Happy Birthday To You; Squashed Tomatoes and Stew!

Today I had a last minute change of plan because when I arrived at work I discovered that I had to take my class together with another class. I had to think of something quick to do, as we couldn't do our normal course book based lesson that I had planned. I thought, having taken in a soft football, that I would do something on the World Cup, teaching them the names of some of the countries involved. However, after getting them all seated (fifteen children in a class that normally holds maximum twelve) one of my students told us all that today was a special day and we had to guess why. We quickly discovered it was his 9th birthday.

Great! It was easy enough to find something on birthdays. I had a quick look in one of my resource books and found an activity that would work well with a class this size.

I started off by eliciting the months of the year, and then the seasons, asking which months were in each season. This was revision, but I really had little idea of what the other class had covered before the lesson. They all knew the months, if some of them had a few pronunciation problems. We then looked at how to say dates, which is normally a source of confusion for Spanish kids, since in Spanish cardinal numbers are used. We went through ordinal numbers and there didn't seem to be any serious problems.

We played a quick game of "Guess my birthday" with "hot and cold" clues to practise dates.

I then wrote on the board:

Somebody whose birthday is in the same month as mine.

                                             in a month that begins with J.

This was to prepare the children for the following activity, where these kinds of sentences would appear on cards with presents. 

I then told them all that they would each have three presents that they would have to give to other students.

I demonstrated by taking a card (I had very briefly cut up the cards whilst practising dates earlier- multi-tasking!) and reading it aloud. It said "Somebody whose birthday is in winter". I went round the class asking several individuals when there birthday was until I found somebody whose birthday was in January. I then repeated with a different card. After that, I asked the class what question they had to ask the other students (to see if they had been paying attention and to make sure they all knew what they had to ask).

I gave out three cards to each student. And then came the mingle! Fifteen eight to ten year olds actually successfully managed to complete the task (mostly!) in English. After this task, we discussed who had received the most presents and why (because their birthday was in a month that began with J and was in summer etc).

We then all sang Happy Birthday to Jorge, asked him what (real) presents he had got and the did a quick pairwork activity talking about the best present you would like to get.

The activity I did was from Speaking Activities (Junior English Timesavers) by Cheryl Pelteret and Viv Lambert, Scholastic. However, you could make your own similar cards using language that your learners are capable of understanding. You could make the clues more simple or more difficult.

This is yet another example of how improvisation can work in almost any situation, even when you don't know the learners. As long as you do something that interests and engages the students (and hopefully teaches or practises some language) the lesson should work.

Note: I actually learnt some silly versions of the Spanish version of Happy Birthday, Cumpleaños Feliz in this lesson. Does anybody remember any English versions? There was one that went: Happy Birthday to you, squashed tomatoes and stew... but I can't remember the rest. These could be fun examples of authentic (if nonsense!) English rhymes and I can guarantee the kids will love them!

Wider Reading - updated

The title of this post has just teletransported me back into my A Level English Lit class (circa 1993). At the time the expression really just meant reading something you chose rather than the books from the syllabus, on which you would later write an essay. Surely I should have forgotten this by now, but I remember writing about Thackeray's Vanity Fair, something about the similarities and differences between Amelia and Becky. In fact I must read the novel again as it is a brilliant piece of work.

I'm not going to talk about literary works here as this blog is supposed to be about teaching and I am also no literary expert. What I would like to do is to ask for recommendations for ELT wider reading. I am not a big non-fiction reader and I am also more of a bedtime reader (ELT books hardly making ideal bedtime reading) but I would like to compile a list of ESSENTIAL ELT works that myself and others could pick and choose from. The list could also be suitable for schools looking to update their library. Any kind of book is welcome as long as you think it would be of interest to ELT professionals, whether they are teachers, materials writers, teacher trainers etc.

If I get enough responses I would then like to categorize the entries, e.g. methodology; resource; teacher training and development; young learners; course books; exams etc.

So what would you put on the list?

At the moment I have listed your suggestions in two categories, although if I get any more suggestions I will update the list.


Language and Linguistics
The English Verb by Michael LewisPractical English Usage by Michael Swan
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter
Language Myths edited by Bauer and Trudghill
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage
The Teacher’s Grammar of English by Ron Cowan
Learner English by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith
Language, Context and Text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective by M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan
The Language Web by Jean Aitchison
The Fight For English by David Crystal

Teaching Methodologies

Teaching Tenses by Rosemary Aitkin
Teaching Grammar Creatively by Puchta, Gerngross and Thornbury
Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener
Young Learners by Sarah Phillips
Implementing the Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis
A Framework for Task-Based Learning by Jane Willis
Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching by Richards & Rodgers
How to Teach Speaking by Scott Thornbury
Language Assessment – Principles and Classroom Practices by H. Douglas Brown
Principles of Language Learning and Teaching by H. Douglas Brown
The Techniques of Language Teaching by Lionel Billows
Teaching Collocation edited by Michael Lewis


I don't think I've come across many of these books before but there are certainly some interesting titles here that I would like to have a look at. I would recommend anything by David Crystal, who is a genius! If you have any favourite resource or course books I will create another section. There are so many thousands of ELT books out there, mostly available on Amazon, and it really can be difficult to choose a book to buy, so I really appreciate your help in compiling this list, which is by teachers for teachers.


Happy Reading!

Time flies when you're blogging

I have been so busy reading and commenting on posts on different ELT sites I have recently joined that I seem to have abandoned my own blog! And the only reason I was admitted to Bloggers in ELT, Freelance is because I have a blog, so I guess not updating my own blog due to spending too much time there kind of defeats the object.

So, I've been wandering around the Beltfree site, trying to figure out if I have to upload my blog entries, or copy and paste them, or write different ones just for that site... but I haven't been very successful. I've spent at least 45 minutes sending friend requests and getting sidetracked by some rather interesting comments (a bit of a soap opera melodrama between two feuding members!) and haven't actually found out what you are supposed to do on the site. Maybe I should just look for a "I'm new and I'm lost" section, which is the kind of place I usually avoid.

I've also been busy on ELTCommunity, which is run by a well-known publisher (don't want to do any free advertsing!) where I've been drawn into the addictive points system they have. This is surely the downfall of heavily competitive people like myself. I only joined last week but I'm trying my best to get from "newbie" to "novice", by answering questions in the forums and taking part in polls (unfortunately, I discovered after about 15 polls that this doesn't give you points!).

While I think all these sites and social networks are a really good idea for teachers and writers to share ideas and have interesting discussions, I'm not entirely convinced that I am not wasting a lot of my free time on them. And not just my free-time, since I've really got into this whole world of PLNs, Twitter and Google Reader lists, I think I have actually spent less time planning my lessons! One day I was so engrossed that suddenly it was lunchtime and I hadn't even decided what I was going to do that afternoon in class. Luckily, this isn't a major disaster for me, being able to pull tricks out of my hat and improvise when necessary. That lesson even worked out really well because I took the children on an imaginary trip to the past using a  visualisation that required very little preparation.

I  would just like to ask anyone who reads this blog, how do you find the time to keep up a blog (and some people even have more than one!), read other blogs, tweet, belong to other social networks, plan lessons and actually teach all at the same time?? Is it possible to do all this and have a private life?

By the way, if anybody can help me on the beltfree question I'd be grateful as I don't want to sound stupid on the site itself! Thanks.

Jack and the Beanstalk Trial - a roleplay for teens and adults

A few years ago I was teaching a group of upper-intermediate/advanced teenagers and the topic of the week was crime. It was in a UK summer school and we had done all the usual vocabulary activities and language work, and I wanted to do something different that would get them speaking. They were a lively group and I knew that some kind of drama activity would go down well with the majority. Mentioning this to a colleague who was teaching a similar class, she introduced me to something she had found surfing the web called The Jack and the Beanstalk Mock Trial. Now, this is actually a real mock trial, I assume designed for Law students, but it can be easily adapted to suit an EFL class. It is available in its entirety here.

Your teenage students will probably not have had any experience of a trial, but they should have seen plenty of Hollywood films that they can base the activity on. If not, you can always show them a few scenes of a trial from a film or TV show, so they get an idea of what happens.

The first thing I do before introducing the roleplay idea is to do some vocabulary work related to the courtroom: judge, jury, defense, prosecution, witness, sentence, be charged with etc. 

Then, I ask them to tell the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. They can do this in pairs or small groups before giving feedback to the whole class, just to make sure that they all know the story. Then tell them that Jack is in trouble. He has been charged with two crimes: the first being the MURDER of the giant and the second being BREAKING AND ENTERING the giant's house and subsequent THEFT of  a goose and her golden egg.

Now give out a copy of the Charge Sheet to all the students, which they should read. Say that the class is going to act out Jack's trial.  Tell the class that you are going to split them into two small groups representing the Prosecution and the Defense, a Judge and Jury (depending on the number of students), and four Witnesses. You will need a minimum of eight students to do this activity (1 Prosecutor, 1 Defense Lawyer, 1 Judge, Jack, 4 Witnesses). If there are several students forming the defense and prosecution, they can either choose a spokesperson to speak during the trial, or take turns to speak. It is a good idea for these students to be the stronger and more outgoing ones as they will have to try and persuade the judge that they are right.

If the group has a very high level of English you can give them the Legislation and Legal notes but if not you could quickly explain and discuss what actually constitutes the crimes Jack has been accused of.

Now give out the roles and the following materials:

The Prosecution needs Martha's Statement and Detective Morse's Statement
The Defense needs Jack's Statement and Nora Jones (Jack's mother) 's Statement

Each group needs to read the statements they have been given and prepare their case. The witnesses (and Jack) should prepare their own statements, trying to remember as much of the information as possible in order to answer questions in their own words. They should try to think of any questions that they may be asked and make up the answers.

The judge is the most problematic at this stage because he/she doesn't really have anything to prepare but you can either ask the judge to help the Prosecution, or you could be the judge yourself, especially if you have a shortage of students. The judge is an important character, however, since he/she will have to instruct the Prosecution, Defense and witnesses to speak.

During this preparation period, you should go round monitoring and helping with any problems (language or ideas) students may have.

The trial itself is probably best held another day, as otherwise it will be rushed. This also gives students time to look over and learn some of the information they will be required to present, making a more organised and fluent trial. When you are ready to begin the trial, make sure everyone is comfortable and clear about what they should say and when, although it doesn't really matter if things go a bit astray, you can always put them back on track yourself if necessary. (If they are not camera shy, you could even record the trial and show it to them another day. Taking photos is another option. They could later make a poster as a kind of photo story, detailing what happened during the trial.)

Then, let them get on with it, only interrupting if absolutely necessary. If you have a very shy student that doesn't want to take part, you can give him/her the role of taking the minutes, which means that he/she has to listen carefully and can later type up what was said (or give to you to type up!).

At the end of the trial, the judge and jury must decide whether Jack is innocent or guilty and what punishment he should have, if any. The judge should base this on what he/she had heard during the trial and which side has been more persuasive, with the better arguments. There are some worksheets for the judge and jury to complete during the trial on pages 9-11 here (pdf).

You can then make a big drama out of sending Jack to jail if he is found guilty, which they all love!

I have only used this activity once and I had completely forgotten about until yesterday, when I was thinking about what kind of "crime" materials I had for my FCE teenage group tomorrow. So I am going to try it out with them. I think they will enjoy it because they are a lively noisy bunch and are quite fed up of doing FCE-type tasks. I will report how it went down on Thursday. Wish me luck!

Baby Talk

One of my closest friends has just given birth to her first child. His name is Andrés and is two days old and he is beautiful. However, I have a dilemma - and no, it is not whether to have one of my own. The dilemma is the following: do I speak to the child in English or in Spanish? Of course, my natural instinct is to speak Spanish: I speak to his parents in Spanish, none of our group of friends speak English very well and although completely fluent in Spanish, I'm not the best at switiching between the two languages. Every time I'm with an English-speaker and a Spanish-speaker at the same time, I always end up speaking the wrong language to each one.

So why the dilemma?  Well, as soon as my friend discovered she was pregnant, she promptly informed me that I would have to speak to the child in English so that he would have a headstart and somehow acquire English just by listening to me speak English babyspeak. Of course, my friend has no knowledge of language acquisition and just assumes that if I talk to the boy in English for half an hour very week (I only see them on weekends) he will suddenly be able to speak the language when he is older. Everyone has it got into their heads that children are brilliant natural language learners (which is why they all put their kids into English lessons when they are four years old) but there is evidence that a child who starts at four and one that starts at eleven will have similar chances of learning a language well. My friend's son will evidently not acquire English from me speaking to him for a few minutes a week.

What is your opinion on the subject of language acquisition? Is it worth me talking to the baby in English? Will he get any benefit from this? Or will he just think that his "Auntie" Michelle speaks funny? Should I just do it to keep my friend happy?

I'd love to know your thoughts on the matter.

Ten blogs

It's my turn to recommend ten blogs that I think are worth taking the time to follow. I was given this priviledge by Richard, at http://richardteachesenglish.blogspot.com and I'm finding it hard to come up with ten that haven't already been nominated! When I started my blog, I didn't realise how many other ELT blogs were out there, and have only really started to discover many of them recently. This means that I follow some of the most typical blogs on everyone's reading lists, but I am going to try to provide some different ones here. Of course, my favourites are going on the list, even if they have been listed 20 times already! By the way, the blogs are not listed in any particular order.

1) Carol Read's ABC of Teaching Children http://carolread.wordpress.com/
I have unwittingly become a kind of young learners specialist over the years and Carol has some wonderful ideas about teaching children. She also gives extensive replies to comments you make, which means she is all for helping and sharing with others.Well worth following if you teach kids.

2) Tefltastic with Alex Case http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/
 Alex was the first person to comment on my blog and I regularly read his. He also accepts guest posts by newbies like me, helping novices to get our faces out there! He also provides lots of interesting ideas to use in the classroom.

3) Early EFL by Leahn Stanhope http://earlyefl.blogspot.com/
I have worked with Leahn in the UK and I can say that she is a funny, intelligent and dedicated teacher who has now entered the blogosphere to share her thoughts and ideas with the rest of us. This blog concentrates on Primary Ed and CLIL.

4) Training English Language Teachers Blog by Vanessa Reilly http://vanessareillytelt.wordpress.com/
Vanessa is a teacher trainer and writes course books and resource books for very young learners. Her blog has some lovely ideas to use with children under six, as well as older children.

5) TEFL Clips by Jamie Keddie and blog http://www.jamiekeddie.com ,  http://www.teflclips.com/
Fantastic resource site and blog (I've included them in the same entry because they're both worth a look and are both by Jamie) with plenty of original and interesting lesson plans and ideas, especially using video and images.

6)  Mantras of a Mad Man http://mistermikelcc.blogspot.com/
A blog by a dedicated tutor of English, Mister Mike provides ideas to use in the classroom as well as how to use different web 2.0 applications and funny anecdotes. All in all, a good read!

7) Nik's Learning Technology Blog http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/
I am a complete tech novice but I am trying to learn, and following Nik's blog is a great way to do so. I attended a workshop of Nik's at a virtual conference and discovered his blog. He presents different web tools in a very simple way and provides tutorials, which really do the trick.

8) Strictly4myteacherz -A tefl blog with Swag!  http://strictly4myteacherz.wordpress.com/
I have actually only just discovered this blog even though it has been around for ages. It has lesson plans and teaching ideas, and amusing general posts. Put it on your reading list!

I am starting to flag now... I think I might have to include all the blogs that I am trying to avoid - they are brilliant but they have already been on so many lists, I really wanted to exclude them!

9) English Raven http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com
Jason Renshaw's blog was one of the first I started reading. I really don't think I need to say anything about this blog, it's one of those "must-reads".

10) Sean Banville's Blog http://seanbanville.com/
I'm including Sean because apart from his blog he has several resource websites and I think he must be a kind of robot in disguise to manage all these things at once! He is totally dedicated to sharing and helping teachers and students alike with his lesson plans and online activities.

So, these are my ten. It has actually been much harder than I thought it would be, but I never imagined I would get to do one of these lists, I am honoured to take part. I wish I did know of more up and coming blogs rather than renominating these oh-so-famous ones because surely that's the idea of the initiative, but I don't. I would love to find out about more blogs, though, so if you have any recommendations or friends who have set up ELT blogs, please add them in the comments box.

Fun at the Fair!

Living in Andalucía, one of the most important weeks of the year (after Holy Week) is approaching: the feria, or fair. In Jerez, where I live, the fair is considered to be far better than the more famous Feria de Abril in Seville and the local ladies spend hundreds on their new frilly flamenco dresses and impossibly high heels, enormous earrings and the like, and the kids are all completely over-excited because they get to go on rollercoasters and dodgems and the ferris wheel.

So the days during the run up to the fair it is impossible to get any work out of the younger students and your typical course book lesson goes out the window. Here are a few activities I do with my youngest learners, to take advantage of their excitement and enthusiasm.

First, I ask them to supply words about the fair. This is usually in L1 since they don't have the vocabulary to do so in English. I write up their suggestions on the board. I then show them some pictures of different fairground attractions (big wheel, carousel, dodgems, roller coaster, ghost train, haunted house) as well as candy floss, horses (in Jerez it is The Horse Fair), girls dressed up in flamenco dresses dancing "sevillanas". I then drill the vocabulary with them, doing different picture activities such as: point and say, what's the missing picture?, run and touch, the "corner" game.

We then walk in a line around the classroom chanting  or singing this little song I made up (to the tune of The Farmer's in the Den):

We're going to the fair

We're going to the fair

 We're going to have lots of fun

 We're going to the fair

I then ask the children what they are going to go on?  "I'm going to go on the big wheel", "I'm going to dance sevillanas" etc.

We then go on to mime the different activities, which they love. We all go on the ghost train together, me at the front and the children all hanging on behind, me going "woooo woooo"; we drive round in dodgems, all bumping into each other; we go on the big wheel, crouching down and standing up tall and looking at all the imaginary tiny people down below; we go into the haunted house, all in darkness, and get frightened by the monsters (me - roaring); we dance sevillanas; we ride horses; and best of all, we go on the rollercoaster, slowly creeping up to the top only to rush down the other side screaming!

After all this excitement, comes a calm down period, where we sit and discuss our favourite parts of the fair. I sometimes get them to draw pictures and label the rides, or tell me the names, if they can not yet read.

With children that have started reading in English, you can make a wordsearch or crossword with some of the vocabulary.

Activities on the topic of Emergencies and Road Safety for Very YLs

New post on my resources page: http://sothisisenglishresources.blogspot.com/2010/04/activities-on-topic-of-emergencies-and.html

Praise

I recently watched an interview with the wonderful Carol Read on the subject of praise. Carol is in my opinion THE authority on young (primary age) learners and so when I saw her name on the interviewees list, I clicked straight on the video link (http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-09/interview-carol-read-spain).

Carol focuses on the use of praise with young learners, explaining about how to use praise in order to give encouragement and to build up children's self esteem as well as to help with classroom management and deal with behavioural problems, without going overboard and using too much praise, making it empty and meaningless. I don't want to go into too much detail, as you can see the video for yourselves.

However, this interview got me thinking about the use of praise with teenagers and adults. When we think about praise, we automatically think of children, since they seem to need a certain amount of praise and they are constantly demanding it, by asking the teacher if their work is OK, if they can have a tick and so on. But what about older students? You will rarely find a sixteen-year-old directly asking for praise, but there may be indirect signs which we as teachers must learn to interpret. For example, a teenager who answers questions when no-one else does may secretly be hoping for a "good" from the teacher. I find my FCE students looking for a "well done" when I give them back their writing tasks, and see their disappointment when they see a "good effort" which they interpret to be a mediocre result.  Most teenagers have many insecurities and lack self-esteem and confidence in  their abilities and therefore maybe need some sort of praise more than any other age group. Nevertheless, we must be very careful not to make the praise too obvious or selective since this can have the opposite effect. Peer pressure may make it uncool to be a model student, so I think private praise could be the solution. On written work, think carefully about the comments you write as using the right words can be an excellent method of encouragment. However, as Carol mentions in her interview, it can be much more effective to praise the different elements of a piece of work such as the planning and ideas, as well as the linguistic aspects. Give praise for good paragraphing, or the use of different vocabulary and structures. Notice the work that has gone into the piece; with practise you will be able to quickly tell when an essay has been rushed and when some thought has gone into it at the planning stage. As for other types of work, if you do not want to openly praise your students, write them little notes at the end of the lesson mentioning anything they did especially well. They will probably want to compare them with their classmates but if everyone gets one, there should be no problem with this.

Now, what about adults? I feel that we neglect adults because we think that they don't need praise, but surely this isn't true. I am convinced, when I think about it, that adults need just as much praise as younger learners, they just don't show it. Think of an elementary group of adults. These learners don't have enough English to express themselves well; they get stuck, they get frustrated when they can't understand or make themselves understood, and all we do is tell them not to worry, we try to encourage and motivate them to keep trying and we may even put words in their mouths for them, but how often do we say "excellent" or "you are doing really well!"? And as we go up through the levels, we give less and less praise. With an advanced class, we already have high expectations (maybe too high) and assume that these learners know how well they are doing and don't need to be told so.

Adults are actually the biggest drop outs of evening classes. We must understand that they have many other commitments like work and families and they could be making sacrifices to come to their English lessons. When these people feel that they are not progressing enough, or that they are simply not good language learners, they drop out. It is then, more important than ever to show learners how they are doing and give them support and praise when necessary.

Topic of the month: Natural Disasters

Most course books at Intermediate or FCE level have a chapter or unit devoted to the topic of natural diasters or extreme weather, and I think it can be much more sensible to study these topics when an event of this kind has recently occurred. Most adults watch the news or read a newspaper, and even many children also see images of what is happening in the world, and to me it seems far more  natural to discuss these things as they take place, rather than when you get to that chapter in the book, as it makes the topic much more interesting and personal. After the recent eruption in Iceland, (and of course Haiti) most learners (of any age) will have seen some images on TV and will want to discuss them. It is far better to look at a topic about which everyone has something to contribute, than the one that appears in your couse book on the next page just because you are following the book from front to back cover.

So this week (in Europe, at least) could be a good time to talk about volcanoes, possibly leading on to other natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis.This kind of topic is interesting for all age groups from small children to the elderly, and there are plenty of resources on the internet that you can use. Here are some I have found:

Great for CLIL but suitable for any class are these presentations on how volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis are caused. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/science/2009/09/090930_volcanoes_guide.shtml

Lots of links here for Primary learners: http://www.teachervision.fen.com/natural-disasters/teacher-resources/48771.html

Some wonderful ideas on the British Council site: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/language-assistant/essential-uk/natural-disasters

Nice listening activities by Adrian Tennant on Onestopenglish: http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=100283

If you have access to the internet in your school (for students) you could create a webquest where learners have to find out the answers to a set of questions. If, like for me, such resources are unavailable, you could print out texts about different disasters which you could then hide around the school or classroom making a kind of treasure hunt out of the activity. Each pair or group should get only one question at a time (it is best to stagger the groups by giving them a different question each) to which they have to find the answer, like a reading race. You could even bring in audio so that it is not just practising reading, having some of the answers in a recorded text. You could use the one provided by Adrian Tennant, or download a podcast from a new website. In fact, you could also include puzzles like anagrams of vocabulary or crosswords that they have to complete as part of the quest. All this may take quite a bit of planning, but it should certainly make for a fun and productive lesson.

The topic can be a good one for practising modal verbs with elementary students, having them design posters or leaflets giving advice and recommendations for what to do in an emergency situation like an earthquake or severe flooding.

Please feel free to send in any good ideas that have worked well with your students on this topic, especially with YLs.

Psychiatrists: a good game for practising questions

This is a well known game in Spain, but I had never thought of using it in class until my teenage students asked if they could play it. It is a typical group guessing game where some of the players know the rules but others are unaware and have to guess what is going on.

You will need to have the class sitting in a circle (or semi circle if you lack space). Some of the students must go out of the room while you explain how to play the game. These students are the "psychiatrists". These students must never have played the game before (it is better if they are stronger students). The others are patients. Tell the patients that they have an illness. This is usually that they think they are the person sitting to their right (but if you want to play the game on other occasions, change this every time e.g, the person sitting opposite, to the left, two to the right etc).

Then, invite the psychiatrists back into the room and tell them that they must diagnose their patients by asking questions. The patients must answer as if they were the person to their right, e.g to the question: Are you wearing jeans? If the person to your right is wearing jeans, say yes. Students must be careful not to look at this person as this will give the game away. If the patient does not know the answer to a question, they must shout "psychiatrist!" and everbody changes places. If a question is too revealing, any player can shout "psychiatrist" at which point everbody, again, changes seats.

The game continues until the psychiatrists correctly diagnose the illness.

This game can be played at any level; at higher levels make sure the students ask more complex questions using different tenses, the passive etc.

Play it again, Teacher!

After so many years in Spain, I may have forgotten what it is like to be in the presence of a group of people and not understand a single word of what they are saying. Having my mum over for a few days, I have realised how unpleasant it can be for someone to be in the company of people who speak a different language. That feeling of overwhelming frustration and annoyance and even paranoia you get when everyone seems to be laughing and you have no idea of what's going on. Trying to put myself in my mum's shoes, I got a faint recollection of how I used to feel for the first few months I spent here, with a group of Spanish friends. Despite actually speaking the language quite well even in those days, whenever I found myself sitting at a table with more than two or three other people I suddenly became unable to understand what anyone was talking about. On a one to one basis I was fine, but put me in a group and they could have been speaking Mongolian for all I knew. All this got me thinking about some of my students and their inability to understand listening extracts or videos, even those that are below their productive level.

As teachers, we have usually forgotten about our own experiences of language learning, and blocked out those unpleasant memories of being in a classroom with another 30 students all trying to make out what is being said on a tiny taperecorder placed unstrategically on the teacher's desk at the front of the classroom. Maybe you were lucky and had a language laboratory with individual headphones, but it was rare to do any listening comprehension at all, at least in my French class, and when we did it was a recording of Mrs Rowlands speaking in her lovely Potteries accent.

Teaching methodologies have changed a lot over the past couple of decades and we now force plenty of natural sounding English conversations and interviews down the ears of our students, whether it is still on a cassette player, a CD or if you are "modern" like me (that's what my students say when I get the equipment out) an MP3 player with portable speakers. But however good the equipment and acoustics of the room, unless our students are well prepared for what they are going to listen to, the exercise will be useless. Put yourself in the situation my mum was in last week, sitting on a bar terrace having a drink with me and seven Spaniards, not knowing the language. Even if she did speak Spanish, what would the chances be of her understanding what we were all talking about? She doesn't know any of the people or places mentioned, and has little knowledge of what we do every weekend or what kinds of things we discuss. Now put yourself in the place of your students. They know they are going to listen to a recording, but unless they are given some clues as to what it is going to be about, they are unlikely to understand a thing and the whole activity will be pointless.

So, what can we do to make listening comprehension tasks more productive? Firstly, it is vital to provide some information about the context. How many people will speak? Who are they and what relationship do they have with each other? Where are they? What are they going to talk about? You can do this by explaining the situation, you can provide a photo of the interlocutors (which often appears in the coursebook) or you could get your students to ask you questions which they think will help them with the listening task. Secondly, make sure it is clear what students have to do. What information do they have to listen for? Are there any questions they have to answer? Where are the questions? Which exercise do they have to complete? This may all seem far too obvious, but I can guarantee that all of you have had at some point at least one student trying to complete exercise three (fill in the gaps) when they are supposed to be doing exercise two (comprehension check). They should be allowed plenty of time to read the questions before they listen so that they don't get lost because there is a word they don't understand in the questions. Take the time to explain any confusing words or questions, and if you feel it is necessary, preteach some of the vocabulary that occurs in the recording. All of this preparation should at least make your learners feel more relaxed when they listen.

One of the most important qualities a teacher needs and especially with listening exercises is patience. Listening may be something which comes naturally in your own language, but in a second language a great deal of concentration is required. Don't try to make a challenge out of listening and don't allow your learners to feel that they have failed if they have not been able to understand. You may find that certain learners or even whole classes have a listening ability below their general English level. If this is the case, you will need to adapt the materials (it is easier to adapt the questions rather than the recording) and make sure your students get plenty of practice. Build up the level little by little, start with easy tasks and gradually make them more difficult or complex. Be sympathetic and understanding, and if the pressure is off, your learners will become better listeners.

The Benefits of Exams for Young Learners

Here's the link to an article about exams for young learners I have written as a guest piece on Alex Case's blog:
http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/teaching/tefl/young-learner-exams/

Adapting traditional games for whole-class use

Most students enjoy playing games from time to time, even adults, who after a long day's work need a bit of relaxation. As I mostly teach young learners, I will be focussing on using games with them, but you could use the same principles with more mature students. One of the important things to decide before you play a game is whether the objective is just to play and give students a break, or if you want to practise a specific set of vocabulary or grammar point. With children I usually involve some vocabulary practice, but it can be a good idea to allow older students to play as a break in the lesson or as a reward for working well. There are many traditional board and card games that you may have at home which you can use in class.


Card games
You will need a set of cards with pictures on. There are some nice sets available for children that have pictures of animals that are split into two or three cards. This makes it into a kind of jigsaw puzzle. With a group of young children for example aged 5, deal the cards until everyone has the same number, if there are any left over, keep them for yourself to demonstrate and start off the game. Place one of the cards on the floor an ask the children if they have a card which matches it. If so they place it in the right position. When you have placed all the extra cards, say the name of an animal e.g lion and the children that have the lion come and place their card on the floor. The winner is the child who gets rid of all their cards first. Afterwards, you could play a pelmanism game where all the cards are spread out face down on the floor and the children take it in turns to turn over a card. When they find a match, they form the animal and keep it.

This can be done with almost any set of cards or even dominoes. Games traditionally played in small groups can become whole class activities.

Board games
Games such as Monopoly, Ludo, Scrabble, Snakes and Ladders or Cluedo can all be played with the whole class by dividing the students into teams. I have a large floor board game which is called The game of the goose. It is a traditional board game in Spain. The one I have is based on a national children's TV programme. It has giant counters and a giant dice, making it ideal for the whole class to play. What I usually do is show the children a flashcard every time they throw the dice, and they can only move forward if they say the word correctly. If they are a bit older (7-8) I ask them questions, sometimes based on pictures or objects e.g What is the boy doing? How many pencils are there? etc. You could use this strategy with Snakes and Ladders or Ludo. Monopoly and Cluedo are more complex games and require lots of language, which you will need to prepare students with before playing. You can grade the language provided depending on the level. Scrabble can be played according to the rules, or you could just use the letters. A very popular game in my school is Combiletter, which can also be played with Scrabble letters, where the letters are placed face down in the middle of the table (or floor) and are turned over one by one. When a student sees a word can be formed with those letters, he/she says "Stop!" and forms the word, which the team keeps.

Other children's games such as "Guess Who" can be very useful when teaching parts of the body or "has got". Playing such games makes the lesson much more fun and motivating for the children, although beware of using them too much! Young Learners will get used to playing games and will demand to play every day, something which should not always be allowed. Make sure that your learners do all the work before they play, or just let them play occasionally as a treat. When the games are to practice a certain structure or vocabulary, tell the students this so that they know why they are playing. If you do have the odd student who doesn't like playing games and feels that they are not learning if they are playing, explain the reasons why they are playing and what they are learning/practising with this.

Generally, using games regularly as either a way of learning and practising or as a break from the routine of the course book, can be a postive way in which you can reward your students for their hard work, and get a few brownie points in the process!

Preparing children for Young Learners Exams

Those of you who who work with Young Learners will probably have heard of the Cambridge Young Learner Exams. These exams are for children aged 7 to 13 and are available at three different levels. The benefits of children doing these exams are not so clear to me, as I generally believe that assessment should not be exam-based, but I'm sure the marketing people at Cambridge will have plenty of reasons why your young learners should sit these exams. In any case, they are becoming more and more popular, and you will probably have to help prepare your learners so that they are ready to do the exam.

The original idea of these exams I believe, was to introduce the concept and format of Cambridge exams to younger learners, so that they would be better prepared for KET, PET or FCE at a later stage. The exams were introduced to teachers as being suitable for children from as little as one year's English experience and that no extra preparation was required. If you have looked at these exams, you will see that they include quite an unusual vocabulary list, with some Americanisms (French Fries, eraser), unusual fruits that the children may not have even tasted (kiwi, mango), and some of the grammatical structures are quite challenging for a child who has only been learning the language for a year or two.

In recent years, Cambridge have realised that a general English course for children may not be enough to get them through the exams and have been publishing materials to specifically help with the preparation of them, and they have even brought out a new course specifically for the Young Learners Exams. I am actually using such a course with my seven to nine year olds, and I must admit, it is quite a nice course to use.

I would like to suggest some activities that can help with the preparation for these exams, including vocabulary tasks, grammar practice activities and ideas of how to improve students' reading, listening and speaking skills for the exams.

Firstly, lets look at the different levels. The first is called Starters, and is suitable for children of around seven to nine years with one or two years of English. Quite a lot of vocabulary is required, at least in a passive sense, and the ablility to read English is essential. As for all the exams, there is a reading and writing component, a listening paper and an oral interview. The second level is called Movers and requires a level quite a bit higher than Starters. It corresponds to level A1 in the Common European Framework. Understanding of the past simple tense is necessary, as is that of some modal verbs and comparatives and superlatives. The final level is called Flyers and is equivalent to KET (A2). This is a challenging exam and in my school we don't usually prepare our learners for it, as they are usually about 13 years old when they get to this level and find it too babyish for them. Instead, we start them on a two year PET course.

For this reason, I shall be focussing on activities for Starters and Movers. However, you could probably adapt them to Flyers, if you wish. Any worksheets will be posted on my Resources page (see link above).

Reading and Writing
There are five parts to this exam at Starters (S) level and six at Movers (M). The activities are very easy at the start and progress to become quite challenging in the later parts. In the first part the children have a set of pictures and a list of definitions which they decide are correct or incorrect (S) or names and definitions to match (M).
One activity you can do with your learners to practise this is Pelmanism.

Pelmanism
You can make your own cards with a set of pictures and definitions or see my Resources section for examples or to download. Learners can work in pairs or small groups with a set of cards between them. They spread out the cards face down in two separate areas, one for the pictures and one for the definitions.  Each turn they pick up one picture and one definition. If they match, they keep the cards. If not, they return the cards to their original position. The game continues until all the cards have been used or whenever you think the children are getting bored. The winner is the person with the most cards at the end of the game.

Another part of the Starters exam is based on spelling. Learners should have plenty of practice of ordering jumbled letters (anagrams) of common words e.g classroom objects, food, transport and other words that appear in the thematic vocabulary list (see http://www.cambridgeesol.org/assets/pdf/resources/teacher/yle_hb.pdf) You can do this by writing anagrams on the board for them to copy and rearrange, or give them words cut up into letters which they should place in order. They can also make their own anagrams for other students.

They will also need practice of singular and plural forms of nouns for part 4 (S). In this part candidates are given a short gapped text but they are given the missing words. They have to decide which word fits in each gap, but should be aware of the artcile a/an before singluar nouns and no article before plural or uncountable nouns. They should have practice in completing simple sentences with missing words. You can make cards or worksheets to practise this. There are examples on my Resources page.

Generally, you can practise most parts of the exam as a whole class activity if you have access to large pictures, big books or flip charts where you can ask all types of questions, either orally or written, about the pictures.

Listening
Tasks in the Starters and Movers Listening exams are mostly based on matching, notetaking and carrying out instructions. Learners will need to be able to recognise the names of the letters of the alphabet, numbers, colours and days of the week (M).

Here are a couple of activities which practise giving and carrying out instructions, prepositions of place. These are good practise for parts 1 and 4 of Starters, and parts 1 and 5 of Movers.

Draw It!
Give students a blank piece of paper and show them how to place it in a landscape postion by drawing a rectangle on the board. Draw a few basic objects e.g a tree, a house, a car (S) or stick people doing various activities such as carrying a book, climbing a tree, eating a sandwich etc (M). Students copy these pictures. Then give instructions such as the following:

Draw a ball next to the tree. Colour it orange. Can you see the house? Draw a cloud behind the house. Now draw a cat in front of the house and colour it black.

or

Can you see the girl eating a sandwich? Her name is Sally. And look at Peter, he's climbing a tree. John is the boy who is carrying a book and wearing a blue t-shirt. Colour his t-shirt.

Now, on another piece of paper the children do their own drawings. They then give instructions to their partner who draws and colours as instructed.

NB You will need to make sure the children know the names used in the exams and whether they are boys' or girls' names. These names are included in the vocabulary lists in the Handbook.

Lego Building
 This activity includes giving and carrying out instructions, prepositions, colours and sizes. Give each student a selection of Lego bricks. Each child makes a sculpture with their bricks. They then have to give instructions to their partner so that they can make the same sculpture without actually seeing it. You should revise statements such as Can you repeat it please? and  I don't understand so that the children can ask for clarification.

Silly Words
To practise spelling, make a list of silly words. These are invented words - you can give them a meaning if you like but make sure the learners know they are not real words!. It can be fun to invent animals e.g. SQUANT, PREATER, JUMSLE etc. Spell the words to the class and get them to write the word and then draw what they imagine they look like. Then, the children invent their own silly words and spell them to each other in pairs, groups or to the whole class.

Speaking
For Starters, the speaking test also includes carrying out instructions such as pointing to objects and placing objects in certain places. It also includes some basic personal questions about likes and dislikes, hobbies, family and school.

The House
This activity is to practise giving and understanding instructions. Give students a picture of a house with different rooms and some pictures of furniture. They colour and cut out the furniture (if you prefer you can give them magazines or catalogues from which to cut out the pieces of furniture). Then write the following dialogue on the board:

A) Can you see the lamp?
B) Yes I can.
A) Put the lamp in the bathroom next to the bath.
B) Sorry?
A) Put the lamp in the bathroom mext to the bath.
B) OK.

The learners use the dialogue to tell each other where to place each object in their house.

Vocabulary and Structures
There are some specific vocabulary and structures that you may wish to practise with your learners in preparation for the exam. Really, this will depend on your students and their weaker areas. However here is an activity that you can do with any vocabulary.

Tricky Words
Write a song or chant that includes some of the words your learners find it hard to learn (abstract nouns, determiners, quantifiers, adverbs etc) for example:

I like sweets! Sweets! Sweets!
Some are here
Some are there
A lot of sweets
and chocolate too!
Yummy Yummy
Let's chant again.

Here I have taken some of the words my students have problems with and after learning the chant, the children were able to guess the meaning of these words. We did actions to help understanding. You can call the chant a rap if the children are a bit older. I have a class of nine and ten year olds who I soemtimes get to create their own raps. You could give them a set of tricky words that they have to incorporate into their own raps or songs.

Find the Answer
I find it quite hard to get students to remember the different WH- question words and so they need lots of practice in this. This activity can help:
Print and cut out the questions and answers from the Resource section, or create your own. This activity is a mingle activity. Depending on the number of students, each child has a Q/A or Q&A. The objective is to find the answer to their question. They must mingle, asking their question to different students in order to find the answer. They must not show their question to anybody. When they find their answer, they take it and sit down.

Resources: http://sothisisenglishresources.blogspot.com/

   

Articles

I am currently writing articles about various aspects of methodology with a practical focus that am hoping will get published on some of the more well-known and professional ELT websites and magazines. If this actually happens, I will post links to these publications so you can read them.

I will continue to write about practical issues on this blog, and I have also set up a new Resources section, where I will be posting useful activities and ideas for you to try out in class.

Technical Problems

I am having a few technical problems with the layout and design of this blog, so if it keeps changing, don't worry, it's still the same blog!

Teaching "chunks" to Very Young Learners

For those of us who teach very young children, who are still at the nursery or reception class stage (in Spain until 6 years), it can be very frustrating to see that after all our efforts, the children only remember a few individual words. I have been teaching at a nusery school twice a week for many years, I only see them for half an hour at a time, and only a few of those children actually go home at the end of the year with more than a few words learnt. This is due to the extremely little exposure they get to English, an hour a week is not enough, they would ideally need to be practising and reviewing the new vocabulary throughout the rest of the week in order for me to teach them something new each lesson. As this is not the case, since English is just an "extra" and not actually part of the syllabus, it is disappointing, especially for the parents who think that their child is going to come out speaking English, that they cannot remember the color orange when they go home after 6 months of English lessons.

However, if you have more contact with the children, you can get much better results by teaching "chunks". By chunks, I mean expressions or short sentences, instead of individual words. I have a class of five-year-olds in my language school, whom I see for two hours a week, and recently we have been learning to use can for ability. Children of this age evidently have no understanding of grammatical concepts, but you can ask them in L1 if they can do certain things, like swim or skate, and then go on to teach the English way of saying it. You can also teach through mime. Children love it when the teacher acts a bit silly, I have had many laughs when pretending to ride a bike and then falling off to elicit "I can't ride a bike"  and this helps them to remember. The important thing is to teach them "I can ride a bike", instead of just ride, or bike. I actually taught the vocabulary first, and later added "I can" and "I can't". In our course book, the current unit includes the vocabulary: skip, slide, ride a bike, fly, play football, swim and dive. There are flashcards with the characters doing these activities, so in the second lesson, I used "Anna can skip", "Lee can play football" etc. Some of the brighter children started to use these chunks even in that very lesson! In a subsequent lesson, I introduced: "I can swim. Can you swim?" and encouraged them to reply "Yes, I can" or No, I can't". We had already practised hearing the difference between can and can't in one of the previous lessons.

What I would like to point out with these examples is that it is much more rewarding for the child and the teacher if the child has learnt a "chunk" of language, rather than just an individual word. I encourage the children by telling them that they can now say complete sentences in English! The child feels that they have learnt something important, and the teacher sees that the child is using real English, they are actually communicating, not just looking at a flashcard and saying what they see. I think this is especially important for 5 and 6 year olds because they are competent in their own language and if they can communicate in another language, they feel (and rightly so) proud of themselves, and want to learn more. It is much more motivating to learn how to really communicate something in another language, than just to learn individual words. I still remember quite a few words in German from school, but I cannot say a single sentence, and I therefore feel that I know no German. Our learners must feel the same, whatever their age.

Every year, at the beginning of term, I teach the chunks: Can I have a pencil/rubber/ruler/sharpener, please? along with Can I go to the toilet, please? as I feel it is much more positive for the children to ask for things properly, instead of saying "rubber please", and they do actually learn to do so. It is important to start these habits early on, and not let them off because they are so young. The more you can get a child to communicate, the better!

Planning versus Improvisation

Anyone who has done any kind of formal training in ESOL (Celta etc) will know that lesson planning is absolutely essential in every lesson, and anyone who does not write out a proper plan is a terrible teacher with no thought whatsoever for his/her poor students, who of course will learn nothing.

In this article, I would like to discuss the importance of lesson planning and whether or not it is entirely necessary. I am sure there are many novice (and not so novice) teachers out there who have terrible feelings of guilt whenever they have just blagged their way through a lesson, hoping that no colleagues will have realised that they have committed such an abomination!

The main advantage of lesson planning in my view, is that during the process of planning you think through what you want to acheive and how you can do this. The stages of the lesson are carefully structured and aim to acheive the very objectives that you have chosen whilst planning. I disagree that the lesson plan should be based on a template such as the ones used in most TEFL courses and classroom observations, usually PPP methodology (although this may have changed in recent years), primarily because I believe that the process of planning is useful for the teacher whilst it is being done, therefore the paper itself on which the plan is written is not essential to the teaching of the lesson. By this I mean that each teacher should make a plan in whichever way it suits him/her. The plan does not have to follow a specific structure, neither does it have to be produced with pen and paper. The important thing is that the teacher have clear in his/her head what is going to happen in the classroom and why. If you have made a clear plan, there is probably no need to even take this plan into the classroom with you since you will already have internalised all the stages of your lesson. If you feel more comfortable having the stages written down in front of you, make a brief plan on one sheet of paper, or index cards if you prefer. You will find it much easier to follow your plan or find your place if you get lost than if you have a fully-blown 2 or 3 page observation type plan in front of you!

The main problem with thinking through and planning all your lessons is the time factor. If you have 4 or 5 classes a day, and a thorough plan can take an hour, this means that you will be spending 3 or 4 hours every day planning! This is obviously not ideal, especially since most of us do not get paid for planning time and it would mean a 10 hour day! In this business we most definitely do not earn enough to spend so much time planning, many of you will even supplement your work with private classes in your free time and simply not have the time to do so.

In practice, most good teachers spend some time planning each lesson, looking at what comes next in the coursebook, thinking of how to present the information, of maybe adapting activities from the book to make them more engaging or thinking up supplementary activities. However we do not write out a proper detailed plan of everything we are going to do in the lesson, we usually make a few notes that will enable us to follow through our ideas. In fact, most courses that use a course book will provide you with a teacher's book which can give you plenty of ideas of how to use the exercises in the book and even provide you with extra activities, sometimes photocopiable. This seriously reduces our lesson planning time, thankfully!

Having discussed lesson planning, I now come to improvisation. Every teacher has improvised at some time or other and in fact, improvisation can be a good thing - there is little point sticking to your lesson plan just because you have written it, if the lesson is a complete failure! As teachers we need to be flexible to our students' wants and needs. This obviously does not mean giving in to all their demands, but if we see that something isn't working, we shouldn't be afraid to abandon the activity.

But what about those days when we haven't prepared a thing, or have decided to forget about everything we had planned to do? Is this such a bad thing? Well, I believe that once in a while it can be something positive, a breath of fresh air for you and for your students. Sometimes, just starting a discussion by asking a few questions can turn into a complex debate which lasts for half the lesson, sometimes your class will be in one of those moods in which forcing them to do work is useless and something a bit more relaxing is required. Sometimes, one of your students will tell you something which completely changes the direction of the lesson, and, as we all know, there is no point running against the wind. As teachers we need to be aware of how our learners are feeling and adapt our lessons to this. I honestly believe that a flexible teacher who does very little planning can be a better teacher than one who meticulously plans lessons and refuses to change anything.

In conclusion, planning is an important stage in the teaching process, but it should not be overestimated, the way it often is in teaching courses. The teacher is the one who needs to decide how much he/she wants to plan for each particular class and lesson. I would like to end with a nice quote which gives a fairly accurate description of how I feel about improvising at times:

The work can wait while you show the child the rainbow but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work. (Patricia Clafford)

Nice Classroom Routines for (very) Young Learners

I have set up two activities to use as routines with a couple of my young learner groups. Any kind of routine at the beginning of the lesson is a good idea with small children, up to about 6 years old, as they know what to expect and therefore feel more comfortable. This is especially important if it is the first time they have been in a language learning situation.

The first is a colour table. The coursebook the children will be using has a colour scheme - each unit is a different colour and the book's mascot turns that same colour. I decided to set up a colour table following the scheme of the book. The first unit is red and I have made the table out of an old cardboard box and a piece of red fabric. After discussing red items with the children, they started to bring in red objects to put on the table. This can produce some unusual vocabulary depending on the items they bring in, but they are usually engaged at this stage and are keen to know the names of their objects in English. When we progress to unit 2 the table will change colour.

The other routine, which I am using with two classes on alternate days, is a calendar. I bought the calendar set from www.latiendadelprofesor.com. It consists of a large sun with the days of the week and a space for each date. The dates come on small cards to stick in the right place. Each lesson the children tell me what the date is and one of them sticks the number on the calendar. The name of the month comes on a nice cloud which is placed next to the sun. There are also cards for "Today is..." and "The weather is...". These make a nice activity for the beginning of each lesson, revising days of the week, numbers up to 31, months of the year and weather. There are also special cards for festivals and birthdays - making it easier to remember all the children's birthdays!