7 Superb Speaking Activities That'll Get Your ESL Students Chatting. “All right everyone, pair up!”
This sentence can be met in many ways. Blank stares. Two class troublemakers reaching for one another’s hands. The shy kid in the class trying very hard to become invisible. It’s no secret, getting students to work well in pairs can be hard, and it doesn’t stop with just having them pair up. ESL students doing pair activities can often try to skive off doing the activity at hand. As far as the teacher is concerned, it can be tough making sure that the students who are actually working are speaking correctly. Well, it’s time for all those problems to be ancient history. Techniques for ESL Pair Work The first mistake many teachers make when assigning pair work is letting students choose their pairs. While that may be fun for those in the class who are already friends, your job as the teacher is to assess each student’s strengths and weaknesses and put them with someone they can work with well. “We’re going to go about this activity in pairs!
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. No-prep warm up activities. ESL warm-up activities are essential in the English classroom. Students may be tired or have other things on their minds and diving straight into a textbook or grammar explanation can be quite jarring. With a good warmer you can put your students into English mode; attentive, interested and ready to participate. A warmer can also serve to review language from a previous lesson or prime the class for a new topic. Teaching Online I have created a page collecting activities suitable for teaching online many of which work well as warmers and fillers. Idebate.org.
Great Mystery Skype Questions to Get You Started. My students have grown into being quite good Mystery Skypers but it has taken them most of the year and many practice calls.
One thing they have really worked on has been the act of asking great questions so we thought it would be nice to offer up some great sample questions for when you get started with Mystery Skype. However, the best way to grow is to not follow a list but instead discuss throughout the year what the best questions are for your class. For the USA Are you in North America? Are you in the United States? Depending on the answer to that, you can go in different directions: If east of Mississippi: Are you one of the original 13 colonies?
If west of the Mississippi: Are you in the West/Southwest region? How to Set Up and Run a Mystery Skype Session. Tongue Twisters. Here is an alphabetical selection for classroom fun.
They also practice pronunciation as students try to get their tongues around the sounds. Europeiska språkdagen > Language Fun > Tongue twisters. From ‘Around the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran’ to ‘red leather, yellow leather’, one aspect of mastering a language is being able to master its tongue twisters.
They are always decidedly odd sentences: Combien de sous sont ces saucissons-ci? Ces saucissons-ci sont six sous (French): “How much are these sausages here? Running Dictation. Choose a short passage or dialogue and make several copies.
Put the copies up around the walls of the classroom (or even the school building). Put the students in pairs or small groups. The aim is for one of the students in each pair to walk (or run!) To read the passage on the wall. They remember some of the passage and walk (or run!) The winning pair is the team that finishes first - although you need to check for mistakes. Story telling grid. Retired occupations - old accountants never die. Ten ways talking in English baffles Swedes. A Viking - sometimes pronounced 'Wiking', in Sweden.
Photo: Shutterstock While Swedes were recently ranked the world's best non-native English speakers, there are a few common - and often charming - mistakes The Local's team has spotted while chatting to them in their second language. 1. Sheep shoes We absolutely adore how ‘ch’ often becomes ‘sh’ in Swedish, but it sometimes baffles us. Sheep and children. 2. Those Swedish Vikings may have braved rough waters and conquered distant lands – but one thing their descendants haven't all managed to do is distinguish between the English letters ‘v’ and ‘w’.
We cannot independently verify the authenticity of the Vikings in this photo. 3. The difference between letters 'y' and 'j' may not be as apparent to the native Swedish speaker as it is for those of us for whom English is our mother tongue. Yoolery, also known as jewelery. Our Strange Lingo. Engelska citat on Pinterest. Aussie English for the Beginner – Flash interactive. Interactive KulturChock: Swedish idioms in literal translation. ( REMARK: This Historical Document has been revised to fulfil the new Swedish legislation "PUL-lagen" ) "Call Sweden: 37 cents/minute" kulturCHOCK!
Needs you!! Aficionados of the Swedish language like to collect idioms and amuse each other by translating them literally. Here is your chance to contribute to an ever-growing collection. Some of the submissions that are not really idioms, or that just do not make any sense can be found on a separate list. This linguistic resource is brought to you by:kulturCHOCK! Editor's Choice: ten idioms that crack us up (Tio ordspråk som spricker upp oss) submit your own! Show where the cupboard shall stand! Get To Know You Questions & Conversation Starters. RhymeZone rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. Merriam-Webster Online.