Do you consider yourself an actor/actress? Have you ever been taught some basic performance skills? Make your class more exciting and understandable by implementing some of these basic performance strategies. In comparison, speaking another language is not a performance, but it does require adopting voice and gestures that do not come natural to you. This correlates with Guiora’s Language Ego – a kind of identity a person develops in relation to the language that he […]
Unit 2 Review World English 1
I created a quick-review for students to run through to see if they remember unit 2 grammar. This slide show goes over prepositions of time, adverbs of frequency, and possessive adjectives. Directions: Go over on the board prepositions of time, adverbs of frequency in the book, and possessive adjectives. Run the powerpoint. Have students shout out the answer. >>>Unt 2 Review<<<
Comparative Adjectives
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 […]
“Can you”? Ability Activity
I created an ability activity for students to do after we discussed “can” and “can’t.” In this activity students run around the room attempting to find some who “can” do something on the list. For the future I plan to give out a snack or prize for whoever can find the most people. This works well in a big class, but can work in a small class if you allow people to ask the same […]
Brainstorming for High Level Writing
This is a power point I use to present different ways to brainstorm. Before the presentation or doing the presentation I give examples of what each brainstorming technique is. The topics are a survey of all the essays this class covers. After this I assign homework for them to practice these techniques and when they return they will have a quiz on this (given around 7 minutes per prompt). Directions: Teach or walk the class […]
Hachiko Waits, exercises for the novel
Hachiko Waits exercises for the novelHachiko Waits is one of my favorite novels to use with ESL students. It’s a lovely story, based on a real story about a professor and his dog Hachiko. Hachiko was so famous that there is a statue of him in Japan that many people visit. These are my set of exercises, questions for discussion, vocabulary work, etc that go along with the 10 chapters. I used to use it […]
Top 3: Revision of Higher Level Writing Idea
I have been teaching writing for a while and at another school where we have department finals. For higher levels instead of giving a ton of comments and feedback, I focus on a Top 3. These are three areas I feel are most important for improvement. Students must improve for their revision and then highlight/bold. After they turn it in, examine and provide additional feedback. If students can focus on certain areas, teachers will see […]
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 […]
Song “Yes, We Can Can as sung by Maria Muldaur
This song was a tribute to Obama sung by Maria Muldaur, with Bonnie Raitt, and the Women’s Voices for Peace Choir at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. It is the perfect follow up for a unit about the Civil Rights movement. It has lots of photos of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. You could just have the students see how many civil rights leaders, presidents and famous people they recognize. The visuals are […]