I really enjoy teaching how to use comparative adjectives with students. The rules are simple and students have fun with this presentation. I run the presentation and have all the students examine the list of adjectives. I provide a few answers and try to get students to guess the rules. After a while they figure out that 1 syllable you add er and 2+ syllables you write more/less. I provide example sentences about classes (Professor […]
Category: Beginning
ESL 235 Practice Final
<<ESL 235 annotated practice final>> <<ESL 235 Practice Final>> This is the Practice Final I created for Level 3 Integrated Skills this semester. It’s based on older finals that incorporated more reading, because as a department we decided that (only) writing finals may not be the best assessment of integrated skills. I gave them another practice final with added writing practice to do as homework before this, and then they had an entire class time […]
ESL 235 Homework Practice for Final
<<ESL 235 Homework Practice Final>> This is an assignment I just made, so haven’t tried yet (feel free to suggest improvements). The integrated skill finals will include more reading this semester, so I made up a practice that involved a similar format with a reading and questions, but added some extra writing work. Even though they won’t have (?) a writing task on the final, I thought it’d be good for them to practice, and […]
Modals Talking Chart
<<would rather talking chart>> I used this in ESL 235/535: Integrated skills level 3. The week before we had gone over World English 2 “Unit 12” with its introduction to using ‘would rather’ and using comparisons. I used this talking practice as part of a review day about halfway through the semester. We reviewed how and when we use ‘would rather (not)’ and then students moved around to talk with 10 classmates and write complete sentence […]
World English 2 Unit 12 reading handout
<<WE2 un12 Starting a new tradition>> I used this about halfway through a semester in ESL 235/535: level 3 integrated skills. We had already done some practice with reading and finding main ideas in readings (what is a main idea vs supporting detail). I made a handout of the reading from World English 2 “Unit 12” to encourage students to take notes on readings (specifically I modeled highlighting where answers are in the text) and then […]
How to Learn a New Language?
When a new class starts, I usually question how much time is needed to teach second language acquisition methodology. I’ve noticed a lot of students have very poor study habits and really do not understand how a language is acquired. Some students think that if they take one English class they should be fluent by the end of the course! I put together this slide to introduce students to language acquisition and to nullify the […]
Personal Shields
This I typically assign as homework the first day of class. I show examples from previous student work, and encourage them to be as creative as they want. The second day of class they get in groups of four and try to mix the nationalities as best I can, and they share their personal shields with each other. The noise level always increases immediately. After they have time to get acquainted with this new material, […]
My Bonnie Song and Engergizer
Having staffed leadership conferences for many years, this was always my favorite “go to” if I felt everyone needed some extra energy. It also works well at the beginning of class, or to refocus after some challenging classwork. I explain the background of the song, and explain who Bonnie might be. They are always terrible the first attempt, but there’s lots of laughter and astonishment. We try it again, and go even faster once they […]
Campus Online Scavenger Hunt
This I assigned as homework at the beginning of the semester to have students search the campus website to discover services available to them that they might not be aware of. Although this is what we used here at Sierra College, I’m looking forward to creating one for Woodland Community College. It will be similar. >>Scavenger Hunt<< Annie
Past Tense Regular Verb Pronunciation Activity
Pronunciation of the regular verbs for beginning and intermediate students is always challenging. I created this kinesthetic lesson to provide students a challenging problem solving activity which is easy to correct. I begin with putting the heading of “t”, “d”, and “id” on the whiteboard, and then ask them to tell me which is the final sound as I pronounce a number of different verbs. They tell me. After we have quite a list under […]