Learning English with Yahoo

Here is a good place to practice your listening and reading skills is to listen to the Yahoo People of the Web site which has a short video accompanied by an article. If you were teaching you could do;

1 Some warm up exercise based on the subject. E.g. Ask your teen students how they could become a millionaire at their age.

2 Then show the video and ask the students to write down as many details as possible.

3 They then work in pairs to share their notes and then write up an short summary of the piece.

4 Finally, they compare their version to the article that goes with the video.

This could be used as a warm up exercise for a debate or discursive essay writing lesson.

Unphotographable

"This is a picture I did not take of a woman in fitness workout wear; running shoes, shorts and an active top; standing by herself in a deserted aisle of a flourescent-lit supermarket, her arms crossed in front of her chest, tears smearing her cheeks while she unwaveringly stared at the store's selection of baby diapers."

copyright 2004-2007 Michael David Murphy

I came across the Unphotographable site a few weeks ago and thought that it would be a great way to teach my students story telling skills. Michael David Murphy gives a short description of something that he has seen recently. A word picture of beautiful intensity. In addition he has recorded these in the form of a podcast (click here) which are wonderful.

Lesson Plan

This is aimed at upper intermediate and advanced ESL/EFL/ESOL students.

1 Give the students a copy of the story above and ask them to read it. deal with any difficulties in vocabulary etc.

2 In pairs students discuss what the background to the situation might be.

3 Elicit answers from the class.

4 Divide the class into two groups. Ask one of the groups tp leave the classroom for two minutes.

5 Tell the other group that they are going to hear a description similar to the one they have just read.

6 Play one part of Micheal David Murphy's podcast (twice if necessary) and ask the students to listen carefully and write down as much as they can.

7 This griup then leaves the classroom and compares their notes.

8 Ask the other group outside to come back in and get them to listen to another short section.

9 When both groups have had enough time to discuss their answers everyone comes back into the class and gets into pairs (one from each group) and discuss what the other person heard.

10 Play both sections again and ask the students to comment on how accurate their partner's description was. If necessary give them a printout of the descriptions.

Follow up exercises could include;

A Their own descriptions which could be writtean and recorded on their cell/mobile phones.
B Finding a picture on the internet which could go with the text.

Writing assignments using Flickr

Here are some ideas for getting our students to write using photographs from Flickr.

1 Choose a picture of a everyday scene and act them to write a story that explains or continues the situation.

Photo by Musicmuse_Ca

2 Choose a picture of a dramatic situation and ask them to write a newspaper article based on it.

Photo by Arjun

3 Choose a picture of a person and ask them to imagine that they are that person and that they're going to write a letter to introduce themselves.Photo by Rod Monkey

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

This got the Bookseller Award for the strangest book title of the year. According to the BBC article it is;

"For everyone who has ever seen an abandoned supermarket trolley and wondered how it got there, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America is an indispensable guide."

So this got me thinking about how we could turn this strange story into a teaching idea for advanced EFL/ESL learners.

Lesson plan

1 Write these book titles on the board (by the way they are all real);

-The Joy of Chickens

-American Bottom Archaeology

-Versailles: The View From Sweden

-Re-using Old Graves

-Highlights in the History of Concrete

-Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers

titles on the board

2 Now deal with any vocabulary problems and then ask students to discuss with each other what they might be about. If you have access to the internet you could ask them to find out about two of the titles and then form a group afterwards to discuss the books.

3 Now ask them to think of a country, a household object and and a period in history

eg France, spoon, 1950's

4 Students then create their own weird and wonderful titles

eg A Definitive History of French Provincial Spoons 1949 -1959.

5 Students then pretend to be the author and explain to their partner the contents of the book and why they wrote it. Encourage them to be as silly as possible.

6 Finally if you have time get them to write the blurb. See here for a lesson plan I did for this last year.

Teaching with music videos

I saw this video and a wonderful teaching idea came to me so I thought I'd blog about it before I forget it.

Lesson plan

1 Explain to students that they are going to see a music video - Walk into the Sun by Dirty Vegas. In the video they'll see the people shown labelled e.g brave, angry etc, their job is to copy down all the labels

2 Play the video. Students then get in pairs and check their answers.




3 Write down the list of labels on the board any deal with any unknown words.

4 Now explain that the students are going to see the video again and they have to choose two/three labels and explain in 50 words why the person was given them.

5 Play the video a second time and ask them to write down their answers. Give no more than 15 minutes.

6 Students the get into groups and read out their suggestions

7 For homework the students write a story based on the person they talked about.

A Flickr biography

DSC00725
Originally uploaded by rayunk2004.

Here is an idea that occurred to me as I was surfing through Flickr a few days ago. At one point I came across this photostream which had a host of fascination images from someone's life. However, there were few details about who took the pictures. The vast majority of the images had just a code number from the camera and the Flickr profile gave no clues either.

This got me thinking. Given the richness of the images and the lack of information this would make for a wonderful writing exercise. The basic idea is that students look at the Flickr page and create a biography of the person who took them.

Ideas for EFL/ESL writing

Here are some ideas I used today to help students with their writing skills.

Lesson Plan 1

1 Write the first line of a story (this is a common exam question) on the board.

E.g. "I opened the envelope and inside I saw a plane ticket with my name on it."

2 Write down a second sentence.
E.g "If that wasn't strange enough, there was also $1000 in cash."

3 Ask the class to shout a third sentence and write it on the board.

4 Ask for a couple more sentences and write them on the board.

5 Put students in pairs or groups of three. Get them to write the sentence in their notebooks and explain to them that they'll take turns in adding their own sentences. To ensure that they don't waste too much time, tell them that each person has only 30 (or more) seconds to write their sentences. To make sure they have an idea of the time, count to 30 aloud slowly.

6 Students then swap the book and the other person adds their sentence. If they haven't finished the sentence his/her partner must finish it before adding, their own.

7 Do this four or five times.

8 Ask the student to make a copy of the story in their own notebooks

9 For homework, students correct what has already been written and then finish the story.


Lesson Plan 2

This idea is a way of getting students to practice using relative clauses in a way that doesn't bore them (not an easy feat, believe me).

1 Write a short sentence on the board;

E.g. "Alan is a librarian"

2 Ask students in what ways we can make the sentence longer.

E.g "Alan is a good librarian"
"Alan is not a good librarian."
"Alan is sometimes not a good librarian." etc.

3 If the students don't mention relative clauses the write up an example of your own.

E.g. "Alan, who is married with two wonderful kids, is sometimes not a very good librarian at Kingston college, which is one of the best in the country."

4 Now write a new sentence on the board;

E.g. " Ingrid is the boss."

5 Tell students that they have five minutes to write the longest sentence they can. The winner of the competition has no homework for that lesson.

I did both these activities in my intermediate lesson today and they were a great success with a very lively and demanding bunch of teenagers.

EFL/ESL writing

Here is another great story writing lesson (see here) from the British Council website. It's perfect for teaching boys at the intermediate level since it's all about aliens and stuff like that. I'm off in a few minutes to try it out for myself.

(http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories-cold-planet.htm)

Essay writing resources for EFL/ESL

One thing I really believe in is that we must also look outside the EFL/ESL world for our teaching ideas. Well, there are lots of great ones out there for teaching foreign languages I think that we often underestimate our students ability to think and reason in a second language. That's why I am always on the look out for stuff that English speaking teachers use in their L1 classes. so, here is a link to www.teachit.co.uk which is full of great teaching ideas which I've used over the years for post FCE (b2 level) students.

This particular link has a lot of ways to teach discursive, persuasive and argumentative writing. I find that the advice that most EFL books is sorely lacking and amounts to little more that copy this model essay.

EFL/ESL story telling

While looking for stuff to do with Arestidis, one of my students, I came across this wonderful site at the British Council web page. The site allows students to create their own fairy tale, horror story or science fiction opus from a list of colourful alternatives.Basically, it is an electronic version of a drama exercise I once saw years ago while teaching summer school in England. I'm going to try it today. I'll let you know how the lesson went.

V for Vendetta lesson plan for ESL/EFL

Nearly every day somebody comes to the blog looking for a V For Vendetta lesson plan. I have talked about how much I liked the film but until now I haven't had the chance to write about a lesson that could be used to teach EFL/ESL stuff.

Many of you might question why I keep on insisting on using things such as films, songs and video games to teach. Isn't learning a serious enterprise ? I grew with comics, movies and video games and I believe that many of the things that make me the person I am today have their roots in these media. For example my political education cames as much from comics such as 2000AD as anything I learnt in school. They taught me more about the horrors of racism, class consciousness and the dangers of authoritarianism than anything than was then available in the British educational curriculum of the 70's and 80's.

Lesson plan (for advanced level students)

1 Tell students that they are going to see a scene from a film which depicts an important event from British history (Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605). They have to take notes on what they see and hear in order to do some research of their own.

2 Ask students to see the first scene form the movie (preferably on DVD with the English subtitles) and take notes.

3 Students get together in pairs or groups and discuss their notes. Show the scene again.

4 If students have access (I wish, sigh) at the school they then go off for ten minutes and find out as much as they can about the event. Otherwise ask them to do this for homework.

5 Students the report back to the class/teacher on what they learnt.

6 Ask students to talk about the coups, rebellions, revolts or revolutions that have happened in their country in the last hundred years (you may have to work on the vocabulary before starting the discussion).

7 Ask them to make a timeline.

8 Ask students to discuss whether violent social change is ever justified.

Next lesson

9 Show a short scene from the later part of the film (for example chapter 18 to 19) and ask the how the world shown in the film is different/similiar to the one we know today.

10Students discuss their answers in groups.

11 For homework ask students to watch the film at home.

What is its basic message?
What evidence does it give to support it?
Do you agree? Why/why not?

12 Students discuss their answers in pairs then in groups then as a class.

Essay question

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. "

Discuss.