Basic Greetings in English

Greetings are one of the topics teachers have to teach every year. They are introduced early on in every textbook and it is really nice if your students can produce some language from the very beginning. It is usually the first function students learn in English.

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Surprisingly, greetings are not easy for students. As they are usual presented in a lexical set (you can see why this is a problem here), students often confuse them and very often they stick to HELLO and forget all the others.

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Moreover, as the greetings are considered easy, there are not many teaching materials which would help us teach these greetings. That is why I created a set of activities that might help you. First, there is a simple song with all the greetings. Second, there is an infographic with all the greetings and several exercises to help your students learn the words.

I have to teach the same greetings every year. However, when I searched the internet for a song which would contain all the greetings I was out of luck. Either the songs did not contain all the necessary greetings or they were too complicated. So in the end, I decided to write the lyrics myself and mikeyshynemusic wrote the music.

And you can hear the result here:

There are two things you can do with the song. You can ask your students to listen and sing along or you can ask them to listen and complete the lyrics of the song.

Lyrics worksheet In the following infographic, there are all the greetings students have to learn in this lesson.

It is a good idea to go through the greetings with your students and teach the correct pronunciation and meaning of each of the greetings.

It is time to practise the greetings and learn them. The first game is in HTML 5 and it will play on any mobile device you use. It is a simple crossword. Click on any square and at the top of the crossword there will appear a clue. Then just type your answer. You can print out the crossword too and then solve it on a paper. It is up to you:

Greetings – Crossword

The other two games are in Flash and therefore they will play just on your desktop. The first one is called Teacher invaders and you have to answer all the questions with the correct greeting and then shoot all the invaders. Good luck.

Greetings – Teacher Invaders

The second game is called Half a minute and it is suitable for classes with an interactive whiteboard. When you start the game there will appear the jumbled greeting and students have to write it on their paper and then one of them can type it into the computer. However, you have to do this in 30 seconds. Have a good fun with it.

Greetings – Half a minute