It is useful for students tot identify the phonic sounds of the alphabet so that they can speak English accurately. Depending on where they are from, our non-native speakers have problems with certain letters. Look at the follownig box and notice the problems that students from different countries might have with certain phonetic sounds. Nationality Phonetic Sound Example Sound Produced French /Ø/ Theatre Seeatre Japanese /l/ Trolley Trorrey Greek /ƒ/ Shopping Sopping German /w/ Whatever...

read more

Print out the lyrics to your chosen song and cut each line into seperate strips. Get the students into pairs/groups and give them a set of the lyrics (jumbled up). Get the students to listen to the song and put the lyrics in the correct order.

read more

Play a game of ‘Yesterday’. Ask a student what they did yesterday: ‘Yesterday, I went to work’. Then the teacher repeats this and also adds a sentence: ‘Yesterday I went to work and I met Brad Pitt’. Then prompt the next student to repeat the two sentences and add a sentence of their own (e.g.‘Yesterday I went to work and I met Brad Pitt and we talked about Angelina Jolie’, etc.). And so on… Ask...

read more

Put sentences on the board and make it a competition to see who can turn them into the longest sentences. For lower level learners, don’t give too many sentences and make sure that they are easy to understand. Here are some example sentences: Mark studied at Leeds University. My friend is a writer. Yuki works in a school. Bill Clinton used to be president. Kingdom of Heaven is the new film by Ridley Scott. Many...

read more

Draw two pictures. One of a man with a speech bubble saying ‘ciao io sono Robert’ and another of a man looking at a sign in Chinese looking worried (write: ‘Henry’ next to the man). Elicit ‘Robert can speak Italian’ and ‘Henry can’t speak/read Chinese’. Give students a few minutes to think of different jobs. Brainstorm on the board. Say to students, ‘When you want a new job, what do you do first?’ (Elicit ‘go...

read more

Words to pre-teach: metal, wood, plastic, valuable, light, model train, bottle, burp, fingers, toes, millimetres, metres. A fun way to pre-teach vocabulary is to play the ‘fly swatter game’. First, divide the board into two halves and write the vocabulary in big words on the board (spaced out). Divide the class into two teams and choose one person from each team to come to the front. Give them a fly squatter each (or they could...

read more

Choose a student leader for the class or individual groups. Ask the leader to think of a famous person. Group members have to ask yes/no questions to discover information about the chosen celebrity. When a group member receives a 'yes' to their question, they can ask one follow up question. If the answer to a group member's question is 'no', the next student gets to ask a question. Students can only guess who it is...

read more

The objective is to make word lists by using the last letter of the previous word. Divide the class into thirds. Divide the blackboard/whiteboard into three with a line. Students all stand up and form lines opposite their side of the board. Provide a first word at the top of the board for all teams. The first student in each team writes a word to follow the first word: The word must start with a...

read more

Put students into groups of four or five. One of the students must sit with their back to the board, with the other students facing the board. The teacher can draw or put a flashcard on the board (or write a word). The students have to describe what is on the card to help the student (with their back to the board) to guess what it is.

read more

The objective is intonation practice and language of deduction. Put students in pairs and give them a scene to act out. Ask students to have a conversation using an invented language. The pair should act out a scene using the correct intonation as if they were really talking to one another. The rest of the class watch and guess what the situation is. After, you could write out the real dialogue in English for one...

read more