Games to help students learn English.
Question formation in general causes problems. Students get easily confused and they feel that they are not able to form the questions. But in fact, it is very simple. If you follow the steps below you can teach the questions in the past tense in no time. The lesson is based on the principles of…
In the first part of the comic story we met Jack and we learnt about 30 new vocabulary item. Now, it is time to finish the story and learn some more vocabulary. In this post there are several activities to learn or teach the new vocabulary, two games to check your vocabulary knowledge and comprehension…
We usually present just one tense to students. However, ever since I was a student I have always wanted to see a more complex picture and get more tenses at the same time. And as we have just finished the whole textbook with one of my elementary students an opportunity presented itself to sum up…
I have already published a post on numbers. However, there I expected that you know the basics and that you need to learn a bit more about them. This post is different. Here, I would like to start at the very beginning and present the basic numbers from 0 to 99. To achieve this there…
I have already published several posts on past simple tense. There are several posts on irregular verbs, a post on regular verbs in past tense and now I would like to explain how to make negative sentences in past simple. It is quite simple – you just add DIDN´T and the infinitive. To help you…
This has been my third post on irregular verbs in a short time. In the first two posts I have tried the associative method, and MP3 drills. While the associative method was not that successful the MP3 drills certainly work. However, they presuppose that the students will learn at home and will play the recording…
Teaching of past tense always starts with the verbs was and were, and then the regular verbs are introduced. And in the end, the students learn that there are over 200 irregular verbs which they have to learn. I have posted several articles on irregular verbs and on past tense in general. However, this is…
As a teacher working with a textbook you often need to pre-teach a lot of new vocabulary, because otherwise the text on the following page will be incomprehensible to your students, or you will face a barrage of questions „What does this word mean?“ However, when you scourge the literature for methods how to do…
I have already published a post on Present simple and continuous tense here. However, as my teaching situation changed I realize that I need a slightly different type of materials and a bit more of them. So in this post I add the following materials: a Song, Speaking exercise, graphical explanation of the usage of…
I have changed jobs and now I teach at elementary school. And even though I think that I am an experienced teacher I have never taught students with actual learning problems. Now I do, and I face real challenges. For example, this week I taught the verb HAVE GOT from the Project 1 textbook, and…
As the word WAS is the ninth and WERE the 34th most frequent word in English it is crucial to use them correctly. You simply cannot avoid using these words, and if you make mistakes in these two words, people will think that you cannot speak English. For teachers it is important to teach this…
In my latest post on irregular verbs I tried to teach 33 irregular verbs. In this post, I would like to add other 30 verbs which I hope you will learn through either the associative method or by using the spaced mp3 recording. ADVERT: [showmyads] [su_spacer][su_heading] Irregular verbs – associative method [/su_heading][su_spacer] You can learn…
I have already published several posts on irregular verbs: Past participles – divided according to the pronunciation and Present perfect tense. However, a week ago a student of mine contacted me and asked me if I could create a way for him to learn the irregular verbs. He spends a lot of time driving so…
There are some words you cannot live without in any language, and greetings certainly belong among those words and phrases. In this post I aim at introducing and teaching nine basic greetings for elementary students. To achieve this goal I there is a nice mind map and several games to practise these words. [su_spacer][su_heading] Greetings…
SVOMPT rule is one of the most important rules in English. If students learn to follow this rule, their English will improve dramatically, and they will be understood. Once a student knows some words and follows the SVOMPT rule, we can say that he/she can speak English. ADVERT: [showmyads] I love Darren Crown’s explanation of…
Have you tried our vocabulary placement test for elementary students, and it was too easy for you? Have you scored close to 2000? Then this is the vocabulary test you should take. Here we test the words which belong between 2,000 and 5,000 most frequent words in English. ADVERT: [showmyads] There are 60 questions and…
Students like reading comics. Comics are often the only thing students read. When I started an extensive reading project last year, students did not mind reading comics, however when we moved to short stories, more than half of them stopped reading and started to hate the programme. On the basis of this experience I have…
Recently we have published a placement test based mostly on grammar. Some of our readers commented that a vocabulary placement test might be useful too. That was why we have tried to create a test which would show you how many words you know. A part of the test is partly based upon the test…
Our most popular post is about questions with HOW. There is another post on all the WH question words. In this post I would like to deal with the questions starting with the word WHAT. To help you with this grammar there is a mind map and two games. ADVERT: [showmyads] [su_spacer][su_heading] Questions with the…
Placement tests are very important for students of languages. First, they can serve as motivation because they show whether the students improved their knowledge. Second, they help students choose the correct course on their level. And last but not least they inform students how good their English is. ADVERT: [showmyads] However, good placement tests are…