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2. Continue until all the students have sat down.
3. Get people back on their feet. Ask one of the better students to come
out and run the same exercise but this time about when people got up,
e.g.
Who woke up at four thirty this morning?
Who woke up at twenty to five?
4. Repeat with a new question master but asking about shopping, e.g.:
Who went shopping yesterday?
Who went shopping on…(day of the week)
Only if
|Grammar: |Polite requests, -ing participle |
| |Only if + target verb structure of your choice |
|Level: |Elementary + |
|Time: |15-20 minutes |
|Materials:|None |
In class
1. Make or find as much space in your room as possible and ask the class to
stand at one end of it.
2. Explain that their end is one river bank and the opposite end of the
room is the other bank. Between is the ‘golden river’ and you’re the
‘keeper’ of the golden river. Before crossing the river the students have
to say the following sentence:
Can we cross your golden river sitting on your golden boat?
3. They need to be able to say this sentence reasonably fluently.
4. Get the students to say the sentence. You answer:
Only if you’re wearing…
Only if you’ve got…
Only if you’ve got … on you
5. Supposing you say ‘Only if you’re wearing trousers’. All the students
who wear trousers can ‘boat’ across the river without hindrance. The
others have to try to sneak across without being tagged by you. The first
person who is tagged, changes places with you and becomes ‘it’ (the
keeper who tags the others in the next round).
6. Continue with students saying ‘Can we cross your golden river, sitting
on your golden boat?’ ‘It’ might say, ‘Only if you’re wearing ear-rings.’
etc.
Variation 1
To make this game more lively, instead of having just one keeper, everyone
is tagged becomes keeper. Repeat until everyone has been tagged.
Meaning and translation
Two-word verbs
|Grammar: |Compound verbs |
|Level: |Upper intermediate to advanced |
|Time: |40-50 minutes |
|Materials:|One Mixed-up verb sheet per pair of students. The |
| |Jumbled sentences on a large separate piece of card |
In class
1. Pair the students and ask them to match the verbs on the mixed-up verb
sheet you give them. Tell them to use dictionaries and to call you over.
Be everywhere at once.
|Mixed-up verb sheet |
|Please match words from column 1 with words from |
|column 2to form correct compound verbs. |
|Column 1 |Column 2 |
|back- |dry |
|cross- |soap |
|ghost- |treat |
|soft- |write |
|blow- |reference |
|double- |cross |
|ill- |dry |
|spin- |comb |
| | |
|cold- |manage |
|double- |feed |
|pooh- |read |
|spoon- |pooh |
|court- |glaze |
|dry- |clean |
|proof- |shoulder |
|stage- |martial |
| | |
|frog- |march |
|wrong- |record |
|toilet- |foot |
|tape- |train |
|short- |change |
|rubber- |feed |
|force- |stamp |
|field- |test |
|cross- |question |
|cross- |examine |
|cross- |check |
Key to first group of verbs:
To back-comb/to cross-reference/to ghost-write/to soft-soap/to blow-dry/to
double-cross/to ill-treat/to spin-dry
Key to the second group of verbs:
To cold-shoulder/to double-glaze/to pooh-pooh/to spoon-feed/to court-
martial/to dry-clean/to proof-read/to stage-manage
Key to third group of verbs
To frog-match/to wrong-foot/to toilet-train/to tape-record/to short-
change/to rubber-stamp/to force-feed/to field-test/to cross-question/to
cross-examine/to cross-check
2. Ask them to take a clean sheet of paper and a pen or pencil suitable for
drawing. Tell them you’re going to give them a few phrases to illustrate.
They’re to draw a situation that brings out the meaning of the phrases.
Here are the phrases – do not give them more than 30 seconds per drawing
(they will groan):
To toilet-train a child
To soft-soap a superior
To force-feed an anorexic
To court-martial a soldier
To back-comb a person’s hair
To cross-examine a witness
To spin-dry your clothes
To cold-shoulder a friend
3. Give them time to compare their drawings. The drawings often make
misunderstanding manifest.
4. Split the class into teams of four. Tell them you’re going to show them
Jumbled sentences (see below) and their task will be to shout out the
unjumbled sentence. The first team to shout out a correct sentence gets a
point.
Jumbled sentences
Will still can you and it it dry retain its spin shape
You can spin-dry it and it will still retain its shape
Cold him we shouldered first at
At first we cold-shouldered him
Our ill ancestors treated they
They ill-treated our ancestors
Clean it don’t dry
Don’t dry-clean it
Black frog they Maria to the marched him
They frog-marched him to the Black Maria
Double your windows glaze to like we’d
We’d like to double-glaze your windows
Pooh just his poohed offer they
They just pooh-poohed his offer
Don’t soap me you soft dare
Don’t you dare soft-soap me!
The world of take
|Grammar: |Some basic meanings of the verb take |
|Level: |Intermediate to advanced |
|Time: |40-50 minutes |
|Materials:|Set of sentences below (for dictation) |
In class
1. Put the students in small groups to brainstorm all the uses of the verb
take they can think of.
2. Ask each group to send a messenger to the next group to pass on their
ideas.
3. Dictate the sentences below which they are to write down in their mother
tongue. Tell them only to write in mother tongue, not English. Be ready
to help explain any sentences that students do not understand.
The new president took over in January.
The man took the woman’s anger seriously.
‘You haven’t done the washing up, I take it,’ his wife said to him.
The little boy took the old watch apart to see how it worked.
‘I think we ought to take the car,’ he said to her.
This bloke always takes his problems to his mother.
‘We took the village without a shot being fired,’ she told him.
‘Take care’ the woman said, as she left home that morning.
He took charge of the planning team.
The woman asked what size shoes he took.
‘Yes I really take your point’ he told her.
‘If we go to a movie,’ she told her boyfriend, ‘it’ll really take you
out of yourself.’
The news the boy brought really took the woman aback.
The chair asked him to take the minutes of the meeting.
‘You can take it from me, it’s worse than you think’
4. Ask the students to work in threes and compare their translations. Go
round helping and checking.
5. Check that they’re clear about the usual direct translation of take into
their language. Now ask them to mark all the translations where take is
not rendered by its direct equivalent.
Problem Solving
A dictionary game
|Grammar: |Comparatives, it (referring back) |
|Level: |Elementary (or as a review at higher levels) |
|Time: |45 minutes |
|Materials:|One dictionary per two students |
Preparation
On the board write the following:
Abcdifghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
It’s got more letters than…
It’s got fewer letters than…
It’s the same length as….
It’s earlier in the dictionary than…
It’s later in the dictionary than…
It’s further on…
Back a bit.
The first letter’s right
The first two/three/four letters are right
(or you could dictate this to the students if you want a quiet settling in
period at the start of the class)
In class
1. Explain to the students that you’re going out of the room for a short
time and they’re to select one word for you to guess when you come back.
They find the word in their dictionaries.
2. Go back in and have a first wild guess at the class’s word. The students
should tell you whether their word is longer, shorter or the same length
as your guess and whether it’s earlier or later in the dictionary. Here
is an example (teachers can correct pronunciation as they go along ):
|teacher: |Middle |
|students: |It’s shorter. And it’s later in the dictionary. |
|teacher: |Train. |
|students: |It’s Earlier. It’s Got The Same Number Of Letters. |
|teacher: |Plane. |
|students: |It’s Later. |
|teacher: |Rains. |
|students: |It’s Later. It’s Got The Same Number Of Letters. |
|teacher: |Seat. |
|students: |It’s Longer.The First Letter Is Right. It’s Later In |
| |The Dictionary. |
|teacher: |Stops. |
|students: |It’s Earlier. |
|teacher: |Skirt. |
|students: |It’s Later |
|teacher: |Spend. |
|students: |The First Two Letters Are Right. It’s Later. |
|teacher: |Spine. |
|students: |It’s Later. |
|teacher: |Spore. |
|students: |The First Four Letters Are Right. You’re Really Warm |
| |Now. It’s A Bit Further On. |
|teacher: |Sport. |
|students: |Yes. |
3. You can write the words you guess and notes of the students’ answers on
the board as you go along, to help you to remember where you are. At the
beginning, you can prompt the students by asking questions such as ‘Is it
shorter, longer or the same length as my word? Is it earlier or later in
the dictionary?’ etc.
4. When the students have got the idea of the game, reverse the process;
you think of a word (one from a recent lesson works well) and students
guess. You give them information as to length, place in dictionary and
any letters they’ve guessed right.
5. Now hand over the exercise to the students. They should scan their
notes, textbooks and /or minds (but not dictionaries) and create a short
wordlist. Then in pairs or small groups they can repeat the activity.
Rationale
This is a good game for teaching scan reading and alphabetical order when
Ñòðàíèöû: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
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