30 student activation tactics

Sometimes we neednt disscuss about the book, because it is very usefull. Look the sumary bellow: There are ideas for all stages of the lesson – warm ups, pre, while and post reading or listening, and homework. The ideas and activities have been put in several broad categories, including talking about news, using headlines, discussions, using opinions, plans, using lists and quotes, role play ideas and taskbased activities. There are also language analysis exercises, at the lexical level and in moving from text to speech. The two largest sections focus on using the central characters and the themes of news articles. There are also many activities that may be copied and used in class. I have avoided talking about methodology or giving “how to” advice in this introduction and throughout the book. Teachers will take the activities they feel they can use and teach them according to their own teaching style and classroom situation. Similarly, I have not provided guidelines for level or timing. An idea that one teacher deems suitable for higher levels might be effectively used by another teacher for lower levels. Likewise, an activity with a suggested duration of five minutes might well run considerably longer with some classes. There are ideas for all stages of the lesson – warm ups, pre, while and post reading or listening, and homework. The ideas and activities have been put in several broad categories, including talking about news, using headlines, discussions, using opinions, plans, using lists and quotes, role play ideas and taskbased activities. There are also language analysis exercises, at the lexical level and in moving from text to speech. The two largest sections focus on using the central characters and the themes of news articles. There are also many activities that may be copied and used in class. I have avoided talking about methodology or giving “how to” advice in this introduction and throughout the book. Teachers will take the activities they feel they can use and teach them according to their own teaching style and classroom situation. Similarly, I have not provided guidelines for level or timing. An idea that one teacher deems suitable for higher levels might be effectively used by another teacher for lower levels. Likewise, an activity with a suggested duration of five minutes might well run considerably longer with some classes. There are ideas for all stages of the lesson – warm ups, pre, while and post reading or listening, and homework. The ideas and activities have been put in several broad categories, including talking about news, using headlines, discussions, using opinions, plans, using lists and quotes, role play ideas and taskbased activities. There are also language analysis exercises, at the lexical level and in moving from text to speech. The two largest sections focus on using the central characters and the themes of news articles. There are also many activities that may be copied and used in class. I have avoided talking about methodology or giving “how to” advice in this introduction and throughout the book. Teachers will take the activities they feel they can use and teach them according to their own teaching style and classroom situation. Similarly, I have not provided guidelines for level or timing. An idea that one teacher deems suitable for higher levels might be effectively used by another teacher for lower levels. Likewise, an activity with a suggested duration of five minutes might well run considerably longer with some classes.

I Was Doing So Wrong

And How I Fixed It

5 Taboo Subjects for

Your Teen Conversation

Class

8 TABOO SUBJECTS:

What the ****? 6 Ways

to Turn Bad Word

Ways to Motivate your

Students to Speak Out

15-16 MOTIVATION: How

To Energize Your Bored

Students With This

Great Game (Perfect

For

Any Level, Any Topic,

Any Size Of Group)

17 MOTIVATION: Speak

Speak Speak: 3 MORE

Activities That Motivate

Students to Speak

18 MOTIVATION: Use It

Or Lose It: 8 Awesome

ESL Activities To Encourage Student Initiative

19-20 DISCUSSION STARTERS: 35 Print And Go Discussion Starters For ESL Students:

The Secret Weapon Every Teacher Needs

21 ROLE PLAYS:

The Ideal ESL Role Play

In 5 Easy Steps 22-23 ROLE PLAYS: How

To Create Your Own Role-Plays: 4 Quick Tips On Inventing Infinitely Flexible &

Dynamic Discussion Environments Your Students Will Love

24 GROUPS: 5 Ways to Make Talking about

Me about Everyone in

a Group Conversation Class

25 SMALL TALK: Chit Chat and Small Talk:

5 Activities To Get The Conversation Started

With Your Students 26-27 GIVING ADVICE:

It’s Not a Problem:

4 Out of the Ordinary Advice Giving Activities

28 FLUENCY: Repeat, Reuse, Review:

Stepping Stones to Fluency

29 FLUENCY: 4 Amazing Ideas for Accuracy- Fluency Balance 30-31 OUTSIDE THE CLASS: Get Them Talking Outside of Class: 3 Speaking and Listening Challenges

32 SKILLS: How to Use

a Class Party to Teach

10 Social Conversation Skills

33 SKILLS:Formality, Yea

or Nay? Help Your ESL Students Know When

to Be Formal with These Useful Tips 34-35 SKILLS: 10 Essential English Skills Your Students Need for College

36 SKILLS: 5 Nifty Tips

on How to Help Your ESL Student Handle

Awkward Situations

37 SKILLS: When the Going Gets Tough: Teach

Your ESL Students How to Manage Difficult Situations 38-39 LEARNING CENTERS: 10 Learning Centers Perfect for Listening

and Speaking Class 40-41 TEACHING

METHODS: DM? CLT? TPR? 6 Most Popular ESL Teaching Methods, And Which One You Should Be Using 42-43 MUST READ: No Prep, Little Prep, and More Prep Ways to Get Your Students Ready to Learn

44 MUST READ: How Was Your ESL Lesson? How

To Assess Your Own Teaching [Checklist]

45 MUST READ: Running dry? Make your ESL lessons irresistible with these ideas

to boost your creativity

A Disastrous Semester: What I Was Doing So Wrong And How I Fixed It

I had a really disastrous semester

earlier this year.

I inherited a group of students of a very

low level, and all from the same country

I thought, ‘No problem!’ I’d handled large,

elementary-level, mono-lingual

class-es before After five months together,

though, I began to worry that I couldn’t

really see any improvement, at least by

the measure that I principally use: the

ability to spontaneously produce

accu-rate and descriptive English

The lack of achievement seemed to be

true across the board: vocabulary stayed

at a low level with little color or nuance,

pronunciation problems became

hard-coded and stubborn, rather than

gradual-ly melting away, spoken grammar, in

par-ticular, was a real problem, with students

rejecting the idea of conjugating tenses

and using time expressions instead,

note-taking remained pretty poor and

dic-tionary use was nearly unheard of

I have to admit, I began to despair What

could I be doing so wrong in my classes

as to have failed to help the students

overcome these basic difficulties? We

worked on every one of their problems

in short, targeted modules of twenty or

thirty minutes, aimed at raising

aware-ness and encouraging self-correction,

but the following week, we were right

back at square one I spent 5 months

en-couraging the use of modal verbs, but still

received answers such as, “I will maybe

go movies tonight,” and, “Remember his

books, maybe was better” Frankly, I was

losing it

Then, following a meeting with my

col-leagues to figure out what on Earth was

going on, we hit on the genesis of the

whole problem: Absolutely no practice

was happening.

We came to find that, irrespective of time

and effort expended in the classroom, it

was the students’ personal time which

governed their rate of progress and the

growth of their skills Once they left the

classroom, they immediately switched

back to L1, and stayed in their home

language (and therefore, almost

inevita-bly, their own cultural) environment until

they next walked into the classroom This was made worse by their housing situa-tion – they lived in L1 groups which never spoke any English, despite residing in a major US city – and worse still by some

of my colleagues’ permitting L1 in the classroom I emphasize this because I did not blame the students for their poor progress I blamed the environment we had created for them, and also certain preconditioned learning styles with which they arrived at the school and which proved a major barrier to improvement

6 STEPS TO ENSURING GREAT PRACTICE

1 HELP STUDENTS TO GET RID

OF BAD HABITS

Check in often with your students and find out what kind of practice they’ve been doing This was very revealing in the case of the class I struggled with ear-lier this year I found that students were simply writing down the new word ten times, or repeating it out loud, by itself, others were merely listening to their elec-tronic dictionary pronouncing the word without doing either! Once we recognize the habits our students already have, we can steer them towards better methods

I set homework which includes lary practice in sentences Students sometimes take some convincing that the extra work of producing a new sen-tence, just to practice one new word, is worthwhile Realistic sentence practice, though, is a great boost to retention and fluency, as the student has created a sit-uation in which the word is needed: the next time, they might well produce the word spontaneously, and then we’ll be making real progress

vocabu-OTHER GOOD HABITS INCLUDE:

• Saying every new word a few times

- not for memorization, but for nunciation, simply to get comfortable with making that particular string of sounds Isolate the tricky sounds and practice them individually, then prac-tice the whole word The teacher can help by drilling the pronunciation, so

pro-that the word has been formed and spoken before the students leave the classroom

• Writing down all new vocabulary in

a book specifically for that purpose, and practice each difficult, new word after each class

• Guessing from context before (or instead of) reaching for a dictionary whenever a new word comes up The dictionary should be a way to confirm the students’ assumptions and get a clear definition, but it shouldn’t ubiq-uitously be the first port of call

2 A REMINDER

OF THE REALITIES

I tried a couple of methods to encourage

my students to realize that a language needs practice, like any other skill Per-suading them to view their work in terms

of skills acquisition, and not simply the gaining of ‘knowledge’ was an important early step

I played them a YouTube video of the legendary Russian pianist Evgeniy Kis-sin playing a dazzling masterpiece They were impressed, of course, despite not being huge fans of classical music

I asked how Kissin had, from nothing, become able to perform with such ease something so obviously difficult Every-one knew the answer: practice It was also recognized that, had Kissin not prac-ticed regularly and at length, he would never have become the globe-trotting vir-tuoso he is today Establishing this critical causal link, however rudimentary it may seem, is usefully illustrative for your stu-dents

Invite your class to come up with their own examples of someone who has put

in long, focused hours and achieved a tremendous ability The same point can

be made by watching a talented man, or an interview with a great writer,

sports-or someone who seems to be a savant, with an incredible memory, but who sim-ply practiced remembering things until they became uncommonly good at it

3 KEEP A RECORD

I’ve found that students are

be-ginning to lose respect for paper

Ten years ago, it was routine to find all

of the semester’s handouts and notes

carefully arranged in a labeled binder

Nowadays, I’m seeing more and more

scattered, incoherent notes, and

dog-earned handouts scrunched forlornly

at the bottom of schoolbags

Normally, I’d try to fight such

chang-es, but here I think acceptance might

work better: ours is a digital age, and

the students are digital operators So,

when it comes to keeping a record of

what they have achieved, that record

must also be digital

Encourage your students to make

weekly recordings of themselves

reading a paragraph, or just

convers-ing in English with others A month

later, listening to the recording will

reveal a change in accent, or an

em-barrassing mistake, which the student

can compare to their contemporary

skills set With luck – and consistent

practice – the student will see some

improvement

4 CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Many young people are

inexpe-rienced in goal-setting and time

man-agement Creating a simple Excel

spreadsheet to track their work is a

good way to bring some structure to

what is often a very disjointed learning

style Daily requirements for speaking,

listening, reading and writing are

artic-ulated, and can be enjoyably checked

off once completed Repeatedly

em-phasizing the importance of making

this practice a daily ritual might well

make the difference between a useful

habituation and its patchy,

unsatisfac-tory opposite There’s a good maxim

for this:

ONCE YOU’VE DONE IT FORTY TIMES,

IT’S A HABIT

I believe this is true for almost

any-thing: smoking, meditating, practicing,

getting up early, you name it

Of special importance here are

read-ing and writread-ing, for me, the two skills

which are most de-emphasized by

21st century students’ learning styles

A daily commitment to reading a few

pages, or a chapter, of a book, and to

writing a short journal entry or part of

a blog article, is a healthy way to dress these important issues

ad-5 SYNONYMS, ANTONYMS AND COLLOCATIONS

Learning the meaning and spelling

of a word is only part of the journey

I always encourage students to write synonyms and antonyms as part of their practice: apart from being use-ful vocabulary review in its own right, linking the word into a family of similar words provides yet greater contextu-alization, and obliges the students to consider aspects such as the relative strengths of adjectives (is ‘exhausted’

stronger than ‘tired’, or ‘worn out’?),

or the relative register of two verbs (which is more formal, ‘jot down’ or

‘note’?)

6 THE DANGER

OF ONE WORD ANSWERS

Sometimes, all we’re looking for is a confirmation that the students know what’s going on This leads, more often for new teachers than for vet-erans, to dangerous and misleading situations where the teacher asks, ‘Do you understand?’

This habit is discussed elsewhere on Busyteacher.org, but I’ll add my voice

if I may: please never ask this tion You almost certainly won’t get a true answer, it’s an ineffective way of checking understanding, and saying

ques-‘yes’ in a big group is hardly what we mean by production

Here’s a classroom example of ing the ‘Do You Understand?’ issue and requiring genuine production

avoid-This was a multilingual class whom I knew very well

Teacher: OK, so how’s the weather this morning?

Student 1: Cold

Teacher: Really, Zhang? Maybe try for more than one word?

Students: [Laughter this is a theme

in my classroom and they’ve heard it many times before]

Student 1: Today is cold

Teacher: Did you hear that, guys? A sentence!

Student 2: With a verb!

Teacher: Indeed so, Mr Gao What a wonderful thing that was Now, how was the weather last night, when you

got home?

Student 3: Not so cold

Student 4: Little cold

Teacher: Well, I’ve got three words, then two Let’s go nuts Who’s got four?

Student 2: It was a little cold last night.Teacher: Heavens above, it’s a mira-cle! Seven words! I can barely count that high!

Students: [Laughter]

The teacher made a joke of it, but there is the underlying theme: short utterances are unlikely to convey what you truly mean, don’t really help the person you’re speaking with, and offer an artificially truncated view of your language skills It may seem as though I’m making fun of my class, but they understand why I do it, both through having seen this method be-fore, and through being aware of my obsession with full sentences and complete answers I leave them in no doubt that:

PRODUCTION IS PRACTICE

and that

PRACTICE MEANS PRODUCTION

I hope that your own students come

to this realization, and associate the learning of a language with the pro-ducing of it

Are Your ESL Students Making

These 10 Speaking Mistakes?

ESL STUDENTS PRACTICE SPEAKING,

READING, WRITING AND LISTENING,

BUT LET’S FACE IT IT’S THE

SPEAK-ING THAT PUTS THEM ON THE SPOT

Whether they are foreign executives

or stay-at-home moms who want to

make new friends, speaking mistakes

might make them look bad Let’s take

a look at the most common and see

how we can help our students move

past them towards better fluency

10 SPEAKING

MISTAKES THAT YOUR

ESL STUDENTS NEED

Word order might pose a problem for

ESL students in general, but when it

comes to questions, the mistake is

glaring This type of mistake when

asking questions is often

accompa-nied by the wrong intonation (falling

instead of rising, in this case) which

makes the question sound like a

statement or an incomplete sentence

2 COUNTABLE/

UNCOUNTABLE MIXUPS

There was much people at the

party.

It is very easy to tell when a student

has not effectively learned the

dif-ference between countable and

un-countable nouns They make

mis-takes with much, many, a little and

a few, and less and fewer, giving us

phrases like, “I have a few money”,

and “I read much books”

3 WORD CHOICE

I love Disneyworld It is very

funny.

There are words that ESL students

typically mix up: some are quite

simi-lar like fun and funny, or farther and

further, and there are others that are

easily confused like watch, see and

look

4 REPETITION

OF THE SUBJECT

My company it is big.

Quite often, ESL students use a noun

as the subject of the sentence and yet feel compelled to add the pronoun right after it

5 SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT

He have a lot of money.

This is a big problem in both speaking and writing It is very common in ESL learners but a hurdle they should defi-nitely overcome if they want to make a better impression when speaking

6 WRONG PREPOSITION

I was born on 1991.

On, at or in? It is one of the most ular questions from students They use the wrong preposition in so many cases and so often, it is impossible to correct every single one

of funny statements, from students claiming to have spent “your” money

to reports of parents having cleaned

“your” room

8 MISTAKING WORDS

THAT ARE SIMILAR

IN THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE

My daughter is embarrassed and will have her baby next month.

The student’s daughter has nothing to

be embarrassed about The student has made this mistake because the word for pregnant in Spanish is em-barazada, and sounds very similar

to embarrassed Each language has words that may sound a lot like words

in English but have completely ent meanings, and students should be

differ-careful with these Also similar to this mistake is “inventing” words in Eng-lish by applying typical patterns (invo-lucrated instead of involved from the Spanish involucrado)

9 USING INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE

Hi! What’s up? (said to a tomer)

cus-Even after we get all of the cal mistakes out of the way, ESL stu-dents still have a hard time figuring out what is appropriate or inappropri-ate depending on the context

grammati-1 0 USING

THE WRONG STRESS

It’s nice to meet you.

A student may say something that

is perfectly correct, grammatically speaking, but what happens if they put the stress on the wrong word? It may lead to confusion or misunder-standing Consider the difference be-

tween, “He didn’t pay for one lesson”

vs “He didn’t pay for one lesson”.

HOW TO HELP OUR STUDENTS MOVE PAST THESE SPEAKING MISTAKES

There are two tiers to correcting and improving these mistakes The first tier is the easiest to attack: it is com-posed of the typical grammatical er-rors students can work on through extended practice and worksheets The second tier involves things that students have a hard time grasping, like the difference between informal and more formal language, intonation and stress, as well as the other nu-ances of the English language

HOW TO CORRECT TYPICAL GRAMMAR MISTAKES

When it comes to correcting grammar mistakes while students are speaking, every ESL teacher comes to this hard realization: you can’t correct every single mistake Firstly, it seriously hin-

ders fluency and does not help boost

morale if students are being corrected

every few seconds or so Secondly, it

simply can’t be done Not unless you

record what a student says and

re-play it so you can correct every single

mistake As in most things in life, we

need to pick our battles, and here’s

how you can choose which grammar

mistakes to correct:

• Things they should already know

by now, like the conjugation of the

third person singular in the simple

present (he takes)

• Problems that are shared by

sev-eral students

• Mistakes that are repeated again

and again by the same student

• Mistakes that are connected to

the lesson goal (i.e., talk about

things that happened in the past)

How can we correct these mistakes in

a way that won’t affect overall

fluen-cy? Because the student is speaking,

and you won’t want to interrupt him or

her, the best course of action is to find

some way of signaling the mistake

For example, if the same student

typi-cally forgets the s in the third person

singular, trace an s in the air or flash a

card with the letter s when they make

this mistake

HOW TO IMPROVE

MISTAKES THAT ARE

MORE SUBTLE

How does a student come to

under-stand that it’s ok to say something

is very expensive, but not very

fabu-lous? How does a student know when

to ask, “What’s up?” and when to ask,

“How have you been?” One of the keys

is exposure Exposure to the English

language, especially outside the ESL

classroom The more ESL students

hear native English speakers using

expressions correctly, using sarcasm

and colloquial phrases, greeting

oth-ers and making jokes, the easier it will

be for them to grasp these differences

and start using them themselves In

addition to exposure, role plays are

instrumental in teaching proper

into-nation, word stress and the use of

ap-propriate expressions I recommend:

• Letting a pair of students carry out

the role play as presented to them

• Taking notes while they speak

• Congratulating them on their forts

ef-• Offering praise for something they did particularly well (use of set phrases)

• Offering suggestions for ment or correcting mistakes (used the right expression but with the wrong intonation, for example)

improve-• Asking them to try it again, ing the suggestions/corrections in mind

keep-SPEAKING IS OFTEN A SOURCE

OF GREAT FRUSTRATION FOR ESL LEARNERS

While our job is to correct their takes, we must also strive to do so

mis-in an encouragmis-ing and supportive environment Instead of focusing on correcting mistakes, let’s help them achieve better fluency

Make Them Talk: 5 Taboo Subjects for Teen Conversation Class

NO MATTER WHAT CULTURE YOU ARE

TEACHING, IT IS PROBABLE THAT, IF

YOU TEACH BEGINNER TO

INTERME-DIATE LEVEL YOUNG TEENS (13-17

YEAR OLDS), YOU FIND THAT THEY ARE

SUDDENLY SHY, UNRESPONSIVE, DO

NOT LIKE LISTENING, AND EVEN RUDE

SOMETIMES

These universal teen traits often make

the ESL conversation instructor’s normal

tricks useless What topics keep them

interested and break the barriers? A

strategy is to work with the

rebellion/bur-geoning independence, “badness”, need

for peer acceptance, and curiosity that

come with the age Try presenting some

of these “taboo” conversation questions

in class

For this to work, the ESL instructor

needs to first establish trust and a sense

of camaraderie that gets them to share

Put the questions, or similar ones

re-lated to the categories, on little cards

and pass them out Have the students

sit in a circle and read their questions

and begin the conversation topics one

by one If they do not respond naturally,

introduce an example, preferably

some-thing personal, even if you are inventing

it! If they still do not respond, poll them

to begin and offshoot questions from the

1 LYING AND CHEATING

They all lie and most have cheated

on a test and feel better when they hear

about someone else that has done the

same Two conversation starter

ques-tions are:

• Have you ever lied to your mom or

dad? Why? About what?

• Have you ever cheated on a test?

Which subject?

If they do not respond right away, tell

them you cheated on your algebra test

in ninth grade because you could not

memorize the equations! They will

re-late If that still does not work, ask the

question as a poll This is a good way to

get the class started with gradual

2 TREATING PEOPLE POORLY AND REGRETTING IT

We have all treated our little brother poorly and felt bad later, especially

at this moody age Usually we do not apologize and try to forget about it, but

it feels good to admit the transgression and can be very humorous when we talk about it

• What was something you said or did

to someone that you regretted later?

How did it make you feel?

This focuses on past tense and is great for practicing feelings vocabulary A starter example is “I ate the piece of cake my brother put in the refrigerator

I felt bad when he told me he brought it home for my grandmother.”

3 GHOSTS AND PARANORMAL

Ask them about paranormal periences and occult beliefs Teens of this age are trying to cope with identify-ing with beliefs and faiths and like talk-ing about and exploring different ideas

ex-Ghosts and the paranormal is lighter subject matter than God existing or heavy religious banter, however, and usually are very engaging subjects for teens At minimum, you will get one or two students to tell stories to which ev-eryone will listen They are curious what their peers believe TheTwilight series, horror movies, and other occult films all are marketed to teens for a reason!

• Have you ever seen a ghost?

Where? What did it look like?

• Do you believe in astrology? What sign are you?

• Do you think vampires exist? Do you know one?

• Can you tell the future? Do you know someone who can?

This practices storytelling, as well as past, present, and future tense It will bring up some good new vocabulary for the students as well!

• If you could meet someone you have

a secret crush on, who would it be?

• What is your perfect girlfriend like?

• Do you have a boyfriend? What does he look like?

5 PERSONAL APPEARANCE

All teens feel awkward in their ies, and, with constant Facebook and media exposure globally, they compare themselves to famous people and wish they could look different somehow! This

bod-is a very funny conversation topic for students of this age if you keep it light – focus on who they think is most beautiful and why instead of making it too person-

al This subject will practice describing people, present and conditional tenses, and will end up being a good vocabulary lesson

• Who is the most beautiful person in the world? Why?

• Which is more attractive – to be a little fat or too skinny?

• How much make up is too much – or

is there never too much?

• Do actresses show too much skin

par-on the level of our students if we want them to learn how to communicate, so have fun doing so and be a teen again with them!

THIS HAPPENS TO EVERY ESL

TEACHER STUDENTS WILL ASK YOU

WHAT VULGAR WORDS MEAN IN

ENGLISH

Ignoring them might work for a while, but

it is best to approach the subject

profes-sionally and offer an explanation for the

word or phrase or question Here are 6

ways to broach the slippery subject and

even turn it into an interesting

conversa-tion class

TRY THESE 6 WAYS

TO TURN BAD WORD

EXPLANATIONS INTO A

CONVERSATION CLASS

1 WHAT THE ****?

In English, especially in American

English, we know it is a serious faux pox

to use certain four letter words, even to

the point where it is illegal in public

me-dia They are powerful expletives though

that attract attention, hence why we use

them in common speech and why

stu-dents want to know what they mean

• Write the list of vulgar words for

them horizontally on the board, and

explain that they are very strong

communication tools, yes, but

usu-ally carry a negative and even angry

tone Alternatively, a speaker can

at-tract attention from creative speech

• Task students to think of 3 words that

rhyme with each vulgar word that

have positive or humorous

mean-ings like “duck”, “spit”, and “spell”

Place a box or hat under each

vul-gar word and have them write their

three rhyme words on small papers

and place in each box

• Then, write common expressions

like “what the ****” on the board and

have students take turns selecting

papers at random from the boxes

and inserting their silly/positive

words in the expressions

2 YOU’RE SUCH A…

English speakers can be quite

confrontational and get involved with

nasty name calling either directly to

someone in anger or behind someone’s

back These mean names are heard on

Students will ask you what they mean

If they do, be prepared and explain that it is never nice to use these words, and would it not be better if we lived

in a world where people only said nice things about others?

• Give students a homework ment to open their ears and record five nice things people say to each other on the street or in pop cul-ture if you do not live in an English speaking country

assign-• Provide examples like, “You’re such

a sweetie!” or “She’s so bubbly!”

It will help them focus on positive pects of colloquial language, and you will have a great conversation class the next week when they explain where they heard these words!

as-3 GET DOWN

Pick a particularly vulgar word heavy dance song, better if it is one stu-dents know, and even better yet if it is one they hear on the radio often

• Print the lyrics and play the song, asking students to circle what they assume are colloquial words

• Then, go through the song and write the bad words with less vulgar words that have a more lighthearted connotation after explaining what they mean Ask students first what they think the words mean Older teenagers are probably just trying to embarrass you by asking what they mean, so embarrass them instead!

re-• Play the song again and have dents sing/read along with the new language

stu-This activity will result in an engaging conversation and vocabulary lesson

4 CUT!

Show a clip from a popular “R”

rated movie with bad language, like a gangster film, preferably one they have seen

• Download and print a transcript of the dialogue and show the clip with subtitles

• Have them circle the bad words while watching

• Then discuss how those words were used in the film by the speakers to relay meaning, add significance to

5 EMBRACE IT

For your older teens or young adults, embrace the swear words and teach them how to use them properly

in conversation Write down commonly used swear expressions, like “what the hell” and “that pissed me off”, on papers with definitions on the back, and have students in pairs come to the front of the class and draw one each from a box Ask them to try to use the phrases in a quick dialogue together For example, they could say:

• “What the hell? He didn’t give you a birthday present?”

• “No! It really pissed me off.”

Students can work in pairs or groups

to invent a dialogue at their desks first

if you think they will need more time to consider the phrases

6 YOU TELL ME WHAT IT MEANS

Alternatively, embrace the swear or loquial words by asking students to write down three that they hear on the street

col-or in music/on TV fcol-or homewcol-ork and to try to discover what they mean by ask-ing other English speakers they know

• Have the students put the words on different papers with the definitions

on the back, and ask them to place them in a box when they enter class that day

• Students can take turns picking words out of the box and reading the definitions If the definition is wrong, correct it

• Then, ask the student to try to use the word in a sentence appropri-ately If she cannot, find out where the contributor heard the word and what type of reaction the definer of the word had when she asked him/her about it!

IT CAN BE AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT FOR YOU OR FOR YOUR CLASS WHEN STUDENTS ASK WHAT THOSE FOUR LETTER WORDS MEAN

Now you can turn it around into a fun tivity that engages their English learning skills and helps them practice conversa-tion! The oral power that makes these words so popular can help energize your class and engage your students

ac-6 Ways to Turn Bad Word tions into a Conversation Class

Explana-6 Activities to Use TV to Teach

When Slang is Appropriate

NATIVE SPEAKERS, EVEN THE MOST

EDUCATED AND REFINED,

REGU-LARLY USE SLANG IN CONVERSATION

In fact, we unconsciously hone slang

depending on the cultural situation in

which we are Demonstrating those

sit-uations through TV can be particularly

helpful in your ESL/EFL conversation

course, especially when students are

trying to reach a more fluent

conversa-tional level The following are six

activi-ties that use TV to teach EFL students

when certain slang is not only

accept-able, but appropriate

To be accepted in a social group,

we need to be cool, and, to be cooler,

we incorporate slang modifiers into

conversation Teenagers might use

more slang modifiers than educated

adults, but educated adults do use

them as well, especially in relating to

their teen offspring Cool, awesome,

and all of their slang modifier cousins

are important words to incorporate into

the EFL student’s vocabulary Use any

of a number of teen TV shows and

pick a scene heavy in “cool” and

“un-cool” speak Glee is a perfect choice

Prepare a list of slang words students

will hear and ask them to mark which

words/phrases are “cool” and which

mean “uncool” Discuss the right

an-swers

2 IT’LL BE ALRIGHT

We use slang when we are

com-forting someone confiding in us about

something negative that happened to

her, or something about which she is

scared or worried We break out

cli-chés and colloquial speech as a

famil-iarity cultural tool to help soothe TV is

full of emotionally dramatic situations

between confidantes: nearly any prime

time sitcom or drama has at least one

scene per episode of people in crisis

Pick a moment between friends or

relatives, preferably women as they receive more emotional dialogue time

Use a dialogue between Lily and Robin

in How I Met Your Mother, for ple This activity will work better if it is

exam-a short three minute clip thexam-at you cexam-an show a few times Find the transcript

Blank out the confiding/comfort slang, and ask students to try to fill in the words they hear as you play the clip

Play it twice Then, go over what the phrases were and what they mean in formal English

3 OH MY GOD!

EFL learners need to understand slang to express surprise Conversa-tion with natives will be impossible to comprehend otherwise Pick a TV clip where an actor is revealing a crazy event to a group and they react Nearly any coffeehouse scene from Friends where all six are together works Have students write the surprise expressions they heard on the board, and then brainstorm additional expressions they know or have heard in other places as well Afterwards, have them practice using expressions in conversation Ask each student to tell a partner the cra-ziest thing that happened to him the week before His partner should react with a surprise idiom, like “Wow, that’s crazy!” They should write down the conversation, switch roles, and repeat

4 TELLING STORIES AT THE OFFICE

Generally, maintaining formality at the office is a good rule of thumb If your EFL learners do so all the time, how-ever, they will have no friends, con-fidantes, or allies Every workplace thrives on comic relief periodically throughout the day with people gos-siping or telling stories Those are the moments when people use slang in the workplace Teach your students to identify informal moments and appro-priately react to them by listening for slang Show a TV clip from The Office (almost any) that has two scenes con-trasting formal and informal language, Angela with Dwight and then with Mi-

chael, for example Doctor shows are good for this as well, to contrast how doctors talk to patients and then to col-leagues in the break room Ask stu-dents in a discussion afterwards which slang words indicate an informal break

on a formality meter of one to five, one being informal and five being formal Then, ask them one by one to respond

to the greetings If you ask “What up?” they should reply “Not much” instead of

“I am well” or a more formal response

6 I DIG HER

Romance and sexual language is full of slang and can make an extremely fun conversation class! Keep it light by showing a dialogue clip from a PG TV show, one with teenagers talking about crushes or young love is ideal Charlie explaining relationships to his nephew

in Two and a Half Men would work Students should pick out how slang is used to talk about romance Then, sep-arate the class into two groups and ask the students to form two lines Throw out different slang romance terms, like

“I dig her” and “she’s tripping” The groups should take turns guessing how

to translate the terms to plain English

WE FOCUS MOST OF OUR ING TIME ON PROPER GRAMMAR AND DICTIONARY WORDS, BUT, IN REAL LIFE, KNOWING SLANG AND WHEN TO USE IT WILL AID YOUR EFL STUDENTS

TEACH-Students will dig these exercises!

Tweaking Speaking:

5 Ideas for Presentations

DID YOU KNOW THAT PUBLIC

SPEAK-ING IS THE #1 FEAR IN NORTH

AMERICA? THE SECOND GREATEST

FEAR IS DEATH!

The thought of giving a presentation is

scary enough for native speakers, but

for ESL students, speaking in front of a

group of people in a second language is

even more nerve-wracking Many

stu-dents have a tendency to freeze when

they are “on stage”, which can result

in robotic like recitations of memorized

speeches or an overreliance on notes

that leads to reading aloud rather than

speaking freely One of the things we

as teachers can do to help students

progress as speakers in front of an

au-dience is to design stimulating and fun

presentation topics Hopefully, the more

engaged students are with their topic,

the more they will relax and deliver a

presentation that flows more naturally

TRY THESE 5

PRESENTATION IDEAS

WITH YOUR STUDENTS

1 POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Some students are deeply

fright-ened at the prospect of presenting in

front of their peers and teachers One

of the ways that instructors can ease

students into the role of presenter is to

create a poster session in which each

student has the opportunity to share

ideas with a small audience multiple

times Poster sessions work great for

just about any topic, and they allow

students to create a visual aid that they

can then explain to a rotating audience

Students can hang their posters on the

walls around a room and have visitors

(perhaps students from another class)

mingle and browse When people stop

to see a poster, the creator has an

op-portunity to present the information

they have included on their poster to a

small group in a more relaxed setting

Then, the student has the chance to do

it again when the next visitor stops by

to take a look, allowing the student to

present the same information multiple

times, hopefully getting better and

bet-ter with each “mini-presentation.”

2 IMPROMPTU SITUATIONS

Your students will really enjoy fun and creative, even silly, impromptu speaking tasks, as scary as they may seem at first If a teacher is working

on developing speaking skills with dents, a great daily warm-up is to write down various scenarios or topics, cut them into strips, and have students randomly choose one Topics can be serious or wacky the important thing

stu-is that students are talking! The more practice students have with delivering even short, random, speaking exercis-

es in front of a group, the more fortable they will ultimately be when it comes time to deliver planned, formal presentations

com-Here are some examples:

• Pretend you are an ant, try to vince an anteater not to eat you!

con-• Explain how to ask a girl on a date

• Pretend that you have just seen a dinosaur in New York City, try to get someone to believe you!

3 HAVE STUDENTS CREATE

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL DOCUMENTARIES

If a course is long enough, having dents collaborate on a mini-documen-tary can be an excellent way to unleash their creativity Working in groups or individually, students can design and produce a video that explores their own lives or the lives of someone else, fa-mous or unknown This fun, engaging project can be a long-term one that students work on over a significant pe-riod of time, or it can be designed as

stu-a shorter tstu-ask thstu-at students crestu-ate in stu-a few days If time is really limited, stu-dents can do a presentation on how they would plan and approach making a documentary, rather than actually pro-ducing it

4 5 TIPS ABOUT SOMETHING FAMILIAR

Students get most excited about tent that is relevant to their own lives

con-when giving a presentation can be leviated by ensuring that the topic is something that they are already knowl-edgeable about Creating a presenta-tion assignment in which students offer

al-“5 Tips” to their classmates can be a great way to get students excited about presenting This is a great way to allow students to display their individuality, too Teachers can provide a list of po-tential topics in case students get stuck when trying to decide what to present about, but many students will be eager

to share their expertise about a topic of their own choosing

5 ASSIGN CLASS VISITS

For academic, tory ESL programs, designing an as-signment in which students visit regular university courses can be an exciting and eye-opening opportunity When students are able to witness the aca-demic environment that they will even-tually fully be a part of, they are able

college-prepara-to better understand the importance of the preparation that they need to do to develop the requisite proficiency to un-dertake study at an international institu-tion of higher learning Once students have visited one or two academic class-

es, they can prepare a short tion, answering targeted questions, and share the experience with their class-mates Students will benefit not only from their own class visits, but also from hearing about their classmates’ experi-ences

presenta-PRESENTATIONS ARE INEVITABLE PART OF A SPEAKING CURRICULUM, BUT THEY CAN OFTEN LEAVE STU-DENTS FRAUGHT WITH ANXIETY

By creating fun, guided speaking sentation assignments, students can grow more comfortable with speak-ing in front of an audience Be sure to give students some say in the topic that they chose: the more personal interest

pre-a student hpre-as in whpre-at they will present about, the easier it will be to get excited about doing so!

Using The News: 7 Steps to

Fantastic Student Presentations

I’M GETTING WORRIED ABOUT

SOMETHING I’VE NOTICED IN MY

CLASSROOM

My 16-25 year old students are smart,

enthusiastic and tech-savvy, but very

often I find a real lack of ‘worldliness’

and I think the ESL classroom is a

great place to fill those gaps I’m

talk-ing about knowtalk-ing the names of the

world’s continents and countries, and

of major political, religious and

his-torical figures Just as importantly,

students need to be aware of world

events, familiar with the major trends

and philosophies of our time, and

con-versant in the topic areas which will

dominate this century, and their lives

A recent survey of my high-level class

revealed – to my amazement, I have

to admit – that Twitter had become

their main news source Even more

surprisingly, many could not name a

cable news anchor, or a respected

print journalist, or any more than a

handful of the world’s great

newspa-pers and journals I’m the first to

rec-ognize that the digital age is driving

our students’ media consumption It’s

just that I’m worried they’re missing

out on great journalism, on incisive

commentary and on that in-depth

analysis which really helps us to

un-derstand the world around us

This demands reading skills, of

course It also requires the confidence

to open a newspaper, or click on an

online article from The Economist or

Britain’s excellent Guardian,

unruf-fled by the high-level vocabulary and

structures, and simply willing to give it

a try News-reading depends also on

tackling something younger people

are being trained to avoid: lengthy

ar-ticles which require sustained focus

With practice, these problems fall

away, allowing students to read the

full range of scholarly and journalistic

material, thereby enriching both their

life experience and their language

skills

To meet this problem head-on, I

de-veloped a weekly 90-minute exercise

to train newspaper reading,

summa-rizing and presentation skills dents have found this challenging and informative, and have grown more confident when discussing complex themes and international events Just

Stu-as importantly, this training hStu-as moved barriers which prevent broad-

re-er, deeper reading, and awoken a more open-minded consciousness the gaining of a more global aware-ness helps to mitigate prejudice, and alleviates the students’ fear of the un-known

Beyond initial setup, the teachers’

role is largely supervisory, giving the students plenty of independence The requirement to present to their class-mates gives good reasons for them to carefully prepare Here’s how it can

be done:

TRY THESE 7 STEPS TO FANTASTIC STUDENT PRESENTATIONS USING THE NEWS

1 STRENGTHEN YOUR NEWS BACKGROUND

A useful, initial step is to ensure that your own understanding of world trends is in good shape When a news story breaks, consider whether you could describe why this might have happened, and what effects it could have Check that you know the ba-sics on the major world leaders, the systems of government in the leading nations, and the names and recent activities of the biggest companies

Anticipate questions the students might ask when something big hap-pens

2 GET THE LATEST INTEL

The evening before class, or ideally at the beginning of the school day, browse the news and tease out between four and seven stories Try

to pick events which will be relevant

to your students, which will have a global impact, or which connect with topic areas you’ve recently discussed

Check for interesting stories in these

areas, among others:

• Elections (major campaign speeches, accusations of vote-rigging, predictions, results)

• Government policies (security, environment, society, business, drugs, personal freedom)

• International Affairs (agreements, conflicts, treaties, wars of words, presidential visits)

• Sports Events (major trophies, broken records, scandals, trans-fers, new managers)

• Celebrity news (marriages, ups, awards, troubles, new proj-ects, the Twittersphere)

break-• Obituaries (former leaders and royalty, influential business peo-ple and academics, artists)

• Science (ISS events and space launches, discoveries, controver-sies, publications, awards)

• Extreme weather (hurricanes, phoons, tsunamis, unusual or un-seasonal weather)

ty-• Entertainment (new movie, album and book releases, popular plays, important concerts)

• Technology (new releases, dictions about the future, custom-

pre-er comments, controvpre-ersies)

• Business (mergers/acquisitions, successes, bankruptcies, major appointments, scandals)

• Environment (signs of global warming, geo-engineering pro-posals, debates)

3 WRITE SHORT QUESTIONS

A one-page handout detailing the stories, perhaps accompanied

by hints on good sources, will enable students to start researching immedi-ately Typical questions include:

• “The Chinese government nounced a relaxation of the one-child policy this week Why has this happened? Tell us about the current demographics in China and how this policy might affect Chinese society.”

an-• “India launched a spacecraft to Mars yesterday Give the class a short history of Mars exploration

– are there any particularly

suc-cessful probes? How many have

failed? What does the Indian

mis-sion hope to achieve?”

• “The investment bank J P Morgan

is being fined $2.6 billion for its

role in the Bernie Madoff scandal

Briefly summarize this infamous

Ponzi scheme Why was the bank

found to be at fault? Who will

re-ceive the money?”

4 PAIR UP

AND CHOOSE FAVORITES

Research can be done alone, but I

find that pairs or groups of three

per-mits a more ‘integrated skills’

environ-ment: the students read, write down

notes, discuss the story and listen to

what their partners have found Once

the groups are established, I let the

students choose two stories (a

fa-vorite and a backup) and then use

varying methods to decide who gets

to choose first: age (in descending or

ascending order), name

(alphabeti-cal or reverse), order they arrived at

school, etc

5 INFORMATION FLOW

As the groups research,

encour-age the constant sharing of their

find-ings, and plenty of note-taking

En-sure the students use their own words

when taking notes, rather than

copy-ing verbatim from the news source

Assist in finding good sources, and

avoiding disreputable, biased or

poor-quality reporting: the ability to make

these distinctions is a skill in itself,

and many students need help with

this Once the notes look complete

and useful, the students should

or-ganize their presentation and plan so

that the speaking is divided equally

6 PRESENTATION TIME

Ensure the ‘audience’ is

listen-ing (computers closed, phones away,

pens down) and encourage the

stu-dents to speak clearly and slowly,

avoiding new or overly technical

vo-cabulary Clarify and check words,

names and concepts as needed Ask

a couple of comprehension questions

7 QUESTION TIME

Invite questions at the end of

the presentation, and take time to

dis-cuss the news event with the class:

are there any strong feelings about

it? Try to bring in everyone, inviting opinions and predictions Enthusiastic applause should conclude each pre-sentation

I HOPE THIS PROVES USEFUL IN HELPING STUDENTS TO DISCARD THEIR FEAR OF READING, IN DEVEL-OPING THEIR SUMMARIZING AND PRESENTATION SKILLS, AND IN EXPANDING THEIR HORIZONS

7 Ways to Motivate

your Students to Speak Out

IT IS COMMONPLACE IN THE ESL

CLASSROOM FOR STUDENTS TO BE

MORE RELUCTANT WHEN IT COMES

TO SPEAKING

While they excel in the other skills,

they find it difficult to speak, not

be-cause they do not know how to, but

because they are afraid to do so

This is even more problematic when

it comes to older learners and adults

as there is the common fear of making

a fool of themselves in front of their

peers There are, of course those

more unique learners who will try to

dominate the ESL classroom when it

comes to speaking, however, more

of-ten than not this is not the case and

when it does happen it also limits the

less confident learners What they

need more than instruction is

confi-dence and the motivation to speak out

in class and not be afraid to do so

As ESL teachers it not only our duty

to teach, but it is also our duty to

mo-tivate our learners to speak out and

participate We need to help reduce

their fears and provide a comfortable

environment for them to learn and to

make them feel more at ease

Speak-ing is by far the most important skill

needed when it comes to ESL

learn-ing Speaking is everywhere in real

life and even though the learners may

be able to avoid skills such as

read-ing and writread-ing English in real life, it

is not the case with speaking So how

can we motivate our learners to really

love speaking English? What can we

do to help reduce fear and give them

the confidence they really need?

Those students who have more of a

positive attitude when it comes to

lan-guage learning will be less likely to

suffer from performance and learning

anxiety thus making them participate

more Here are a couple of useful tips

and techniques that you as an ESL

teacher could implement in the

class-room to help those more reluctant to

speak out

GIVE LANGUAGE LEARNERS ENOUGH CONFIDENCE

to the next level and excel We want

to maintain their interest by making exercises more challenging so the learners do not grow complacent and bored However, this should be the opposite for speaking, as students already have less confidence when

it comes down to it If the teacher duces the levels slightly at the begin-ning, the students will feel less pres-sure and therefore they will be more motivated to speak

re-2 SHARE EXPERIENCES

Sometimes ESL course books are way off when it comes to being realistic If the ESL student can real-istically relate to what has been asked and has the knowledge to answer about it, they will have a lot more confi-dence, therefore, it is important for the teacher to tailor the lessons and adapt the course book material Imagine an adult learner discussing their favorite subjects at school – it just does not work Students will be more motivated when they see that the teacher has taken into consideration their needs and interests and have included them somehow in the lesson Teachers are advised to collect information via needs analysis and surveys at the beginning of a session for a number

of reasons, and other than finding out what they already know, finding out their interests and needs to base their lessons on comes in closely at sec-ond in terms of importance

3 TOLERANCE OF L1 USAGE

Imagine going into a language class for the first time where the lan-guage is completely foreign to you such as Japanese or Arabic Imagine

in the first class having to introduce yourself in this language and having

to communicate – impossible? You will naturally feel insecure, ill at ease and unhappy about the situation – the majority of participants would most likely clam up and be more reluctant to speak In lower levels of any language the learners do not have enough of the language to communicate and ex-press their ideas or opinions Although this goes against the main idea of ESL teaching, it does hold some truth – let them speak some of their L1 There have been some teachers who have demanded absolutely no other lan-guage other than in English in the classroom – the result? A very quiet classroom Teachers need to try and

be a little bit more compassionate and tolerant when learners use their L1, especially if they are trying to un-derstand through another student

If we make the learners feel ated or ashamed of using their L1 to help their L2 the chances are they are likely to say nothing However, there are of course some times when learn-ers take advantage of the situation and use their L1 when it is not neces-sary – in this case, it is the task of the teacher to guide the students back to communicating in English

humili-4 DON’T INTERRUPT

Students, when speaking their L2 get distracted easily, they lose their train of thought and not to men-tion their confidence is knocked if the teacher is constantly interrupting them Imagine having every second word corrected for pronunciation, grammar, usage and so on – it would

be more than frustrating Instead let your learners speak freely without in-terruptions and if they make mistakes, note them down and address them in class later When addressing the class with regards to spoken errors, collate the most common and important ones (not every tiny detail needs to be ad-dressed) and give a mini workshop to the entire class and not just one stu-dent If one student makes a mistake

in speaking, the chances are that

oth-ers will make the same mistakes too

At the end of the day if the students

are allowed to continue speaking

without being interrupted, they will not

associate speaking with a negative

experience

5 EQUALITY

It is a common thing for the

teacher to split their class into small

groups for speaking and

communica-tive activities However, teachers

of-ten make the mistake of not defining

the roles and there will always be one

or two students who are more vocal

than the others thus the conversation

or activity will be dominated by just a

few people and as a result the other

students will feel like they do not have

a specific role, they will not feel

moti-vated to participate - and why should

they, when they have not been given

a purpose? Make sure your groups

are equally divided for speaking and

communicative activities so everyone

can participate

6 FOLLOW UP WITH MORE

QUESTIONS

Students will often give a short or

in-adequate answer because they

can-not think of anything to say They feel

under pressure and it is much easier

to give up and appear lazy rather

than admit they cannot do it If your

students give short answers it could

actually be that they have nothing

else to say on the issue or they do

not have the language or confidence

to express themselves for longer

pe-riods of time Students hate it when

teachers prompt them by giving one

or two words at the beginning of the

answer – it makes them feel like they

are children Instead help your

learn-ers by asking them relevant follow-up

questions to what they have already

said

7 TIME FACTOR

We need to take into

consider-ation how long it takes to think of

some-thing in another language, process it

and verbalize it – when learning new

languages, the words will never just

flow out of their mouths Mistakes will

be made and confidence will be low

therefore it is absolutely essential for

teachers to remember that learning

a new language is a developmental

process There are so many different

factors involved when it comes to

ac-quiring a new language and things of course, need to be put into perspec-tive Sadly, the ESL teacher some-times lacks patience Do not just jump

in and finish the sentence for them and do not immediately redirect the question to another student – through this you will just give them more inhi-bitions and insecurities when it comes

to speaking English Time is what they need and tell them this Use the phrases “take your time” or “I’ll give you a moment to think about it.” Such phrases will take the pressure off and they will be able to think more clearly

TO CONCLUDE, SPEAKING IS THE MOST DIFFICULT SKILL TO MASTER AND MANY TEACHERS ARE UNDER FALSE IMPRESSIONS WHEN IT COMES TO SPEAKING IN THE ESL CLASSROOM

They believe that simply by ing and listening to their teacher the students will be able to speak – this could not be further from the truth Speaking takes more practice and it does require a lot more confidence as

observ-it involves real-time comprehension and reaction A lot of time needs to be spent on speaking and when work-ing with lower levels or shier students more patience is needed to give them that little positive push in the right di-rection

How To Energize Your Bored

Students With This Great Game

JEOPARDY IS A PERFECT ESL

CLASS-ROOM ACTIVITY FOR ANY LEVEL,

ANY SIZE OF GROUP, AND ANY

TOPIC AREA

It’s extremely adaptable and can be

used for almost limitless purposes:

• Review of the day’s material, or

before a test

• Check understanding of key

con-cepts and terms

• Diagnostic tests, to help draw up

a syllabus or decide the students’

level

• Quizzing the students’ general

knowledge, either to discover

weak areas, or just for fun

• Build team spirit and an

atmo-sphere of healthy competition

In adapting this much-loved

institu-tion to the ESL classroom, I’ve found

some ways to keep it simple while

retaining its ever-so-useful flexibility

I generally omit the cryptic word-play

aspects, sticking to easily

compre-hended categories I also do without

the tradition of beginning the answer

with ‘What is ’, preferring to vary

be-tween requiring short, factual answers

and longer, explanatory responses

Double Jeopardy comes only at a

pre-determined time (down to the

ex-act minute), chosen at random by the

teacher at the beginning of the game,

and kept as a surprise My students

have absolutely loved it, and I’m sure

this simple but thoroughly enjoyable

game could find a place in virtually

any class

The teamwork aspect is something

I’ve come to emphasize Students are

asked, at the outset, to discover their

teammates’ strongest and weakest

topic areas (be it business, geography,

history, culture, or sport) Answers

must then be reached by consensus,

after a period of quiet, hurried

discus-sion, so that no single student

domi-nates proceedings Between rounds

of the regular game, additional rounds

add to this discursive aspect,

requir-ing students to choose a numerical

answer: they must persuade, reject,

agree and modify opinions in a

fast-paced exchange of language

SETUP PROCEDURE

With classes of up to 8-9 students, I normally organize two teams, while larger classes might have three More teams than this could slow down the game too much, resulting in frustra-tions The teams could be selected in many ways, but here are some favor-ites:

• Assign each student a number (1,

2 or 3) or a letter (A, B or C)

• Give the teams a name, and sign students this way: “Peng?

as-You’re in Ravenclaw Martina?

Please join Gryffindor”, etc Sports teams, tree species, names of mountains, almost anything can

be used

• Select a team captain to pick students one by one to join their team Be aware that the students last to be picked might take this personally, just like we all did in high school!

• Boys versus Girls, provided that it wouldn’t cause unhelpful levels of class division!

• I don’t recommend organizing mixed-nationality ESL classes into national teams, or continent teams Apart from the obvious danger of encouraging nationalis-tic fervor (a China versus Japan setup, for example, could have dire consequences for class har-mony!) I’ve found that the most successful teams include people from a variety of backgrounds

INTRODUCTORY ROUND

Before the game proper begins, sider a first round which encourages teamwork and communication I’ve found success in asking the students

con-to guess a numerical answer, and then awarding $500 to the closest re-sponse This could also be the format

of alternative rounds, played between the main rounds Good questions might include:

• What’s the height of the world’s tallest mountain? (8848m – Mt

Everest)

• How many national neighbors does China have? (14 – don’t for-get Bhutan!)

• How long was the longest ever stay in space? (437 days, Valeri Polyakov from Russia)

• How many countries have English

as their official language? (60)

POSSIBLE SUBJECT AREAS

I’ve simply been writing three topics

on the board, and then $200, $400 and $600 in a column beneath each one I explain that greater rewards mean more challenging questions Here are some of the topic areas I have found most useful to include, based both on my students’ abilities and the gaps I’ve found in their knowl-edge: remember that Jeopardy can inform as well as review

1 VOCABULARY

• Ask for three (or five, or ten) synonyms for a given word Try: nice, beautiful, old, big, small

• Similarly, ask for antonyms, e,g

“Give me five opposites of id’”

‘plac-• Ask for a definition of a learned word, or one which the students might be able to puzzle out, based on other words they know “Remember how a ‘psycho’

recently-is a crazy person? What work

do you think a ‘psychotherapist’ does?”

• Provide a definition and ask which word this relates to, e.g “How do

we call a building where you can borrow books?” or “What word do

we use for the Jewish house of worship?”

• Ask for a set of adjectives to scribe a given object, person or place, given in ascending order

de-of strength (e.g good – awesome – tremendous – unimprovable),

or register (cute – pretty – tive – elegant), or level, basic to advanced (big – huge – gigantic – titanic - monstrous)

attrac-2 GRAMMAR

• Begin a sentence using a

re-cently-learned structure, and ask

the students to complete it, e.g “If

I hadn’t bought the lottery ticket ”

• Provide a sentence and ask which

tense is being used “’Sheila has

been complaining about our noisy

neighbors for six months’ Which

tense am I using, team B?”

• Ask for a sentence using two

modal verbs, perhaps one in the

past and the other in the present

• Ask for an explanation of why a

particular tense is used, e.g “Why

might I use the future perfect?”,

or, “In what situation might

some-one use the past continuous with

‘when’?”

• Ask for a sentence which uses

a particular tense, e.g “I’d like

a question in the future simple,

please,” or, “Let me have a past

perfect continuous passive.”

• Ask for combinations of grammar

points in one newly-composed

sentence, e.g “Let us hear a

sen-tence which includes two

apostro-phes, a modal verb and finishes

with a tag question.”

These questions are often really very

challenging, and require the students

to think about grammar in an unusual

way: explaining and justifying its use,

rather than simply creating accurate

examples or (at a lower level)

com-pleting controlled, gap-fill type

exer-cises Verbalizing these contexts has

genuinely helped my students to see

the rationale for using sophisticated

grammar

3 BUSINESS

• Ask for a brief biography of a

fa-mous business person

• Ask in which country a

multina-tional has its headquarters

• Ask for the meanings of acronyms

(WTO, NAFTA, AIG, SEC)

• Ask for brief descriptions of

im-portant pieces of business-related

legislation

• Ask for marketing tag-lines or

ce-lebrities who endorse a particular

product

• Ask which currencies are used in

some given countries

4 GEOGRAPHY

• Ask about the names of rivers

which flow through given cities

• Ask in which city certain

land-marks might be found

• Ask which languages one might hear on a journey from A to B (e.g

along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa to Gibraltar)

• Ask which states you might drive through to travel from one US city

hap-• Ask how long a certain figure was president, or monarch

• Ask for the names of five eth century US presidents

twenti-• Ask which products a certain country became famous for trad-ing during a given century

• Ask when a certain law was passed, and give bonus money for extra detail

• Ask for a short biography of a torical figure

his-6 CULTURE

• Ask for the name of the tor, or actors, involved in a given movie

direc-• Ask for the author of a famous book, or ask which books a cer-tain author wrote

• Ask the students to name three albums by a famous band

• Ask where a certain museum is located, and what it’s famous for

• Sing a famous TV theme tune and ask which show it’s from

• Show a picture of a celebrity and ask for their most important achievements

7 SCIENCE

• Ask for the names of the planets

of the solar system (in order, haps including some moons)

per-• Ask which chemical element is represented by some given sym-bols (O, He, W, etc)

• Ask who invented the steam gine, the practical electric light bulb, the TV, etc

en-• Ask from which country certain inventions emanated (gunpowder from China, etc)

• Ask students to explain a ral phenomenon: why is the sky blue? Why are there longest and shortest days of the year? Why do

natu-we build expensive particle erators?

accel-THE SKY IS accel-THE LIMIT

I play this version of Jeopardy at least once a week, and it never fails to en-gender team spirit and enthusiasm,

as well as reviewing important rial and plugging some gaps in the students’ general knowledge I hope you’ll give it a try!

mate-Speak mate-Speak mate-Speak: 3 More ties To Motivate Students to Speak

Activi-ONE OF THE GREATEST CHALLENGES

WE FACE AS EFL TEACHERS IS GETTING

OUR STUDENTS TO ACTUALLY USE THE

LANGUAGE IN CLASS

Many students are very shy about using

English, worried about their grammar,

ac-cent, or many other mistakes Because

fluency is so important for daily

commu-nication in any language, we as teachers

need to find some way to get them

talk-ing Reward systems and tying class

at-titude and behaviour scores to

participa-tion certainly helps address this problem,

but forced participation is never as

pro-ductive as when participation voluntary

To this end, it is worth the teacher’s time

to use speaking activities that get the

stu-dents excited and participating for that

reason instead of coercion

Games are one of the best ways to

ac-complish voluntary participation, even

among the lower level and shy students

Adding an element of competition,

espe-cially on an individual basis, encourages

students to try their best and helps them

lose their inhibitions around speaking

English in front of their peers So here are

three tried and tested speaking games

that have proven to be effective and a ton

This activity only really works for

topics in which there are specific answers

for specific questions or specific

respons-es to certain situations Some

prepara-tion is required on the part of the teacher

Create a set of question/situations and

the correct answers/responses For a

class of 30 it’s best to have 15 of each

Print four or five sets of these (more for

advanced classes) and cut them up so

that each question, situation, answer, or

response is on its own small slip of

pa-per Be sure that you keep them in sets

In class, hand out one set of answers

and one set of questions Students then

circulate and try to find the counterpart

to their card When they do, they find a

teacher and read out the question and

re-sponse as a dialogue If they are correct

the teacher marks each of their slips (the

students keep the completed slips) and

hands them two new slips from the next

set of questions and answers Students then go and try to find a match for their new slips Mark the slips to make sure students do not try to use the same slip

to match with several different people

The marks also serve as points

Contin-ue this process for either a set time limit

or until all of the slips have been handed out When the activity is over the student with the most marked slips is the winner

For higher level classes, stipulate that all communication when trying to find their partner must be done in English

2 PYRAMID GAME

This game requires very little aration on the teacher’s part All that is really needed is four increasingly compli-cated dialogue pieces To help with stu-dent clarity, I either draw a pyramid on the board, or have one on a presentation slide Divide it into four levels Each level

prep-is associated with a two or four line piece

of target language that the students have learned in the unit From the bottom to the top they should be easiest to hard-est All students start at the bottom and must work their way up They do this by finding another student on their level and going through the dialogue together If one student can’t complete their part of the dialogue they remain on that level and their opponent advances to the next level If they both successfully complete their half of the dialogue, they play rock, paper, scissors to decide who advances

Once they have completed all four els , they come and find the teacher The teacher can ask them any question from the entire unit, or preceding units for high level classes If the student gets it correct they play rock, paper, scissors against the teacher If the student wins they are

lev-a winner If they lose they go blev-ack to the bottom level Continue the game until you reach a pre-set number of winners

Some versions of this game associate each level with an animal or action The students who are on that level must act like the animal so they can locate one an-other To extend the amount of time this game takes, the loser of each battle can

go down a level Also, if a student playing rock, paper, scissors against the teacher loses, the entire class goes back to level one This game can be very difficult to monitor, as the students are all over the classroom and all talking at once One method to help with this is to have the

that if they see pairs playing rock, paper, scissors without first completing the dia-logue they can tell you and you move the students down a level and require them

to complete a dialogue set in front of you

to advance Also, emphasise that if one person cannot complete the dialogue then the other person advances without any need to go through the rock, paper, scissors process Students seem to ap-preciate the element of luck that rock, pa-per, scissors introduces into this activity

3 SENTENCE ELIMINATION GAME

This game is one that works especially well for low level classes as it does not require using English freely The teacher must prepare a presentation with one sentence on each slide I usually create a conversation based on the topic and us-ing the dialogue the students have most recently learned Ideally, use relatively short sentences If you can get several one or two word responses in there it keeps the students on their toes To make things more interesting you can add sev-eral other picture slides between the sen-tence slides One is simple an ‘out’ slide

If a student gets that slide on their turn they are out One is a slide that does not affect the student that gets it but the one who is next If that student is still in the game, then they are out If they were al-ready out then they are in The final kind

is a random action (make kids jump and say something or whatever) They must

do it within five seconds or they are out Whatever you do, you will need at least one slide per student with a few extras Once in class, have all students stand

up Set an order among them When each student’s turn comes they have the choice of reading one or two words from the sentence on the screen Not more or less Whoever is forced to read the last word of the sentence is out Depending

on what other slides you have included, there is also a sense of randomness whenever you change the slide Keep going until there is only one student still standing They are the winner

I HAVE FOUND THESE GAMES ARE GREAT WAYS TO GET THE STUDENTS SPEAKING FOR THE LAST HALF OF CLASS I usually tell them there will be a game if they are well behaved and partici-pate and that increases the speaking level even before the game comes out

Use It Or Lose It: 8 Awesome

Activities To Encourage Initiative

MANAGING STUDENT

PARTICI-PATION IS A BIG DEAL IN THE ESL

CLASSROOM, AND MAXIMIZING IT

IS NO EASY TASK

Many of our ESL students are even

reluctant to participate They are

per-fectly content with answering yes or

no and just sitting there quietly But

let’s get real, they are not going to

learn like that, at least not to use the

language Using the target language

as much as possible is the key to

learning any language The activities

we build into our lessons fit our

les-son topics and goals The objective of

these activities is for students to learn

to use the language and to interact in

ways that will help them in real life It

is important to include a good variety

of activities to suit the situations your

students will be in outside the

class-room These activities have to focus

on the transactional use of the

lan-guage, where the goal is to make

so-cial connections No matter how hard

your students work, they are not

go-ing to do it on their own Put the ball

in their court and make them sweat a

little Do you want to know how? Take

a look at these great student initiative

activities

PRACTICE

INTERACTIONS

Practicing interactions is an all time

favorite activity when you want your

students to become familiar with real

life social exchanges Interacting with

others is a natural part of social life

and because of that, they are a natural

choice when you want your ESL

stu-dents to practice absolutely anything

from vocabulary to language

func-tions to structures There are different

types of interactive activities you can

use in your lessons Let’s take a look

at a few

1 ROLE PLAYS

Role plays give students

oppor-tunities to communicate within near-to

authentic situations They can take a

considerable amount of class time,

so it is important to plan ahead and

what they need to do In role plays the situations need to be set up by the teacher, but it is the students who need to make all the choices Some examples are:

• Setting up meetings

• Making travel arrangements

• Talking about oneself in a social event

popu-A: Hi, how are you I’m Mike

B: Hi Mike, I’m Maria

In this example they are practicing greetings but the list goes on and on

MAKE USE OF DESCRIPTIONS

Descriptions are activities without any kind of interaction Here students are given instructions to talk about or describe something The objective is for them to go over specific language goals already covered Of course preparation is needed in advance, no matter what the student’s level is If the students are beginners, a model could be provided by the teacher If students are in higher levels, you can just say: “talk to me about this situa-tion/ the picture in your book” Let’s take a look at some great activities

3 DESCRIBING THINGS

The student can describe jects in the classroom or in their office while others guess what those objects are

ob-4 DESCRIBING SEQUENCES

You provide picture sequences

here They can simply talk about the sequences frame by frame to de-scribe the situation or you can cut out the frames and have them put them

in order first and describe them later

5 USING QUESTIONS

Ask them questions to lead them into a description For instance: What do you do in the morning? What did you do in your last vacation? What would you do if you were asked to re-locate?

6 DESCRIBING ARTICLES

Cut out headlines from the per They need to be related to the topic you are working on, of course Give each student a headline and ask them to tell you what they think that article is about

pa-APPLY QUESTIONS

We have already cover this topic in other articles but let’s go over some things again Questions are of utmost importance for students In real life they will also need to ask questions, not only answer them Through ques-tions ESL students understand how auxiliaries work and how to use them There are many different types of ac-tivities you can use to practice ques-tions Let’s take a look at some

7 ASKING ABOUT PICTURES

Show your students a picture and have them ask you or other stu-dents questions about it

8 ASKING CLASSMATES

Point to one of the students and say, “Diego had party last week Ask him about it” Have the other students ask “Diego” about the party

DON’T LET YOUR STUDENTS GET LAZY

Combine different types of activities and provide meaningful contexts for each Remind them that hard work

35 Print And Go Discussion

Starters: The Secret Weapon

QUICK! YOU HAVE NO TIME TO

PREPARE BUT NEED TO FILL A FEW

MINUTES IN CLASS… YOU WANT

YOUR STUDENTS TO GET SOME

SPEAKING PRACTICE IN, BUT YOU

JUST DON’T KNOW WHERE TO

START…

You need something to warm up your

class before you dig deep in today’s

lesson plans What do you do? With

these print and go discussion starters

for your ESL students, none of these

situations will stress you out You will

always be ready to get your students

talking, no preparation required Just

print and go

FAMILY AND FRIENDS

1 SIBLINGS

Do you have brothers and

sis-ters? Describe one of them Are you

an only child? What did it feel like

hav-ing no brothers and sisters? Do you

think it’s better to have a large family

or a small one? Why? Tell your

part-ner about your ideal future family

2 PARENTS

What does it take to be a good

mother or father? What do you

appre-ciate most about your parents? What

do you wish was different about your

parents? What is one way you want to

be like them when you have children?

3 FAMILY TIME

Some families have a regular

time to be together such as family

game night What do you like to do

with your family? How do you spend

time together? What is something you

would like to do with your family but

have not done up until this point?

4 BEST FRIENDS

Who is your best friend? How

did you meet? Why is that person

im-portant in your life?

5 ANIMALS

Do you own a pet? Tell your partner about him or her What type of pet do you want to own in the future?

Why? What type of pet do you never want to own? Why not?

DAY IN AND DAY OUT

6 A REASON TO LEARN

Why are you studying English?

What brought you to this program?

What do you want to do with English when you have finished school?

7 DAILY HABITS

What are some things you do every day? What if you couldn’t do them? Tell your partner how your life would be different

8 MORNING AND NIGHT

Are you a morning person or

a night person? How do you know?

What happens if you have to be somewhere or do something during the time you prefer to sleep? Tell your partner about it

9 MY FAVORITE MEAL

What do you like to eat? Why?

Tell your partner about your perfect meal What does it include? Who has prepared it? Who will eat it with you?

1 0 I HAVE TO HAVE

Think of something you use every day Describe it to your partner, but do not tell him what it is

After you have described it, have your partner guess what the object is

HOBBIES AND FREE TIME

11 A DAY OFF

What is your favorite thing

to do on a Saturday or a day off from school or work? Describe your favor-

ite past time How does someone get started with that hobby?

1 2 CAMPING

Have you ever been ing? What was it like? If you have nev-

camp-er been camping, what do you think

it is like? Do you want to go? Why or why not? What would you be sure to bring with you on a camping trip?

1 3 YOU’RE A PRO

What do you know about that others might not? What can you tell others about that topic? What do they need to know?

1 4 EXPERT INSTRUCTION

Everyone is an expert at something Tell your partner how to do something that you are an expert at

1 6 SEE ME AFTER CLASS

What do you want to do when you are finished with your schooling? How will learning English help you in those plans?

1 9 MAKING FRIENDS

Do you like to meet new

people? Why or why not? How do you

get to know someone new? Are you

introvert or an extrovert? How do you

know?

2 0 DRESSING UP

What kinds of clothes do

you like to wear? Why? Tell your

part-ner about your perfect outfit and what

you like to do when wearing it

GETTING EMOTIONAL

2 1 I WAS FRIGHTENED

WHEN

Think about a time when you were

scared Tell your partner about that

experience How does that

experi-ence influexperi-ence who you are today?

2 2 I WAS ANGRY WHEN

Think about a time when

you were angry Tell your partner

about that experience How does that

experience influence who you are

to-day?

2 3 I WAS JEALOUS

WHEN

Think about a time when you were

jealous Tell your partner about that

experience How does that

experi-ence influexperi-ence who you are today?

2 4 I WAS EXCITED

WHEN

Think about a time when you were

cited Tell your partner about that

ex-perience How does that experience

influence who you are today?

2 5 I WAS SAD WHEN

Think about a time when

you were sad Tell your partner about

that experience How does that

expe-rience influence who you are today?

REMEMBER THAT

2 6 BEAUTIFUL PLACES

What is the most beautiful

place you have ever been? Tell your

partner about it Do you think you will

ever go back there?

2 7 INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

Who is the person who has had the most influence on you in your life? Tell your partner about that person How have they helped make you the person you are today?

2 8 THROUGH A CHILD’S

EYES

What do you remember about ing a child? What is one of your best memories? Share it with your partner

be-What is one of your worst memories?

Share it with your partner

2 9 GET MOVING

Have you ever had to move from one home to another? What was the experience like? Share everything you remember about it with your part-ner

3 0 GETTING AWAY

Have you ever taken a cation? Where did you go? What did you do? Do you think you will ever go back there again? Why or why not?

va-IMAGINE THAT

Note these discussion starters are for students who have studied condition-als

3 1 A DESERTED ISLAND

If you were trapped on a deserted island all alone, what is the first thing you would do? What would you want to have with you? What would you miss most?

3 2 A BETTER WORLD

If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? How would your change make the world a better place?

3 3 DINNER GUESTS

If you could have dinner with any person in the world, living or dead, who would it be? Why would you choose that person? Describe to your partner what your dinner conver-sation would be like

3 4 HINDSIGHT IS…

They say that hindsight is

20/20 meaning you always know what

is right or best after an event has pened What is one thing you wish you had done differently in your past? How does hindsight make the expe-rience easier to understand? How would you behave differently now that you know what you know?

hap-3 5 REMEMBER WHEN

Imagine you stumble into

a time machine and travel 100 years into the future The machine breaks, and you cannot return to your own time What would you do? What do you think the world would be like? What would you miss most about your own time?

YOU DID IT YOU FILLED THE UNPLANNED TIME

You got your students talking You got them ready for today’s lesson Now

on to something new tomorrow! After all, you still have plenty of things to talk about

The Ideal ESL Role Play

In 5 Easy Steps

PICTURE THIS

You just spent 40 minutes

present-ing and practicpresent-ing a bunch of new

vo-cabulary to your students They seem

to have understood and can answer

questions using these new words But,

how can you know for certain? At this

stage it would be important for them

to prove they are comfortable with this

new material, and the best way to do

this is with some type of activity This

is where role plays come in handy

Why, you might ask? Take a look

• They encourage thinking and

cre-ativity

• They allow students to develop

and practice new language and

behavioral skills

• They can create the motivation

and involvement necessary for

real learning to occur

OK, so we now know why they are

useful, but as we all know, anything

worth doing is worth doing well We

need a good procedure for setting up

a role-play, after all we can’t just throw

a role card at our students and say:

“OK, you are Role Card A, and you

are Role Card B Go!” A well set up

role play makes students feel safe and

facilitates the process Take a look at

these awesome steps that can help

you set up your role play

MAKE SURE YOU

Most activities in the ESL

class-room require some type of warm up

To prepare students, you can use

il-lustrations, flashcards, photos,

pic-tures and even graphs and charts in

the case of business students The

im-ages you are using should be related

to the situation in the role play Your

students describe what they see in

the pictures and then have a brief

dis-cussion It is a good idea to review or

teach useful vocabulary, grammar and

phrases at this point, so that your

stu-dents have all the necessary tools to

engage in an amazing fluency based activity without trouble

2 ENACTMENT 1

So, now it’s time for your dents to act out the role play To help them, you need to create the scene and assign the roles to each of the students Give them a few minutes to gather their thoughts and plan ahead

stu-If the group is able to handle it, you can even add some kind of ‘conflict’ or

‘complication’ Since students should focus more on fluency at this moment,

it is advisable for teachers to take notes on mistakes made by students

These mistakes will be addressed

lat-er, during the feedback session but not during the role play Students should not be interrupted for corrections dur-ing the enactment

It is important to mention that role plays can include more than two stu-dents If it is a group course, you can even involve the whole class Those types of role plays are actually much more fun but remember to keep it or-ganized There are different ways in which a class can participate together

You can either create different roles for each student in the same situation, or while two students are interacting, the teacher can instruct others to whisper information to them or even to stop the role play and ask another student to take over one of the roles

3 FEEDBACK 1

Keep in mind that any kind of feedback should always be positive and constructive In order to encour-age self-correction you can write in-correct phrases on the board and they can reconsider their choices

4 ENACTMENT 2

After reviewing and analyzing what they have done during enact-ment 1, a second enactment is often a great choice That way students have

a second chance to officially change the choices they made in the begin-ning Also, since they will feel more

comfortable, you can have your dents switch roles or if there were more than two roles, reassign them among the students It is possible to make other changes that might suit their needs as well

stu-5 FEEDBACK 2 AND FOLLOW UP

Once again, students analyze their performance and the teacher adds comments and necessary correc-tions Now is a good time for follow up work Homework or some type of fol-low up activity is ideal here since it is a great way to reinforce any loose ends detected during enactments These activities can focus on specific areas

or if nothing specific needs to be dressed, it can be a general closing exercise

ad-ROLE PLAYS ARE A GREAT WAY TO GET YOUR STUDENTS TALKING

By using the language they will be in better shape to retain what they are learning Keep in mind we all learn by doing Use role plays in your class-room and prepare your students to go out into the real world

THE MOST REWARDING PART

OF LANGUAGE LEARNING, FOR

MANY STUDENTS, COMES AT THAT

MOMENT OF SPONTANEOUS,

UNRE-HEARSED PRODUCTION

They’ve learned the vocabulary and

the structures, and can pass the

tests, but now they find themselves

vociferously arguing a point, or taking

a key role in a dynamic discussion,

surprised at their own confidence and

fluency The boost is tremendous: it

could literally change the course of

the student’s education, and lead to

exciting possibilities

Role-play allows a class to debate a

sensitive or controversial point

with-out the bruising emotional experience

of expressing a minority opinion or

putting their reputation on the line

Rather than dealing with genuine and

weighty real-world issues, we can use

imagination and a convincing

‘man-made’ environment to emulate reality,

like in a movie or video game Such

environments are infinitely flexible,

permitting customization and nuance

which respond to our students’

be-liefs, provoke debate in an

unthreat-ening format, and invite everyone to

participate equally

There are no limits to how a role-play

might operate The students might be

defending a policy, or trying to

per-suade their group to accept change It

could be a life or death decision Or it

could just be the advocating of a new

technology they think would sell well

Perhaps they’re representing a badly

treated jungle tribe, or a maligned

CEO, reeling from the latest scandal

They could take the role of a

histori-cal figure, or a contemporary leader,

or someone not yet born Creating

these environments has been one of

the most enjoyable and productive

aspects of my ESL career

Inventing your own role-plays is

time-consuming, and demands care and

at-tention, but once created, you’ll have

a superb platform for genuine and

passionate student interaction

Stu-dents who might be shy of airing their

own views, and therefore not likely to produce as much as we’d like, find themselves in a safe place, and with

a role they can embody by actually maximizing their production Learn-ers who are used to a single point of view, or who are trained in black-and-white thinking, can find themselves challenged to embody the opposite view, and to engage with the nuances

of those oh-so-important gray areas

The role-play itself becomes a able, shared experience which aids integration and unity within the class

valu-I really can’t recommend this enough:

try the steps below, and create your own role-play

CONSIDER YOUR CLASS

What interests them? What gets them talking? Listen for issues which come up repeatedly, or cause de-bate or disagreement Tap into the students’ hobbies and backgrounds, the subjects they’re planning to study

at college, or topics raised in movies they’ve recently seen

SELECT A SKILLS AREA

Review what they already know and focus on one or two skills which either need review, or have yet to flourish

Consider recent language points – tenses, modals, conditionals, plurals, comparisons, measure expressions, modifiers, etc – and assess which of these might both benefit from review and might usefully be practiced in a role-play environment Here are some possibilities, with ‘meta-questions’ to help you choose a particular narrative

or role-play context:

TRY THESE 4 METHODS FOR CREATING SUPER ENGAGING

ROLE-PLAYS

1 GROUP DECISION MAKING

• Which policy should we choose?

• Which person should we hire?

• Which of these choices is the most efficient / risky / popular / profitable?

• How can we make sure everyone benefits from this policy?

• What regulations are needed to keep this community safe?

• Which version of this idea is the best / most appropriate / least dangerous?

Grammar points might include:

• Comparatives: “This solution to this crisis is better than the UN idea, because ”

• Language for agreement and agreement: “How can you sup-port the new fishing law, when ”Modifiers and adjectives: “This pro-posal is outstanding, but this one is absolutely terrible.”

• Agreement and disagreement:

“That may look like a good tion, but I think ”

solu-• Requesting and persuading: “This proposal is not well balanced, but would you consider ”

• Prioritizing and balancing: “That’s significant, but it is far more im-portant that we address

Grammar points might include:

How To Create Your Own Plays: 4 Quick Tips