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] The mind map shows…
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…
I have already dealt with the usage of prepositions in the posts Prepositions AT, IN and ON for time and Adjectives with prepositions. However, this post is different because it concentrates only on the phrases IN THE END, AT THE END, IN TIME and ON TIME which are frequently used incorrectly by students of English….
Means of transport is one of the topics you cannot avoid. Nowadays people travel a lot and they often have to do it on daily basis. And thus it is one of the most natural topics for a conversation in a class. Here you can learn the names of several means of transport and you…
For many learners of English the slight differences between the words BIG vs. LARGE and HIGH vs. TALL are very difficult to understand. In this post I will try to make the differences clearer and easy to remember. To achieve this, I have come up with two videos, two quizzes and two mind maps. I…
In this post I would like to teach you how to use the words DESPITE, IN SPITE OF, ALTHOUGH, EVEN THOUGH, BECAUSE OF and BECAUSE correctly. I will explain the meaning of the words and the grammar. To help you with this there are two games, a mind map, a video explanation and a graphical…
If you do not know a sound, your brain filters it out when you hear someone using it. That is why it is crucial to teach sounds that do not exist in students’ mother tongue. Moreover, Adrian Tennant at www.onestopenglish.com claims that you should learn to hear and say the new sounds at the same…
Hope, want and would like belong into the group of verbs which are followed by the infinitive. If you click the link above you can see a complete solution for these verbs for intermediate learners of English. In this post we would like to teach how to use only the three verbs HOPE, WANT and…
Recently I published a post on TV programmes vocabulary. In this post I would like to add a few activities to help the teachers prepare a great lesson on this topic and to give students a few more activities to practise the vocabulary. ADVERT: [showmyads] Unlike in the previous posts, there are several worksheets which…
When students hear the phrase indirect questions, they get scared. But actually this is one of the easiest grammar points in English. The only thing you have to watch out for is that if a sentence starts with a certain phrase (Do you know or Could you tell me etc.) you have to use the…
Everyone watches TV sometimes. Thus, to be able to speak about what they watch students need some specialised vocabulary. The aim of the following post is to introduce and teach 13 names of TV programmes. ADVERT: [showmyads] To achieve this, we have prepared the following activities: a video, a mind map, a pictionary and two…
When I started this website I dreamt of a site full of games that would be so interesting that students would want to play them and to play them they would have to learn English. However, for nearly a year it was just a dream. I did not know how to create a game like…
Kate Chopin was an American author from the end of the 19th century and she wrote very interesting stories. I have taken one of the shorter ones and simplified it for pre-intermediate students. The Kiss is a story about love and money. It is about a girl who has to choose between real love and…
“What does maths have to do with learning English?” you might ask. Many people believe that nothing. In fact many wrongly believe that you can be good either at maths or at English. However, I think that mathematics and English have more in common than it might seem at the first sight. To be good…
This is another post in my series of simple grammar explanations for elementary and beginner learners of English. In this post I try to explain the usage of the possessive ‘s and ‘. There is a mind map and several exercises to check the students’ understanding of the grammar. ADVERT: [showmyads] If you think you…
Many students struggle with the basic question words even when they are at pre-intermediate level. That is why I have come up with the following post. There is a mind map explaining the meaning of the question words with examples. Then there are two quizzes to practise the question words in a real context. ADVERT:…
Some posts take quite a long time to produce, but this one was an extreme case. Four people participated on it and I think we have produced a great material to teach vocabulary connected with sports. ADVERT: [showmyads] In my opinion there is everything. There is a video to help students with the pronunciation of…
A few days ago I wrote a post where I dealt with the mistakes my students made during their final exams. There were six common mistakes which I felt needed explanation and correction. ADVERT: [showmyads] In this post I will deal with six more common mistakes that my students make. Some of them are really…