Experiences of a teacher of English

  For today something simple, interesting though. An activity I’ve implemented with my senior students this school year has been to orally define and say the meaning of words I chose randomly from a good dictionary of English, Richmond namely. And one of these words has been “life”. Can you define it easily in a language that is not yours!? You’ve got to be careful so that you don’t get confused and messed-up while trying to define it. It’s an activity which mixes thought, English-retrieving capability, some grammar, some communicative competence… all in one single activity! Other interesting words to define are “hero”, “fortitude”, “bookcase”, but better just choose them from the dictionary at random. / Photo from: heypesticide modernfarmer com. the picture is just an illustration

Brainstorm. This game is pretty appreciated by kids in classes.  First the teacher writes on the chalkboard all the colors the students know and say, for example.  Also pretty soon you will get the board covered by colors, or means of transportation, or...  Then a volunteer – they all want to be him – stands up and turns around, his back to the board. And he says all the colors he can remember from the chalkboard. The rest of the class-group are with wide open eyes and in tension.  Finally some student can say out a missing color by the volunteer. Amazing and amusing. / Photo from: brainstorm www eslflow com

Kids love competitions and contests, so we can take advantage of this fact for them to learn and practice English.  During puberty, say ten years old, they start to be aware of themselves and their capacities.  Something I implement in classes from time to time is a competition.  There are two players. They’ve got to say names of foods and drinks in English; the winner is the one who said the last item.  Their classmates have eyes and ears so focused on this battle.  Of course you can make this kind of contests concerning the vocabulary you are studying lately in classes, for example from their course books.  The last student who’s thinking of a new item after many ones has ten seconds to answer, within a countdown. The climax is one with a lot of constrained tension, “Will he say something else?” (in Spanish) The atmosphere of the class is total immersion in English. / Photo from: scuba diving. travelandaman in

Now I’m giving you more learning strategies for learning vocabulary.  First I will say that I’ve learned a lot about learning strategies in Rebecca Oxford’s book about them, published in 1990.  More strategies that I have learned from my students or strategies I’ve utilized myself: make up a group of words of the same semantic field;  focus on the spelling and take a mental “picture” of a difficult word;  think or write sentences by using those words;  focus on those terms that have a Latin origin and so they may be similar to the ones in their mother tongue (our language is Spanish, whose origin is Latin);  write the same difficult word several times;  or repeat mentally;  play with the new words in some way, like scribbling them;  play with the sentences I wrote with that word;  write very original or fantastic sentences with those new words;  every day learn one, or two, or three, which demands se...

Young kids learn by playing, among other paths.  On post # 259 I gave you a version of a list of more than 100 games.  What they do in the class helps them learn.  One example is TPR ( Total Physical Response ), as you may know. They play the actions, verbs, jobs and professions you tell them in English to carry out.  They live those activities.  In early ages they can somehow connect reality with words. Thus they use their brains and make them develop. Also you can show them shapes – triangles, squares, circles, rectangles, made out of colorful cards or on the PC, and the next day you can ask them what rectangles they saw the previous day, in English, by showing them the shapes at the same time.  You can ask them what object a triangle was, too.  Just try a few days, so as to find out if it works with your kids.  If they respond in their mother language, you could teach them how we call those objects in Engl...

We need English words for communication, and our students also for activities and games in the class.  A game students love because it is very competitive is a vocabulary competition.  A pair of students says words each one by turns. The winner is the student that says more words. In this way they can practice the vocabulary of the unit you all are studying. Or a revision of past units.  Something they love too is a competition between you teacher and all the class as a chorus. It’s very fun and focusing. / Photo from: man reading to kids library blogs voices com. Usually the students that love that game are older than the ones that appear on this picture, but those ones above are learning vocabulary

Students who want to participate in games in English in class need grammar and vocabulary.  You can tell them that that is one more reason for learning English. / Photo from: marriage watching tv.  www dailymail co uk. The photo of this post is a mere illustration.

Teacher B said to teacher A, “Other ways of learning new words is playing with the words, making field groups, focusing on the spelling, using it in original sentences, using it in the blog, learning one every day or learning many on a single day, playing with the sentences, revision, asking myself as a teacher, writing more original sentences…” / Photo from:   freshworldblog wordpress com. dictionaries of English

Teacher B said to teacher A, “An activity that is like a game is having them read numbers written on the whiteboard, from the first numbers and their spelling, up to hundreds and thousands.  Explain to them something they will not forget: the way we say numbers in English is the same as the way we do it in Spanish.  250,340. We say two hundred fifty thousand three hundred and forty . In Spanish we use the corresponding words, exactly the same ones, except the and we say in English.  Every long number is a challenge to them. Have fun with the students, and more today, which is a nice day out.” / Photo from: www wipo int. young female teacher painting a boy on his face 

Many of you teachers of English or other modern languages utilize songs and music in your classes.  I have done this very few times.  You teachers can teach me how to get the most of songs that teenagers like. Now I can think of cloze texts, filling out the blanks, and any kind of activities where the kids have to complete the lyrics.  Ok, any idea from you will be welcomed, but from my way of being I tend to use songs rather little, or you can give me ideas and try to convince me of the positive things we can do by using songs.  Some of you have told me that music provides supplies of potential activities, because kids like some kinds of music. I agree. / Photo from: www nslplus com.   

Teacher B said to teacher A, “What do we do to speak in English, as I told you on post # 1033? I ask them to describe the meaning of a word, or to describe a picture from a general-content magazine, or it’s me who says the meaning and they say the word. We have fun, and that’s so essential.” / Photo from: innovasjomorge no. Fjord in Norway.

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “A game you can try with your class is repeating a sentence as a chorus, word by word, subsequently increasing the number of words, starting with the last word of the sentence. It’s amazing to see students’ capability to remember each chunk, which becomes longer and longer. I’ve done this with students from 10 to 12 years. In this way you make them develop their memory and some awareness of syntax-with-a-message. They like it. They’re able to repeat long sentences. It can be helpful to practice the grammar and vocabulary they’re learning.” / Photo from: sierra-nevada costasur com. A hotel in Sierra Nevada, Granada, Spain. This picture could have been taken these days.

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “Once I found out that my young students liked one game a lot, and it was fun for them, and for me - you have plenty of games on ‘Labels’ on the right column in this blog. I then thought that if that game was so fun for them maybe I shouldn’t exploit it too long – we could play it again on a few days; it was useful to learn and revise vocabulary. Perhaps the game was ‘hangman’ or something like one student had to repeat the written words on the whiteboard. This latter game was: I elicited professions, said by them, and I was writing those words like a network, with lines around pointing at the center of the board, where I had written ‘jobs’ in a circle. Then I gave them one minute to memorize the words, and one volunteer – many raised their hands – had to repeat as many words as possible, turning around so as not to see the board. His classmates were getting totally focused on the board.” / Photo from: canada - map fnet...

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 B said to teacher of English A, “Crosswords are simple to make on your own, on the board, with little preparation out of the classroom. It’s useful to revise the vocabulary you are learning in the classes and fun too. Very simple, look. You write a rather long word from up to down, vertically. You don’t need to draw the grid. You give a clue about one word of the unit, and you point at the horizontal line where that word has to be written, including the letter of the vertical word. It focuses their attention. If not too complicate, you can give a clue in English for a vertical word containing two letters of two horizontal words. Do this game in just a few minutes, so as to make them wishing to continue... but the game is up! It works.” / Photo from: eviajando com. This is Patio de los Leones , in Alhambra palaces, in Granada, where I live. When are you coming, if possible?

One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “I tell my students to play with the dictionary; that the dictionary is like a private teacher, at disposal at any time. Also I’m referring now to online dictionaries. To play with the dictionary I said. To read and memorize words and their meanings, expressions within the entrance of a word, to find interesting meanings, also to use those words in fanciful sentences, alike as when writing an essay I set as homework. My students so build up a useful stock of words, which come up when writing, sometimes being unaware that they have learned those words. No words, no communication in English.” / Photo from: westchesterlibraries org

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “A student of mine has told me a trick he utilizes to learn new phrasal verbs and verbs with following prepositions and adverbs. He says each preposition or adverb which follow a verb have common meanings: up and down refer to directions. However this can be dangerous, but it helps some way. Can be too risky because you can say something you really don’t mean, in some cases! Yet he thinks that the meaning of each word - away, off, up, down, out, in, into, on – helps. Some examples of clear-meaning phrasal verbs, and others not that obvious: take off, put away, put on, get up, look down, check out, break in, break into, put on, get on, get off, check in, break up, break down, look up, kick off, fill in. ” / Photo from: vagabundeoresplandeciente wordpress com

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, "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

Agata Zgarda asked for help to teach students of different countries. This post of hers appeared on www.teachingenglish.org.uk , the site of BBC – British Council. Underneath is my response to her post. Photo from Farsi Crop. How diferent is it to teach students from different countries? Submitted by Agata Zgarda on 26 July, 2010 - 23:08 I've been invited to take part in a webinar with a title (that's not the final title yet) "Cross-cultural communication". One of my ideas was to look at the communication from a different point of view: teacher-student communication, provided that a teacher is of a different nationality than a student. I am one of the examples - a Polish person teaching English in Brazil. So for that I need to collect characteristics of English students from different countries. Have you ever had an opportunity to teach people of a diferent nationality? How would you characterize them as learners? What kind of difficulties (that come from cultural ...