Resource Posting PD.tifI find that students, especially at the lower levels, are curious about the history and politics of the United States. Over the years one of the handouts I have accumulated is the INS Standard 100 Questions for 312 Test at Legalization Offices. The document has questions such as, “What do we call a change to the U.S. Constitution?” Answer, “Amendment.” It serves as a nice break from grammar, writing, etc. and often engenders […]
Tag: Intermediate
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 […]
Rosa Parks and the Bus to Freedom by Beth Johnson
Here are the additional handouts to the rest or the chapters of this wonderful book from Townsend Press (only $2.00 per book for teachers, very affordable!). My Level 2 students have enjoyed the challenge of reading this for 2 semesters now, and learned a lot of vocabulary. They were very inspired by the story of Rosa Parks’ life. It would be an easier read at Level 3 or 4, but just as motivating. The first […]
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 […]
Showing versus Telling – Building Support
This lesson illustrates to students how to write “telling” versus “showing” paragraphs. That is, student are shown the difference between a paragraph that merely states reasons rather than develops them through explanation, examples, or specific details. The lesson proceeds as follows after discussing components of a paragraph from previous lessons: Project on the screen the first model of a “telling” paragraph. Read the paragraph aloud and then ask students to complete the comprehension questions following. […]
Sentence Structures – Five basic
This lesson entails familiarizing our students with some of the basic sentence structures in English – especially where word order is concerned. See handout attached to begin and later expand this lesson to other English structures. The lesson entails beginning with the basic subject-verb structure and ending with subject-verb-noun structure shown on the handout. The instructor writes the first structure and ask students from the various language-groups represented in the class to come to the […]
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 […]
English for Employment Syllabus
The attached is a syllabus for an English for Employment course for intermediate students and above. The course entails career exploration by examining interests and skills and related career fields and academic requirements. The as American education system as well as the Yuba College general education requirements leading to an associates degree, certificate and/or transfer are also covered. See syllabus: << 259SyllabiS2018 – SAMPLE SYLLABUS >> As the syllabus shows, we also explore reading job […]
Adjectives, Gerunds, Infinitives Board Game: Identifying Parts of Speech
This activity takes place as a review after students have learned adjectives, infinitives and gerunds. Cut up the parts of speech cards. You will need a game board for each small group and enough dice for each group to use one. Students get into small groups with the cards face-down and a player piece on “Start” (I have them use a tiny piece of paper with their initials on it). A player rolls the die, […]