Oxford`s teachhing methods of english language (стр. 4 из 7)
Feeling and grammar
Typical questions
| Grammar: | Question formation-varied interrogatives |
| Level: | Beginner to elementary |
| Time: | 20-30 minutes |
| Materials: | None |
In class
1.
Ask the students to draw a quick sketch of a four-year-old they know well. Give them these typical questions such a person may ask, e.g. ‘Mummy, does the moon go for a wee-wee?’ ‘Where did I come from?’. Ask each student to write half a dozen questions such a person might ask, writing them in speech bubbles on the drawing. Go round and help with the grammar.2. Get the students to fill the board with their most interesting four-year-old questions.
Variations
This can be used with various question situations. The following examples work well:
- Ask the students to imagine a court room-the prosecution barrister is questioning a defense witness. Tell the students to write a dozen questions the prosecution might ask.
- What kind of questions might a woman going to a foreign country want to ask a woman friend living in this country about the man or the woman in the country? And what might a man want to ask a man?
- What kind of questions are you shocked to be asked in an English-speaking country and what questions are you surprised not to be asked?
Achievements
| Grammar: | By+time-phrases Past perfect |
| Lower intermediate | ||
| Time: | 20-30 minutes | |
| Materials: | Set of prepared sentences |
| 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 |
| Beginner to intermediate | |
| Time: | 5-10 minutes |
| Materials: | One question set for each pair of students |
| 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: