Experiences of a teacher of English

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “On post #259 I gave you a lot of activities and games that may help our students play with English, and construct sentences or texts in English. With passing months and years I’ve invented more games/activities and as well learned from the reactions and ways of doing things by the students themselves. On label ‘more games’ in this blog you can find some more. Now I offer some new games, briefly: 1. The teacher invents and tells a simple story, by speaking, with 3 or 4 words the students provide; young students are very imaginative. 2. One student says a sentence with one word he or she has learned lately in the classes. 3. Elicit and give terms related with computers and the Internet. 4. They say, by turns, words that include one letter, but which words don’t begin with that letter. You can write them on the board; students like to see filling with columns of words by themselves; it’s like a competition. 5. They, with your ass...

One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, "Brainstorming has some very positive aspects. The students, with full freedom, say ideas about a topic, in order to produce original ideas or new solutions. Its aim entails to develop and exercise a creative imagination. The first premise is that if you let your students act as persons, in an informal environment, there exists the chance to find a brilliant idea. This technique stimulates racking one's brains, and makes searching varied ideas something likely probable, and impels to act autonomously, with originality and according to their own personality." I've translated, with minor changes, from José Bernardo Carrasco (2004) Una didáctica para hoy. Cómo enseñar mejor . Madrid: Editorial Rialp. / Photo from tefl fll purdue edu

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “What’s better, doing the same sequence of activities always in the classes or bringing in variety of activities? When you introduce a positive routine in the classes, the students can know ‘What is next’, and they can focus on that next activity more simply. Anyway, you should give them surprises, activities they don’t expect, they don’t expect from you. Break up the usual thread of the classes. A teacher I know told me his students asked him next to every day, ¿Qué vamos a hacer hoy en clase, don José? ‘What are we going to do today?’ They liked this teacher because the students used to say he surprised them with something new. It’s also true that some routine can bring up order and clarity to the classroom. Whatever you do, I would tell you, should be a challenge to them, that’s clear.” / Photo from Denver Post - colorado images - world cup watching

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, "Using realia can somehow immerse our students into kind of small environment where English is used naturally. Assign one day as homework to bring packages, round cartons, etc., to the school-room, with the names of the ingredients of foods, in English. It's authentic English. If the students are adolescents, they can just write the ingredients on their notebooks. Besides you all in the class can read instructions, like Keep in the original packaging, well closed in a cool dry place . One activity: all of you work on the ingredients of different boxes or foods. You are writing the ingredients on the board. O, this game takes next to no extra-class preparation. Afterward, you ask the kids what ingredients they think are in a chocolate. Bringing real packages provides a special mode of dealing with authentic English, colorful objects, everyday food and drinks, smells." / Photo from quedificiles wordpress com

One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, "Do not spoonfeed your students - otherwise they'll never make an effort. For example, assign them tasks or problems which they've got to solve. This is a sound training for their future careers. A pair students are ordering their lunch at a burger place. Or a small debate between two big wheels: one wants to build a mall on a specific place, while the other guy wants to devote that large spot of land to a park. Each realtor defends his position. A lead-in activity can be two halves of the class brainstorming pros to support their leader. You can be writing on the board the things each half proposes, in few words. One point that will help the students to develop their ideas: your small joking or smiling at their proposals, and your stirring them up to say more things." A bulldozer, in English. From www outdoor-perspective com

This is a reply I wrote to a colleague of ours, about questioning the students in an effective way. It has been published in the web-site of Pearson-Longman. Worth to call on this site! / Photo from www ekinsbuilder co uk . This truck c1925. Hello Benson and everyone, I'd tell you some hints, if any useful. 1. Talk about things of your students' real interest currently, don't talk about, say, fishing red crabs in swallow waters in areas close to the Antarctic. Get it? 2. Paraphrase what your student just said, just responded. 3. Listen, listen, listen, listen. 4. Look in his/her eyes. Eye-contact is of paramount importance. 5. Address each student and look in his/her eyes in the class. 6. Any answer might be acceptable: they are starting communication, and this is our goal of teachers of languages! 7. Pretend you don't understand your common language: at that class-time you "do not understand L1": it's a funny treat, believe me. Oooops, I'm stopping ...

One more game, a listening-jogging one. I write an interesting story (rather short) on my class-notes. I feel as if the Internet offers umpteen activities, tips, etc., but when I want to copy and print a worksheet or a text... they don't quite fit my students' level or necessities or the grammar or the notional approach it presents. Because of that I just write my own stories, connected with their own concernings. So, I read a text aloud, in the class, twice, and they listen, right? I somewhat act out when reading, only a bit, so as to focus their attention. And the follow-up activity is I read some statements and they have to say if they are either true or false or not in the text. I try to read the statements with kind of a cunning look, and I get silent to let them think and reply. It's okay, it works. /Photo thanks to www asiapacific basf com - Oh, also read them texts about, for example, general culture, we need kids willing to change the world as much as possible. It...

I just opened www.teachingenglish.org.uk and I saw the staff published a comment of mine. Thank you. On this comment on the site I respond to a teacher who asks for any clue or help about making groups according to the students’ level of English. Dear colleagues, I would be glad to get feedback from Ts who have experience in making groups according to level. It may sound very simple but in fact it is not. The situation is as follows: My Faculty (English Studies) offers a course for Ss from other faculties. The course is compulsory and motivation is very low. The course aims at developing their listening skills only, using authentic recordings from the radio for instance. The Ss have to take a free online placement test and pass on their score to the head teacher. This is not supervised by anybody. Consequently, many Ss easily manage to be in the lowest level group so as to twiddle their thumbs and get good marks. The Faculty has not budget for reliable placement tests, which Ss coul...

One day teacher B said to teacher A, "I offer you some more games for your classes. For example, on grammar and memory: The teacher writes one sentence of his students' level, on the blackboard or whatever. One sentence their level or a bit above. The teacher and a few students read the sentence aloud. You then, the teacher, erase it. Then you say it from memory. And then you jog their memory, one by one: you ask them to repeat the sentence - as much as they can. They like competitions, freeze this point in your memory for your teaching. Oooops, silly me, I forgot my class-notes at my school, and I had some other games. Next day I'll tell you more games. I have learned many games from my students themselves, from the way they work in the class and their reactions to my prompts and their capabilities or flaws. Thus, you learn how to treat them and what you can expect from them; also, with more ample lenses, you learn, one day after another, how to get the best out from them...

I'd like to thank Alistair for his proposal of a dictionary game, presented post #353. I just read it, and sounds great, and it would put variety in my own class games. Thanks also for I had the chance to read stuff in English adequate to teaching and conducting games and so. It's good to put in variety: I've noticed my veteran students can get bored if I always implement the same games. What I'm trying lately is to change some things in the games I run in the classes, besides the fact that from time to time some variety within a specific game spontaneously shows up during the class. Picture from www uniquetranslations eu

This is a post within a thread I contributed for, some days ago, about dictionary games, on the website of Pearson-Longman. Thanks to the author of the following post. – Picture from lego star wars blogspot com Fernando Diez Gallego, A new message was posted in the thread "Dictionary Games": http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/message/2255#2255 Author : Alistair Melliar Email : alistairm@eircom.net Profile : http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/people/voyager Message: -------------------------------------------------------------- This game is a bit different to any others so far, but I've found it works very well - have used it with upper-intermediate and advanced groups only but could be played by intermediate groups with a change of dictionary type preferably. You have 2 teams, each with a dictionary, the first team starts with letter 'a', opens dictionary with eyes closed in this section, and selects a word from the page opened to ask the other team about. There are 3 p...

This is a post with which I responded to a teacher of English. The posts, both his and mine appear in www.pearsonlongman.com . The thread of posts are about dictionary games. This was my contribution. Picture from www friendlyplanet com Hello Daniel, I can also suggest some games I implement and they work so fine in my classes, and my students love those games! 1. (I hope to be any helpful: I see you implement similar stuff). Dictionary competition. I write a word on the whiteboard, and the students have to find the word as soon as possible in the dictionaries. The winner is the first in finding the word. Currently my students are aged 10 to 14. 2. Sometimes I am one of the players in the latter game. They wish to play vs their teacher. It’s funny. 3. One student counts the seconds one other student takes to find a given word in the dic. Obviously the winner is the fastest. 4. On worksheets or on the WB I write words that appear close to one another in the dictionary. The ss have to pu...