Games to help students learn English.
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,…
Recently I have spent quite a lot of time designing various speaking activities for my students. In this post I would like to share two speaking activities which help students practise the usage of the past continuous tense and of the modal verbs MUST, MUSTN´T and DON´T HAVE TO. I hope both of the activities…
Present continuous tense is one of the most popular tenses among students. It is easy to form and its usage is crystal clear (at least at the beginning). However, when it comes to forming questions, students often fail. To avoid this, I have come up with a number of activities to help my learners and…
Speaking activities are essential in a communicative approach. Most people agree that students should communicate ever since they start learning English. However, it is really difficult to design genuine communicative tasks for low-level students of English. In this post, I would like to share two communicative tasks for beginners. In the first one, students practise…
Easter is coming and many teachers are looking for materials connected with Easter. Here, I am offering a magazine full of materials connected with Easter for learners of English. I hope you like it. <!– wp:more –> ADVERT: [showmyadsa]