Games to help students learn English.
Speed reading activities are very important for learners of English. By trying to read quickly, they develop their comprehension and fluency in reading in a foreign language. Thus they improve their knowledge of English. The problem with speed reading activities is, that they are not for elementary students of English. The texts mostly aim at…
A few years ago Jason better known as Fluency MC, came up with a rap song and a video. In this video he teaches ten phrasal verbs. And as I like the video very much and I think it is really useful, I decided to create a post using the video. <!– wp:more –> In…
Yesterday I published a post in which I taught 16 phrasal verbs which belong among the 50 most frequent phrasal verbs in English. In this post I am going to introduce 10 more phrasal verb which belong into the same category.
Before you start learning anything, take the following quiz. Read the questions and choose the best option to see how many phrasal verbs you already know. If you manage to score 20 points, you can leave this page because you know all the phrasal verbs, I am going to teach here. <!– wp:more –> [WpProQuiz…
Paul Nation in his book What Should Every EFL Teacher Know suggests that every language course should consist of four strands: Vocabulary development, Extensive input and output, grammar explanation and fluency development. By giving these four strands equal amount of time in EFL lessons, students will learn the foreign language. <!– wp:more –> In this…
Ever since I was a boy I wanted to write and publish a book. It took over thirty years for my dream to come true. In this post I would like to introduce the three books for learners and teachers of English which I published. <!– wp:more –> ADVERT: [showmyads] Grammar Up is a book…
I have just published a new book. It is called Grammar Up. Grammar Up is a new, holistic approach to teaching and learning English grammar. <!– wp:more –> When you take English in school, you learn one piece of grammar at a time. After a while, you become confused by all the rules, and you…
Some posts are easy to write and some take a lot of time to create. This one is the latter case. It took me three months to draw and rewrite the Sherlock Holmes story for pre-intermediate students. <!– wp:more –> In this post, I would like to share with you a graded comic called Sherlock…
I recently created my first app for mobile phones and it became a hit among my students. Already 85 students downloaded the game and they are working hard on learning the new vocabulary. <!– wp:more –> However, as this app was just for Czech students, I wondered whether I could offer it to people from…
We live and teach in the communicative era. However, the textbooks offer very few speaking activities where students could practise the language they have learnt. That is why I decided to share several speaking activities with you. <!– wp:more –> In this post there are two speaking activities to practise describing a house using the…
Mobile phones are bad! Students spend hours on mobile apps and they do not learn! What can we do about it? I tried to do something about it. I prepared a responsive website for my students to learn on their mobiles and … they didn´t come. <!– wp:more –> But then I created my first…
In this post I would like to share with you the best activities I know to teach the present simple tense. To achieve this, I will recycle some of the materials I have already and shared here. However, there are several new materials (for example the infographic) which I designed just for this post. <!–…
For students who do not use articles in their mother tongue it is incredibly difficult to learn to use them correctly in English. In fact, it is very difficult to teach them use the articles at all. That is why I often spend a lot of time teaching definite and indefinite articles in English. <!–…
Elementary students are taught that there is very little difference between the words MUST and HAVE TO. Little as it may be, it exists. And in this post I would like to give you several rules which will help you decide which one is better in the given sentence. <!– wp:more –> ADVERT: [showmyads] In…
Choose what you need to practise
In this post I would like to offer you several activities to teach Clothes vocabulary. Here, I will concentrate on teaching the following 15 pieces of clothes: a jacket, a dress, a coat, shorts, trainers, boots, shoes, trousers, a skirt, a shirt, a T-shirt, a hat, a cap, a tie and a jumper. This selection…
Speaking activities should be the core of the communicative approach. However, there are many textbooks that come with very few exercises to practise this skill. And then you have to create your own. To save your time and energy I will share four speaking activities that worked very well in my classes. <!– wp:more –>…
In my previous post I offered several resources to teach the difference between the present simple and present continuous tenses. There are several exercises and games including an infographic. But, as my students complained that the infographic was not that helpful I created a new one. <!– wp:more –> Advert: [showmyads] In this post there…
Sometimes it is very difficult for students to decide whether they should use the present simple or the present continuous tense. To help them decide correctly, I will share several activities with you. These activities make it clear which tense the students should use and how to form it. <!– wp:more –> ADVERT: [showmyads] In…
The following set of activities is for false beginners and elementary students of English. The aim of these activities is to practise the usage of the form be going to and reinforcing this form. <!– wp:more –> Make a copy of the worksheet for each student. Make an extra copy of p.1 for each student,…