So this is Christmas. And once again I am looking for some interesting materials to use in my lessons. But I don’t want to recycle as the students often remember very well what we did last year or the year before. Lucky kids, as I can hardly remember what I did yesterday :-).
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In the issue 105 of English Teaching Professional there is a wonderful article by Chris Payne. It is called Plan V and it deals with vocabulary teaching. Chris explains that teachers should teach vocabulary every lesson, they should teach high frequency words and they should not teach semantic sets. He supports his arguments with research and the whole text is really worth reading.
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For me, the most important idea to teach thematic sets instead of semantic sets. Research shows that it takes much longer to learn words in semantic sets than it takes to learn unrelated vocabulary items. However, “it was found that grouping words according to a theme, so long as they belong to a different class, can aid retention and enhance learning…” (Chris Payne, English teaching professional issue 105). Therefore, teachers should teach thematic sets instead of semantic sets.
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What is the difference between a semantic and thematic set? An example of a semantic set is for example the category clothes. Words like jumper, skirt, shirt, trousers, gloves, T-shirt etc. create a semantic set. A thematic set are the words used for a given theme. Thus a thematic set for a frog, consists of words swim, green, hop, pond, croak and slippery. And these thematic sets are much easier to learn.
However, if you start to search the internet, you will find that these thematic sets are very difficult to find. That is why I would like to create and publish several such sets here.
Birthday
All the words in the Birthday set were chosen in the following way. There can be only two words which are the same part of speech. Therefore, there are only two nouns, two verbs and two adjectives. These words are then organised into a mind map and their meaning is illustrated.
Under the mind map you can find example sentences. It might be a good idea to read the sentences with your students aloud to practise the pronunciation.
On the second page, there are two exercises for the students to practise the vocabulary. In the first task, students read the sentences and complete them with the words from the mind map.
In the second exercise, students should read the sentences aloud, replacing the pictures with the appropriate words.
You can download the pdf file with the worksheets here:
Pdf worksheet
Do you think these thematic sets are useful? Vote here:
Do you think these thematic sets are useful?
Picture dictionaries are very popular among learners of English. In this post, I would like to offer you a pictionary with vocabulary connected with Modern Technology. This post contains an infographic, a crossword and three games.
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Machines and appliances – infographic
Print the following infographic for your students.
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It is a good idea to drill the pronunciation first. Then ask the students to learn the words. I usually give my students about five minutes to do this.
Then hand out the following crossword. Ask the students to complete the crossword. They can use the original infographic if they need to.
You can print the infographic and the crossword using the following pdf file.
Machines and appliances – worksheet pdf
Modern Technology – games
To practise the new vocabulary, I have created three games which students can play either at school or at home. All the games are in HTML5 and they will work on all desktop computers and mobile devices.
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[tab]Dice game[/tab]
[tab]Time game[/tab]
[tab]Length game[/tab]
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The first game is called Dice game. Click the PLAY button and then you will see a picture. Type what you see in the picture (do not use CAPITAL letters). If you type the correct word, two dice will appear on the screen. Your task is to click the STOP button. You will get as many points as there are on the dice when you stop them. If both of the dice show the same number, you will get ten extra points. Good luck.
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Dice game
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[tabcontent]
The second games is called Guess the time. Your task is to type what you see in the picture (do not use CAPITAL letters). If your answer is correct, a countdown will appear on the screen. Your task is to stop the countdown at the moment it reaches zero. The closer to zero you stop it the more points you get.
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Guess the time – full screen
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The third game is called Guess the Length. Once again, you will see a picture and your task is to type the correct word (do not use CAPITAL letters). If your answer is correct a line will appear on the screen. Your task is to guess how long the line is.
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Length game – full screen
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You can find some more materials to teach about Technology at British Council site.
Picture dictionaries are very popular among learners of English. In this post, I would like to offer you a pictionary with Machines and appliances. This post contains an infographic and a crossword. I hope you will find these useful.
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Machines and appliances – infographic
Print the following infographic for your students.
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It is a good idea to drill the pronunciation first. Then ask the students to learn the words. I usually give my students about five minutes to do this. Then hand out the following crossword. Let the students complete the crossword. They can use the original infographic.
You can print the infographic and the crossword using the following pdf file.
Together with Fluency MC we have already published several interesting posts. In our latest post, we tried to help you teach 16 phrases with GET. And this time, there are 16 more. All the phrases come from the song by Fluency MC called GET A LIFE. And as the song contains many more phrases with GET there will be some more posts soon.
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In this post, there is the song, an infographic and three games to help you teach the phrases with GET.
Phrases with GET – song
As a starter play the song Get a Life to your students. All the phrases taught in this post can be found between 0:38 and 1:20.
You can join Fluency MC’s free starter course here and also get his free YouTube songbook! http://fluencymc.com/starter-course/
After introducing the phrases, move to the infographic.
Phrases with GET – infographic
Display or print the following infographic for you students and go through the phrases with them. If you teach a monolingual class, it is a good idea to translate the phrases with the students.
After you teach the pronunciation and the meaning of the phrases, it is useful to give your students about five minutes to learn the phrases on their own.
After this, play the video again (from the beginning to 1:20) and let the students enjoy the fact that they can understand.
Phrases with GET – games
The first game is just a simple piece of a drilling software. I call it Vocabulary Trainer. It displays a definition and your task is to write the phrase. Then the computer writes whether you were right or not. The phrases which you do not write correctly get repeated. Once you can see a zero twice it is the end of the game. I admit that it is not much of a game but I find it very useful when I learn foreign vocabulary.
The second game is called Dice. You see a definition and your task is to type the correct phrase. If you succeed, you will see two dice and your task is to stop them. You get as many points as there are points on the dice. If both of the dice show the same number, you will get 10 points bonus. The best scores are saved. Good luck.
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Dice game
The third game is called Guess the Length. Again, first write the correct words and then you will see a line. Your task is to guess how long the line is. The best scores are once again saved in a leaderboard.