Beating the Humdrum

Flicking through your courseboook, have you ever thought the reading texts all seem a little bit….

…Dry?

…Bland?

It’s hard to get teenagers to interact with a text about Prince Charles.

Exam course books with page-long texts sap energy from the classroom and tire students out.

Can students bring their cultural knowledge interact with an anglo-centrically themed text?

Read, underline, read, underline, answer questions… seems a bit repetitive, doesn’t it?

So here are some ways of adding a little zest to a reading text. They are not failsafe and obviously aren’t applicable to every text you come across but I have found them very useful lately to increase student participation in reading and make it a bit more than just the humdrum comprehension.

1. Rewrite

Take a more informative text – exam books are full of them, like on the founders of some juice company or how children spend their free time in the UK. Put students into groups and give them each a part of the text. They then underline five sentences they think express the opinion of the author. Discuss them as a group and check with the teacher. Ask each group to rewrite the part of the text using the 5 sentences (like a writing guide) but stress that it must be rewritten in their opinion! Swap and guess which part of the text the rewritten version comes from.

2. Interviews

Again making use of the numerous ‘informative’ texts or even a true story human interest text, ask your class to make three of four interview questions to interview the class with. To add some support for this activity you might use the same key sentences for opinions activity or perhaps by putting a question box on the board.

what would you say is______/let’s say you were_________, would you?

3. Pictures

This one works well with short-story or human experience texts or just a part of the text. If the text describes one scene, give students a piece of paper, if it’s a sequence of scenes, give them paper with boxes on. One reads the text and the other draws it unfolding. Compare pictures and explain their stories to different groups. Some groups will have understood different vocabulary and at this time they can explain these to each other, the teacher can also intervene to add to this and supply more information.

4. Game shows

Give the text to your class for homework to read: half the class reads the texts and creates 3 questions and the other half only has to read. In class, have the other half of the class write their questions on the board. Those who didn’t make questions now have to read the text one final time and will work in groups of two to answer the questions, like a game show with one point for sufficient detail, two for lots and three for detail plus opinion.

5. Jigsaw summaries with longer texts

Mark a number one each paragraph. Distribute parts of a text like a in jigsaw activity. Students summarise the paragraphs they are given. Having done this, they pass their summaries to the other groups, who read the rest of the text and match them to the correct paragraphs.

6. Character

Take a character from a short story or text from a course book. Make two questions about the character, ambiguous questions which students would have to infer information in the text in order to answer like “would X prefer a night in with friends and pizza or a wild night out on the town?”. Once students have answered these, ask them to make two of their to share with the class.

Lesson Skeleton: Iphones and Opinions

Teenagers and telephones – I had one, they all have one. Why not use one? 

1. Write a an adjective and its antonym on the board, e.g. ‘proud’ and ‘embarrassed’

2. Ask your learners to find a picture that describes the adjective for them using their phones. Mingle and ask them to explain why they chose the photo. At this point I discovered my group had simply searched proud on Google – so I drew and Italian flag on the board, which focused the search on an idea – teenagers are resourceful things, they have the ability to find the quickest route possible to the finish! You can extend the topic and introduce more context if needed.

3. Each student takes a piece of paper and makes a topic sentence about their pictures, e.g. “The rubbish heaps in Napoli are truly an embarrassment to this nation”, “The fast cars we produce are the best in the world and make us famous”, also with a space below for comments.

4. Pass the sheets around and ask students to comment on the points, expressing their opinion in agreement or disagreement

- in this stage you can input phrases to agree/disagree/offer a counter-point/extend someone’s point/exemplify – feed in vocabulary for students. You could put this on cards and after dish them out and ask students to match them to the context (the statement/picture).

5. Gather the sheets up and check them for corrections (I usually do this in the break). You could do some error correction or just to make sure the extension activities don’t use incorrect language.

Extensions:

•  Post the sheets around the room and ask students to pick the opinions they agree with and which they disagree with to formulate a debate.
• Do some vocabulary work on a topic: brainstorm.
• Ask students to host a chat show. They take a sheet and have to represent the point in a live debate.
• Write a magazine article or an interview with a famous person about the arguments e.g. an interview with George Clooney about how much Italy has to be proud of.
• Ask students to find a text about one of the points for next lesson and make a summary of it.

To consider:

• I used pieces of paper and circulated them to make the best use of my classroom: 17 teenagers, tiny black board, one piece of chalk… not so easy. Consider how to capture the language. Consider recording, using the whiteboard, the IWB, large sheets of paper stuck around the room and marker pens.
• Careful it doesn’t turn into ‘I agree, I agree, I agree’ monitor and push students to give reasons or to say something outrageous. Provide lots of examples yourself.
• I have a monolingual class, so I allow them to ask me for words in their language. Brainstorming vocabulary for each point may be fruitful as well.

Possible adjective pairs:

Relaxed – stressed

Busy – calm

Modern – old-fashioned

Brave – cowardly

Intelligent – idiotic

 

 

 

 

Lesson Skeleton: IELTS news-based writing class

This skeleton has been kindly donated by the debate-master Phil Wade. No materials needed, just blank paper, students, pens and a teacher.

Exams don’t exist in a bubble, or rather they shouldn’t. It’s easy to just ‘teach the test’ but with the speaking and writing it’s also fun and educational to show and use the real world. This is useful on several levels. Firstly, it gives students a wealth of realistic ideas to use (often only the realm of CAE+), it creates a positive and practical purpose for speaking/writing classes and it also avoids students only learning IELTS writing English or memorising examples.

1) Elicit a controversial decision/opinion in the news which is causing debate.

2) Write FOR and AGAINST on the board and elicit one example for each

3) Ask pairs to brainstorm more arguments

4)Set up and run a debate scenario with For/Ag sides

Possibilities

1)Groupings

1 to 1 (for new debaters and higher levels or with more structure for lowers)

2 to 2 (bigger classes and weaker students)

3 to 3 (very big classes and very weak or very organised students

The class is divided into 2 teams

2)Format

30 second arguments in turn (for lower levels or new debaters)

1 min arguments in turn (for medium levels)

2 min arguments+support (for experienced debaters)

2 min arguments including criticism (for seasoned debaters)

Open debating (for discussion or informal debate classes)

5)Give FB on languag, pron, grammar, delivery style

You might cover

Presenting a clear opinion statement e.g. I believe that..

Presenting an opposing view e.g. I do not agree that

Using linkers to give reason e.g. because, on account of, due to

Adding support (cover the logical links and the language)

Adding polite criticism e.g. You failed to consider that

Pausing for dramatic effect

Intonation (rising before pauses/drops on important words/large drops on final sounds)

stress (moving the main stress for effect)

6) Move students/groups according to your observations:

a)Who didn’t speak much

b)Who was not challenged

c)Who was domineering

d)Who felt too comfortable with their friends

7)Make new pairs and ask them to note down and match 2 main arguments.

8)Write an essay style For/Against question on the board, then draw 4 boxes labelled Intro, Main1, Main2 and Conc.

9)Choose 1 student to explain if he is For or Against and why

10)Ask him how he would structure the essay to reflect his opinion.

You might cover

Intro-summarise topic and give your opinion

Main 1 For+support (examples, explatanations, quotes)

Main 2 Against+support (examples, explatanations, quotes)

Conc-summarise the arguments and give a last statement

Or

Intro-summarise topic and give your opinion

Main 1 For+Against+support (compare and contrast)

Main 2 Against+For+support (compare and contrast)

Conc-summarise the arguments and give a last statement

11)Ask new pairs to plan their own essay and present it

Possible areas to cover

1)Logical counter-arguments

2)Strong vs weak support

3)Reprasing the question in the introduction

4)Comparative language

5)Essay writing phrases

6)Including ‘lexical items’, ‘grammar stuctures’ and ‘cohesive devices’ at the planning stage.

12)HW

Write the full essay and post it to the website/VLE

Lesson Skeletons: Good day/Bad day?

Thanks to Fiona Mauchline for her session at TESOL France 2011, entitled “write on, right on!”, from which the idea for this lesson plan came.

Take a sentence starter like

“I got out of the house this morning, and…”

1. Ask each learner to add the next line, taking it in turns sitting in a circle

or

Hand out a piece of paper and ask learners to pass it around in groups, completing the next sentence

or

In groups, mime the activities they did next and guess what happened (Thanks Anna Musielak for the drama inspiration)

2. Ask learners to draw a table, something like this:

A good day

A Bad day

They  fill it out to explain what makes a good day and what makes a bad day for them. Add an example of your own the act as a prompt, like “When we’ve run out of coffee in the morning”. In this stage feed in vocab to help them express what they want in the table.

3. Discuss in groups/as a class what makes a good day for them and a bad day. Encourage learners to ask each other questions in this stage. During this time, move around the room, monitor for interesting themes developing or difficulties learners are having with language for the next stages.

4. Board some interesting examples that could be extended for language or theme. How could these be extended?

e.g.

A bad day is when I miss the bus

1. Brainstorm in groups lexical sets for transport.

2. Discuss how transport services in your city could be improved (leading to a debate/letter of recommendation/language for giving recommendations).

3. Elicit what happens when you miss the bus (you arrive late) and ask learners to mime reasons for being late for work/class

A good day is when I don’t do any work

1. What are your responsibilities at work (helping with language to explain what you do at work)

2. How could you help pass the time when you’re at work with nothing to do (language for suggestions or first conditionals).

A horrible day is when it rains

1. Discuss what normal types of weather are for this time of year. This could lead to brainstorming lexis for the weather, comparatives, and past tenses (well, last year, it was nothing like this, it was much colder and rained more, I remember…)

2. If have the luxury of internet access, why not use this as a stimulus to brainstorm weather vocab and review future tenses in preparation for watching the weather forecast.

Lesson Skeleton: what was unusual about this morning?

I have Mike Harrison to thank for this one as it was his reverse reading activity that gave me the inspiration for this skeleton. He took a reading text from a different perspective by giving students comprehension questions to answer first to make a story, which could then be compared to the original.

1. Create five or six questions that make the basis of a story. Last week there was a flood in Rome and everyone got soaking wet and was late for work… so I thought questions on the topic might connect with students. I also wanted to get to know a little more about their daily routine but go beyond the usual questions like “what do you do after school” etc, which had until then not been received with much interest. The idea could be adapted to any age group though, to get to know the ups and downs of someone’s day.

1. What was unusual about this morning?

2. Why were you late for school?

3. What was lucky about when you made it to school?

4. What happened at lunchtime that was lucky?

5. Why were you happy to get home?

2. Ask learners to respond to the questions, creating a story of their day. Move around looking for interesting pieces of their stories that might be interesting later in the lesson.

or

Ask learners to draw 5 boxes and put their day into pictures – using the lesson skeleton on YLs and drawing to continue the activity.

3. Put the stories up on the wall and ask learners to move around the move and write two questions to ask about what they read. Note down any problems for a language focus later in the lesson.

4. Allow for some time to discuss students’ questions. In the lesson last week this led to a discussion about what sorts of behaviour are punishable at school and whether this is right. We then looked at phrases to make suggestions on how to make school a fairer place for students.

5. Use language from stage 2 to do a delayed error correction/reformulation activity with the class.

Possible extensions:

1. As this sort of activity will produce lots about the highs a lows of someone’s day, there is always the opportunity that a letter/email suggesting improvements for a problem is possible. I asked my learners to write a letter to their headmaster for homework.

2. Add some synonyms to the board and ask learners to find the corresponding words in their stories.

3. Put some adverbs appropriate to the situations in the text and ask learners to find them. e.g. “it was raining” “it was raining heavily’ ‘the bus was late” “seriously delayed”.

4. Create a dialogue with the class and practice it as a role-play. For example, someone mentions they had to wait in line at the post office for thirty minutes to renew their driver’s license or someone’s friend called to cancel a meeting. How would you do this in English? There could be a range of functions learners would need in situations in which they need to use English.

What I like about the skeleton:

• The questions dig deep and rely on the little moments in people’s days like when they arrive at work/have lunch/chat to colleagues.
• For lower level or YL (teen) classes, the form of a story of a bad day gives them time to write about their day that I have found difficult to facilitate through conversation.

What to consider before the lesson:

• There’s always the chance that nothing happened that day.
• Learners need to be clear about why they are making questions.
• Consider the jobs of the people in the room when making questions or if they are students. A group of university students may have slept all morning.
• Does your class have a preference for drawing or do they prefer writing to prepare? Do they need preparation time, if so, how much?
• A language focus may arise from the initial activity or the discussion after, be prepared to wait for ‘the wave’.

 

House hunting

 Housing and apartments

 

This lesson is particularly useful with students studying abroad.

 

1. Students seated in a circle with the teacher. Write “what do I like about my apartment/house” or something along those lines. Share something about yourself and your house. Allow students to ask questions and do not stop any debate about the topic.

 

2. Count 1-20 around the circle and every third number stop. This person shares something they like about his/her apartment/house. Again, allow for questioning or debate. At this stage, do not be worried if there are not questions.

 

• Any negatives that arise can be used in later stages of the lesson or can be used to make a roleplay instead of stage 4.

 

3. In groups, ask learners to make a list of the most and least important things for an apartment in the city you all live.

Optional: ask groups to swap lists and agree/disagree on any points

 

Now there are two options

4a  Ask learners to plan a phone call to a landlord to make an appointment to see an apartment.

*I normally note down where language is missing and input snippets of language.

• Include information from ‘important’ and ‘not important’ lists.
• Sit students back to back to role-play the phone call

After the first practice, give some feedback on the call. Encourage students to share what they found difficult

• Share some good examples of language from the roleplay. Reformulate some language that needs to be improved with the class.
• Drill fixed expressions as chunks for natural sounding rhythm and stress, highlighting areas of connected speech and stressed syllables.
• Change the pairings and repeat the roleplay – you can repeat this as many times as you feel is necessary, adding new language or changing the conditions by adding restrictions such as you are in a hurry or you are very picky.

Ask learners to copy new language from the activity and any other emerging language from the lesson in their notebooks, with any notes on pronunciation.

4b Ask learners to write an email to a landlord enquiring about an apartment or room they have seen on a website

In groups, swap emails and comment on the language used in the email. Move around the room and take some examples of good language and note areas where language is missing (especially for style and use of fixed expressions).

With the whole of the class, construct a ‘skeleton’ email, using contributions from students and elicited reformulations.

Ask students to copy the email structure with new lexis which emerged from the activity in their notebooks.

5. Review new vocabulary from the lesson