Tagged: speaking

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Give Me 5 – Vocabulary game

Give Me 5 is a simple vocabulary prompt game that makes for a light lesson and review of main English vocabulary. Download the Give Me 5 cards. Students can be dealt the cards and challenge each other (or other groups). Set a time limit in...

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Zip Zap: A “no tech” teaching idea/game

This is an activity that your students can do whenever some fun yet competitive language practice is needed. It would be a great activity for a camp or for a party or just as a reward for students. I discovered it when teaching Grade 4 and...

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Who’s Speaking? Guess the Accent.

This game, Guess Who’s Speaking, I designed using the Speech Archives and stock photos. It could be a good listening activity for students (it provides repetition) and also a way to discuss stereotypes. Basically, you first guess who might be speaking (these aren’t the real...

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2 Way Tasks

Two way tasks are the staple activity of the communicative approach. Also known as an “information gap” activity, they force students to communicate with each other in order to retrieve information to complete a task. Usually these tasks involve students with different sets of information, usually...

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Job Interview Practice

Job interviews can be pretty tough in your first language but imagine doing one in your second! You need to be well prepared and the more “real” you can make it, the more successful your practice will be. As someone who believes in video as...

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5 Card Flickr – Storytelling….

Yesterday on twitter, I was pinged and asked about “Storyboards”. I offered my own collected resources, including Story Dominoes. Both fine resources with photos which students can use to either tell or write a story. A wonderful activity (and always make sure to get students...

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Accent Agape

I spent a large part of a wonderful day stuck in the car. Thankful, saved by a wonderful interview with Slavoj Zizek, philosopher and iconic social critic. Catch the same interview here. What I love about him besides him irreverence (laughed like crazy when he...

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EFL 2.0 gems: Karaoke dialogues

I am very proud of this very underused resource- our karaoke dialogue page. You get a full ebook of all the blank dialogues + Karaoke or video files of the full dialogue or with parts missing where the student can reply with their own voice....

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EFL 2.0 Gems – Our 24/7 teacher

One of the nice things about a computer is that it never tires (also frustrating, always there tempting us). No greater example than our teacher bot on EFL Classroom 2.0. She’s pretty, smart and also wants to talk about Christmas these days (just select the...

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The #1 …. (voicethread of all time)

** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s number 1. Dr. Quinn’s Love Line I can’t tell you how many tears of laughter I’ve shared with students while using Dr. Quinn as an example of Voicethread. He’s incredible and even after 5+ years, still...

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The “Blank” Dialogue Updated

The blank dialogue is a very “natural” teaching approach. Something intuitive about it. I used it in my early days of teaching – just pausing a dialogue on cassette tape and asking students to respond. You had to get skilled with using those big buttons!...

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The 5Ws focused lesson

Using the journalistic technique of the 5W questions is really effective for any listening / reading activity. Students can read or listen to  the news item or story and then write out the 5 questions that would cover the story. They can then quiz each other for...

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Using Technology to teach Speaking

I recorded my talk at the recent KOTESOL National Conference – Getting Students Speaking: Harnessing the Power of New Technologies. It’s a pretty comprehensive overview of online tools and technologies. Here’s the presentation of only the websites (click the images to go to that website)....

Cue Prompter and Transl8it.com 1

Cue Prompter and Transl8it.com

Today, two quick tips of two very innovative and adaptable tools. The Cue Prompter and Transl8it.com. Listen/Watch as I show you them and suggest some uses. Get the dialogues mentioned HERE. Hat tip to @russeltarr for the tip about the prompter!

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Faking it …..

Today, my “much better half” insisted that our dog Chico could understand Korean. She showed me how he could understand Korean and sit and stay, even give paw. I had a good chuckle. Not much different to many teachers who believe their students understand them...

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The #1 …. (conversation game)

** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s number 1. Pass the Paper There are many conversational games but I have found none so popular and powerful as “Pass the Paper”. We have many pre made Pass the Paper games on EFL Classroom 2.0...

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Quizlet now has voice recognition for student practice!

I’ve started up our long dormant Quizlet flashcard group. Even make your own flashcards and share them (use our ID/PW – eflclassroom/eflclassroom.     I also highly recommend all the Quizlet quizzes on Gif Lingua.  For any book, click “Study” and then “Quizlet”. They have...

The #1 ….. (faux pas / weakness) of ELT instruction 1

The #1 ….. (faux pas / weakness) of ELT instruction

** Not your ordinary, endless list – just what’s number 1. Not Pausing while speaking I’ve been in a lot of classrooms recently. One thing that becomes abundantly clear is that most instructors aren’t pausing enough while speaking. Students need time to process language, students...

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Using Voicethread with your textbook

One of the hardest parts of being an EFL student is not getting enough opportunity to speak. In class, there are usually too few opportunities for really spontaneous and “real” production/output. Voicethread is a tool that offers this in abundance. Read all our blog posts...