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…
As I mentioned before, next year I am going to teach low level students, so I am trying to prepare some materials which I will be able to use with them. A week ago I wrote a post on the verb to be in affirmative and negative sentences. In this post I would like to…
This post is about common mistakes in English. There are two pieces of interesting research into learning and teaching English. One of them says that students learn more if someone else is corrected by the teacher than if they are corrected. The other found out that students learn and remember more vocabulary if the words…
Next school year I am going to teach low level students, so I started to prepare materials for them. The first one deals with the verb to be in affirmative and negative sentences. The verb to be is the most important verb in English. You need it all the time. That is why solid knowledge…
In the previous post we could see that verbs usually go with one or more prepositions. In this post we are going to deal with two verbs which can be followed by two different prepositions with different meaning. These verbs are THROW and SHOUT. ADVERT: [showmyads] Both of these verbs can be followed by the…
Are you going to teach or learn the form “BE GOING TO” for expressing future? This post might come handy. There is a mind map explaining all the forms: Affirmative sentences, negative sentences and questions. This post is especially designed for elementary students who need to learn the form. There are two games to practise…
Yesterday I learnt Spanish and when I tried to reconstruct a text I found out that I do not remember the small words like articles and prepositions. They were so small that I did not pay enough attention to them to remember them. Interestingly my students have similar problems with prepositions in English. Therefore I…
The greatest thing that can happen to a teacher is the aha! moment when suddenly the students get it. And this happened to me on Thursday. I was teaching the modal verbs of deduction for a hundredth time and suddenly the students could understand it and use it correctly. Wonderful feeling!!! ADVERT: [showmyads] In this…
Students often use the wrong prepositions. So I have created this post in hope that this short explanation and practise will help them get at least some of the prepositions correct. ADVERT [showmyads] Many teachers claim that students use prepositions incorrectly because of interference from their mother tongue. It is true in many cases but…
My students are online all the time. Through the internet they are flooded with information, but whenever I ask them about any current affairs they know nothing. They have no idea who or what I am talking about. ADVERT: [showmyads] In my opinion, this “dementia” is caused by two factors. First, all the news on…
Many students struggle with reported speech. They feel that there are many rules they have to follow and they often get confused. In this post I try to simplify the rules about the reported speech (or indirect speech) as much as possible. There is mind map describing the basic rules, a video and two games…
In my last post I try to teach 11 common similes in English. However, as some students still feel that they need more practise, I have decided to produce this post too. This post contains a visually appealing demonstration of all the 11 similes, a short film to learn the phrases and a dictation exercise….
A year ago George Woolard published a book called Messaging. There he suggests that learners of a foreign language should learn the whole phrases and sentences. By learning the whole chunks the students will later be able to produce the language quicker and more precisely. ADVERT [showmyads] I think that I can agree with this…