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 […]
Tag: Advanced
Word Family Framework – Vocabulary
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/word-family-framework What is the Word Family Framework (WFF)? The WFF is a searchable resource for teachers and learners of English that consists of over 22,000 vocabulary items arranged according to six levels aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).. Start using the Word Family Framework What can the WFF be used for? The WFF can be used by institutions, teachers and learners to construct target vocabularies for individual learning, syllabus and lesson […]
Smart Phones and You – Research Results
This unit/module focuses on the negative effects that smart phones are playing in our life in terms of memory and our attention via an article entitled “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds,” by Nicholas Carr, October 6, 2017. The article is rather lengthy so best to do this towards the end of the semester than at the beginning. With that in mind, the unit/module focuses on teaching students how to relay research results in a […]
Summary Writing
Summary writing is challenging at best for native speakers let along English language learners who often resort to copying huge amounts of text from the original source feeling they can’t paraphrase due to their lack of vocabulary. Last semester and again now this semester actively, I started a new practice of asking students to focus on using the ten survival words in their summary and limiting the number of sentences they could use. This has […]
World Village
This is an intermediate /advanced listening & discussion activity that has students imagine the world as a village of 100 people. What would this world look like? All the activities and instructions are on the two page handout. The first page is the handout for the students and the second has instructions and follow up assignments for the teacher. Here are links to the 2 page handout: » WORLD VILLAGE « and the […]
Listening – Gerunds
This is a listening exercise – fill in the blanks with the gerunds you hear. The exercise uses the song “That’s Important to Me” by Joey and Rory who sing about the values and related norms important to them. This activity follows a reading entitled “The Influence of Culture” in Chapter 2, The Power of the Group in Academic Encounters 3, Reading/Writing 2nd ed. by Jessica Williams, Kristine Brown and Susan Hood. It extends the […]
Your Dream Job
Before students can decide on a career of study, it is important to take them through some initial steps to explore their interests and preferred working environments as well as what types of skills they already have and what fields these may be useful. The attached handout is the written segment of this lesson leading to a writing assignment expressing all these preferences in a well-developed paragraph. Being able to state what we want is […]
Reading Demonstration – comprehension and vocabulary in context
Reading Demonstration – Importance of Context in Comprehension This reading demonstration was taken from Dimensions of Literacy, by Stephen B. Kucer (page. 142, Table 6.2). The purpose of the exercise is to help students examine their own reading process and strategies used to gain meaning. Use this as an opportunity to discuss and share out reading strategies used by your students and share you own. Distribute the reading to students asking them to […]
Vocabulary Practice Bingo
Spelling Word Bingo: This is a way to practice vocabulary (whether from a reading or any other vocabulary source). It can be used at almost any level as you would just use the vocabulary students are currently learning and could adapt box size, etc. to accommodate. I used it in an advanced ESL writing/reading class, after half the semester (they had a few vocab lists and had taken a few spelling quizzes already). The students […]
ESL Reading/Composition Syllabus
<<ESL 116B Syllabus>> A syllabus for an advanced ESL reading/writing class (using accelerated methodologies). L Talley