Personalised Dictogloss to Practise Tenses

One way of diagnosing students' knowledge of tenses, or of getting them to focus on the difference between two tenses, is by doing a dictogloss. On Tuesday with my CAE class, we were revising the use of different tenses, and I began by reading out the following short text:

Last Sunday I took part in the Race for Life. 

This was the first time I had ever participated in a race, except for the odd fun run when I was at school.

I took up running in March and I have been training since then - two or three times a week. 

There were over 5,000 women doing the run, of all ages. It wasn't easy to run at first because some of the women were walking.

In the end I finished in 412th position! I'm now thinking of trying to increase the distance on my training runs. Maybe next year I'll do a 10K!

 

I read it twice. The students then had to write down what they remembered from the text. They then worked in pairs to try to reconstruct the text, paying close attention to the verb tenses used. They could ask me questions about any details they couldn't remember, but I would reply with one word answers. I then wrote all the verbs that appeared in the story on the board and the students could check that they had included everything. There didn't seem to be any problems with the use of tenses in this case, but you can always focus on some of the verbs and ask the students why they used each particular tense.

Today I have a teenage group who were looking at the main differences between the present simple and continuous last lesson. I am going to do a dictogloss with the following text:

I'm feeling nervous and excited. It's very noisy because there are so many people. I am with more than five thousand other people and we are all standing in a small space, like a outdoor corridor. I hear a man through the speakers. He is telling us how long we have before we start. The atmosphere is amazing. Everybody is getting ready to go. The man is reading some names and now five thousand people are singing "Happy Birthday" to those people! The man is now counting ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, go! Now there are lots of pink balloons in the air and we are all running. 

 

I will pre-teach some of the vocabulary so that the weaker students don't panic when I start to read. The first time they listen will be to find out where the speaker is. This is not explicit - they will have to imagine they are in this situation and guess where they are. Can you guess? The first example should help you!

The second time they can take notes. They will then work in pairs or threes to reconstruct the text. Again, I will write the verbs in their infinitive form on the board. If they find it difficult, I will put the verbs in the correct order. They will have to think carefully about whether each verb should be in present simple or continuous and why.

I am then going to ask them to write their own short text. They should imagine they are somewhere interesting (at a Cup Final, lost in a forest, in the A&E ward etc) and write how they are feeling and what they can see, hear etc. Hopefully, this will get them using both tenses appropriately.

Both texts are true and about an event I took part in last weekend. I think that giving a personalised touch to the materials you use can provoke more interest and discussion - the students may wish to know more, and it is more motivating for students to find out something about their teacher as a person instead of an impersonal text from a book. It may even motivate them to write their own!

THE BEST ACTIVITY IN THE WORLD... EVER!!!

Ok, before you all start accusing me of outrageous lies, this ISN'T the best activity in the world. Those of you who were in Britain in the nineties (and noughties) will recognise the title as a take on the countless pop music albums that appeared, named The Best ... Album in the World...Ever!

Some fantastic songs from some of the best "indie" artists of the 90s

The activity I'm going to share with you is certainly not the best in the world, and it's probably not very original either, but it is one of the easiest activities to set up as well as being suitable for a wide range of levels and age groups.

The main focus can be changed to suit level and needs - in this case (and the most obvious) I have used it to practise superlative adjectives. All you need are lots of small pieces of paper (Post It size is good), enough for each student to have one for each question. You can prepare the questions in advance or make them up as you go along.

Here is the procedure, as I carried it out with a group of ten to twelve year olds who had recently been looking at superlatives. It is carried out in "lockstep", but if you prefer you could write the questions on the board or on a handout and have everybody work at their own pace.

1) Hand out the pieces of paper.

2) Tell the students that you are going to ask some questions, and to write down their answer to each question on a separate piece of paper.

3) Have somewhere the students can place each paper as they complete it. Alternatively, have students number each paper, so that later it is easy to tell which question it answers.

4) Ask each question. The students should write down their OWN PERSONAL answer.

Sample questions:

Who is the best footballer?
What's the most interesting school subject?
Who is the most beautiful woman?
Who is the best singer?
What's the funniest TV programme?
Who is the fastest motorcyclist/F1 driver?
What's the most difficult school subject?
What's the nicest food?
What's the best book?
What are the coolest clothes?
What's the most dangerous animal?

There are plenty of alternative questions but these are some the ones I posed because we had been looking at these particular adjectives. With higher level groups you could use a wider variety of adjectives.

5) Everybody should now have answered all the questions. Collect in the anonymous answers. Younger students often like to fold up their papers, like in a secret ballot.

6) Announce each "nominee" and elicit the category. For example, "Maths, Science, English, History. The category is ..." (most difficult subject) and then announce the "winner". (The winner is the answer repeated the most times. If all the answers are different, or there is a draw you could have another vote.) My class wanted to take it in turns to come out to the front and read out the nominees. I would then say, in a grand voice, Oscars style "And the winner is..."

And that's it! My kids really enjoyed this activity and even asked to play it again the following day with different questions. With older students and adults you could use it as a basis for discussion, a way of practising expressing agreement and disagreement, language of persuasion etc.

Pimp My Ride: an activity to practise comparatives and superlatives

I actually got the original Pimp My Ride lesson idea from a colleague named Will Hebbron during summer school many moons ago. In this lesson the students were given a basic black and white picture of a car which they then had to "pimp" or "tunear" as it is known in Spain. They had to change the entire look of the car by adding spoilers, wings, tinting windows, adding a cool design to the paintwork and so on. They also had to list the characteristics of their car including any special features it may have had. This was done as a project type lesson, the main aim being communication in L1 and collaboration in groups.

This afternoon my class of thirteen-year-olds are going to be revising comparative and superlative adjective forms. After the usual course book exercises, I wanted to do something a bit more fun with them. What could we do to practise comparatives and superlatives in a way that they would enjoy? Well after actually seeing an episode of the real "Pimp My Ride" tv show on MTV last night, I remembered the activity in question. However, we don't have time to waste colouring in large pictures of cars, so I decided to slightly alter the activity and have them design their own car, in pairs. In each pair, one will be responsible for the design of the car and the other will work on the characteristics. Here are screenshots of the worksheets I have just created:

Fairly self explanatory I think. They have a sample advert to look at first, and I will make sure they understand horse power and engine size (not that I really understand it myself!).

When everyone has finished, which may have to be in the following lesson, we will stick all the worksheets on the wall around the classroom. The students will look at all the pictures and information and decide:
Which car is the fastest?
Which car is the most expensive?
Which car is the biggest?
Which car is the most beautiful?
Which car is the most fashionable?
Which car is ther most sporty?
and so on.