that are not true about them in another color.
2. Put the students in fours to explain to each other which of your
sentences were also true of their lives.
3. Run a quick question and answer session round the groups e.g. ‘At what
age had you learnt to ski/dance/sing/ play table tennis etc by?’ ‘I’d
learnt to ski by seven.’
4. Ask each students to write a couple of fresh sentences about things
achieved by a certain date/time and come up and write them on a board.
Wait till the board is full, without correcting what they’re putting up.
Now point silently at problem sentences and get the students to correct
them.
Variation
You can use the above activity for any area of grammar you want ti
personalize. You might write sentences about:
- Things you haven’t got round to doing (present perfect + yet)
- Things you like having done for you versus things you like doing for
yourself
- Things you ought to do and feel you can’t do (the whole modal area
is easily treated within this frame)
Reported advice
|Grammar: |Modals and modals reported |
|Level: |Elementary to intermadiate |
|Time: |15-20 minutes |
|Materials:|None |
In class
1. Divide your class into two groups: ‘problem people’ and ‘advice-givers’.
2. Ask the ‘problem people’ to each think up a minor problem they have and
are willing to talk about.
3. Arm the ‘advice-givers’ with these suggestion forms:
|You could… |You should… |You might as well… |
|You might… |You ought to… |You might try…ing… |
4. Get the class moving round the room. Tell each ‘problem person’ to pair
off with an ‘advice-giver’. The ‘problem person’ explains her problem and
the other person gives two bits of advice using the grammar suggested.
Each ‘problem person’ now moves to another ‘advice-giver’. The ‘problem
people’ get advice from five or six ‘advice-givers’
5. Call class back into the plenary. Ask some of the ‘problem people’ to
state their problem and report to the whole group the best and the worst
piece of advice they were offered, naming the advice-giver e.g. ‘Juan
was telling me I should give her up.’ ‘ Jane suggested I ought to get a
girlfriend of hers to talk to her for me.’
Variation
If you have a classroom with space that allows it, form the students into
two concentric circles, the outer one facing in and the inner one facing
out. All the inner circle students are ‘advice-givers’ and all the outer
circle students are ‘problem people’. After each round, the outer circle
people move round three places. This is much more cohesive than the above.
Picture the past
|Grammar: |Past simple, past perfect, future in the past |
|Level: |Lower intermediate |
|Time: |20-40 minutes |
|Materials:|None |
Class
1. Ask three students to come out and help you demonstrate the exercise.
Draw a picture on the board of something interesting you have done. Do
not speak about it. Student A then writes a past simple sentence about
it. Student B write about what had already happened before the picture
action and student C about something that was going to happen, using the
appropriate grammar.
I got up at eight a.m.
I’ve just got off the bus
I’m going to work today
2. Put the students in fours. Each draws a picture of a real past action of
theirs. They pass their picture silently to a neighbor in the foursome
who adds a past tense sentence. Pass the picture again and each adds a
past perfect sentence. They pass again and each adds a was going to
sentence. All this is done in silence with you going round helping and
correcting.
Impersonating members of a set
|Grammar: |Present and past simple-active and passive |
|Level: |Elementary to intermediate |
|Time: |20-30 minutes |
|Materials:|None |
In class
1. Ask people to brainstorm all the things they can think of that give off
light
2. Choose one of this yourself and become the thing chosen. Describe
yourself in around five to six sentences, e.g.:
I am a candle
I start very big and end up as nothig
My head is lit and I produce a flame
I burn down slowly
In some countries I am put on Christmas tree
I am old-fashioned and very fashionable
3. Ask a couple of other students to choose other light sourses and do the
same as you have just done. Help them with language. It could be ‘I am a
light bulb-I was invented by Edison.’
4. Group the students in sixes. Give them a new category. Ask them to work
silently, writing four or six forst-person sentences in role. Go round
and help especially with the formation of the present simple passive
(when this help is needed).
5. In their groups the students read out their sentences.
6. Ask each group to choose their six interesting sentences and then read
out to the whole group.
Variation
The exercise is sometimes more excitingif done with fairly abstract sets,
e.g. numbers between 50 and 149, musical notes, distances, weights. The
abstract nature of the set makes people concretise interestingly, e.g.:
I am a kilometre.
My son is a metre and my baby is centimetre.
On the motorway I am driven in 30 seconds. (120 kms. per hour)
We have also used these sets: types of stone/countries/items of clothing
(e.g.socks, skirts, jackets/times of day/smells/family roles (e.g.son,
mother etc.)/types of weather.
Rationale
The sentences students produce in this exercise are nor repeat runs of
things they have already thought and said in mother tongue. New
standpoints, new thoughts, new language. The English is fresh because the
thought is.
Listening to people
No backshift
|Grammar: |Reported speech after past reporting verb |
|Level: |Elementary to lower intermediate |
|Time: |15-20 minutes |
|Material: |None |
In class
1. Pair the students. Ask one person in each pair to prepare to speak for
two minutes about a pleasurable future event. Give them a minute to
prepare.
2. Ask the listener in each pair to prepare to give their whole attention
to the speaker. They are not to take notes. Ask the speaker in each pair
to get going. You time two minutes.
3. Pair the pairs. The two listeners now report on what they heard using
this kind of form:
She was telling me she’s going to Thailand for her holiday and she
added that she’ll be going by plane.
The speakers have the right to fill in things the listeners have left out
but only after the listeners have finished speaking.
4. The students go back into their original pairs and repeat the above but
this time with the other one as speaker, so everybody has been able to
share their future event thoughts.
Incomparable
|Grammar: |Comparative structures |
|Level: |Elementary |
|Time: |15-20 minutes |
|Materials:|None |
In class
1. Tell the students a bit about yourself by comparing yourself to some
people you know:
I’m more … than my husband.
I’m not as…as my eldest boy.
I reckon my uncle is … than me
Write six or seven of these sentences up on the board as a grammar pattern
input.
2. Tell the students to work in threes. Two of the three listen very
closely while the third compares herself to people she knows. The
speakers speak without interruption for 90 seconds and you time them.
3. The two listeners in each group feedback to the speaker exactly what
they had heard. If they miss things the speaker will want to prompt them.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 so that everybody in the group has had a go at
producing a comparative self-portrait.
One question behind
|Grammar: |Assorted interrogative forms |
|Level: |Beginner to intermediate |
|Time: |5-10 minutes |
|Materials:|One question set for each pair of students |
In class
1. Demonstrate the exercise to your students. Get one of them to ask you
the question of a set. You answer ‘Mmmm’, with closed lips. The student
asks you the second question – you give the answer that would have been
right for the first question. The student asks the third question and you
reply with the answer to the second question, and so on. The wrong
combination of question and answer can be quite funny.
2. Pair the students and give each pair a question set. One student fires
the questions and the other gives delayed-by-one replies. The activity is
competitive. The first pair to finish a question set is the winner.
Question set A
Where do you sleep? (the other says nothing)
Where do you eat? (the other answers the first question)
Where do you go swimming?
Where do you wash your clothes?
Where do you read?
Where do you cook?
Where do you listen to music?
Where do you get angry?
Where do you do your shopping?
Where do you sometimes drive to?
Question set B
What do you eat your soup with?
What do you cut your meat with?
What do you write on?
What do you wipe your mouth with?
What do you blow your nose with?
What do you brush your hair with?
What do you sleep on?
What do you write with?
What do you wear in bed?
What do you wear in restaurant?
Question set C
Can you tell me something you ate last week?
Tell me something you saw last week?
Is there something you have come to appreciate recently?
What about something you really want to do next week?
Where have you spent most of this last week?
Where would you have you liked to spend this last week?
Where are you thinking of going on holiday?
Which is the best holiday place you have ever been to?
Variation 1
Have students devise their own sets of questions to then be used as above.
Variation 2
Group the students in fours: one acts as a ‘time-keeper’, one as a
‘question master’ and person 3 and 4 are the ‘players’.
The ‘question master’ fires five rapid questions at player A which she has
to answer falsely. The ‘time-keeper’ notes the time questioning takes. The
‘question master’ fires five similar questions at B, who answers
truthfully. The quickest answerer wins. (The problem lies in choosing the
right wrong answer fast enough.)
Possible questions:
How old are you?
Where do you live?
Which color do you like best?
What time is it?
How did you get here?
What time did you get up today?
What did you have for breakfast?
Where does your best friend live?
What sort of music do you dislike?
How many brothers and sisters do you have?
Movement and grammar
Sit down then
|Grammar: |Who + simple past interrogative/Telling the time |
|Level: |Beginner to elementary |
|Time: |10-20 minutes |
|Materials:|None |
In class
1. Ask everybody to stand up. Tell them you’re going to shout out bedtimes.
When they hear the time they went to bed yesterday, they shout ‘I did’
and sit down. You start like this:
|Who went to bed at two a.m.? |Who went to bed at quarter to |
| |two? |
|Who went to bed at ten to two? |Who went to bed at half past |
| |one? |
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