look at these questions and responses from the depression case. How long have you been feeling like this? What else have you been noticing? The verb form is the present perfect progressive: has/have + been + [verb]-ing It indicates that the activity (e.g., feeing like this, not going out as much) started in the past and is still ongoing (at the time of speaking about it). Compare the different verb forms used in these three questions and the responses given. How long have you been working there? How long were you working there? How long are you working there? INSTRUCTIONS:: Read the context.
Sentences and Paragraphs by Ben VandenBerg on Prezi Internet TESL Journal (For ESL/EFL Teachers) Create Instant Interactive Text Based Activities Creating computer based materials can be incredibly time consuming and also very frustrating as websites and web based content can change so quickly, that's why it is always so nice to discover tools like Textivate which can enable you to create instant interactivity using almost any text you find from around the web. All you need to do is copy and paste your text into the Textivate window and then click on 'textivate now'. Here you can see some text I have copied from the Goldilocks story which I found on the Project Gutenberg site. Now I get a range of different exercise types to choose from. All I have to do to generate the exercise is to click on one of the square and I instantly have an interactive activity. There are quite a few to choose from. You can also have the text arranged vertically so that students drag and drop the parts into position. Some of my favourite task types it creates are the instant gapfill activity. Why not try this one out for yourself and see how you get on: Best
Building on the Kernel Essay First of all, if you ever have the opportunity to go to a workshop by Gretchen Bernabei, definitely do so. She offers so many great ideas to teach writing, and one that I hooked onto and have used successfully many times is the Quick List and Kernel Essay. What I found when using them was that even students were surprised at how good their writing sounded. Plus they also creates a structure to build a great piece of writing. The first step is to create a Quick List of possible topics, or students can use a topic they already have. To start the Kernel Essay, I tell students to write one sentence telling me where they were at this time. The Kernel Essay is just a starting piece for a more involved piece of writing.
Getting more complex language from your students Part Two The follow up to this article, also published in English Teaching Professional. Given the likelihood that your students often communicate with people who have a lower level of English than they do, there is much to be said for even intermediate-level students getting some practice in simplifying their language in order to accommodate the people they are speaking to. However, even in the “English as a Lingua Franca” world in which we live, I still think our main emphasis should be on persuading our students to move quickly on from language they know well to something more ambitious. This is especially so when they are in the perfect place to try something new – in our classrooms. For one thing, even students who usually communicate with other non-native speakers often say that interacting with native speakers is their main challenge, and trying to use the kinds of tricky language that native speakers do is the best way of remembering it and making sure you really understand it.
:: e-Learning for Kids :: Editing & Revising Paragraphs The Improving Paragraphs section of a standardized test presents a draft of a short essay, which you must read and answer questions about. Many questions require you to understand the essay as a whole. For example, a question might ask about a particular sentence in the context of the paragraph it is from. Time4Writing’s free writing resources cover editing and revising paragraphs on a standardized test.
Getting students to use more complex functional language An expanded version of an article of mine just published in English Teaching Professional magazine as Keep Moving On Part One – available here on TEFLtastic for free! One of the best language learning tips that I have used and passed on is to stop using something as soon as you know how to do so well, and move onto something else. For example, as soon as you can use the equivalent of “In my opinion” or “Can I have…?” You could think of this issue as a rational subconscious response by students to language that seems to do something that they already can do and so has little communicative use for them. That emphasize on more complex language that also serves different functions is probably the best response of all to the problem of students not progressing beyond basic functional language. – Point out that a basic phrase that they keep using is fine, but a bit Elementary for a class of this level – Ban basic phrases like “In my opinion,…” from the classroom or from a particular activity