Months are one of the few lexical sets that students have to learn. In general, lexical sets are difficult to learn and remember. Therefore, we should teach vocabulary in thematic sets. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. There are some lexical sets which should be taught as such. They are for example…
Reported speech is not easy but when it comes to reported questions students go mad. “There are so many rules to apply,” they whimper. “First, you have to change the question into an announcement and then you have to shift the tenses.” That was why I tried to simplify this procedure. <!– wp:more –> In…
Recently one of my readers asked me to write a post on USED TO, GET USED TO and BE USED TO. He wanted a clear infographic and some exercises to practise the grammar. So I did exactly that. I created an infographic, an online quiz and a simple worksheet to help you learn these phrases….
I can see what you think. Irregular verbs again? You must be joking!!! I know. I have already published many posts on irregular verbs. For example: <!– wp:more –> Irregular verbs with Fluency MC Irregular verbs rhymes Irregular verbs straightforward ADVERT: [showmyads] But let´s be honest. None of them proved to be the miracle solution…
Reported speech is often considered very difficult. Students fear the backshifting of the tenses, because they often do not know the tenses very well. If they struggle with the formation of the past tense, you cannot expect them to recognize it and backshift it to the past perfect tense. To avoid all this hassle I…
Keywords are the easiest way for students to know which present tense they should use. If the students know them, they are more likely to choose correctly which present tense they should use in the given sentence. Moreover, once they remember and understand the keywords, they might be able to form the underlining grammar concept…
It is very important for students to be able to say and understand dates in English. For example if our students deal with someone about a deadline, they need to be sure what date is being talked about. In business, missing the deadline can have dire consequences. Therefore, dates are extremely important for the students…
The schwa sound is the most frequent sound in English. It appears in nearly every word, therefore, it is of paramount importance that students can hear and produce this sound correctly. To help them I have prepared this post. You will find several exercises to help your students produce and hear the schwa sound. <!–…
In his latest video Fluency MC teaches comparatives and superlatives. He uses about forty different adjectives and raps them in the comparative and superlative form. The song is catchy and the grammar very important. Jason was kind enough to allow me to write some teaching materials to go with the song. In this post you…
Greetings are one of the topics teachers have to teach every year. They are introduced early on in every textbook and it is really nice if your students can produce some language from the very beginning. It is usually the first function students learn in English. <!– wp:more –> Surprisingly, greetings are not easy for…
Thematic vocabulary sets are the best way to learn vocabulary. The research shows that students learn these sets much more quickly than semantic sets. Moreover, they remember the words much longer and they confuse them less. Even our poll has showed that 100% of teachers consider these sets very useful. <!– wp:more –> These thematic…
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…
Dictation is one of the best listening activities. To be able to write what you hear, you have to understand it and know the words. Once you can divide the stream of sounds into separate words, then you can understand it. And as dictation makes you do this, it is the best way to improve…
Irregular verbs in English are very important for students to learn. These verbs belong among the most frequent words in English and if you want to speak about your experience you cannot do without them. Therefore it is extremely important to give a lot of time to teaching and learning these verbs. <!– wp:more –>…
In this post I would like to share 7 online quizzes to practise the present simple tense. All the quizzes are in HTML 5, so you or your students can play them on their mobile phones. Moreover, if you have a website or a wordpress site, you can easily enter these exercise there by copying…
In this post, I would like to share the best activities I know to teach questions in the present simple tense. The aim of these fun activities is to help your students form the YES/NO questions and short answers correctly. I have used all these activities in my classes and they worked very well. In…
[mp_row] [mp_span col=”3″] [mp_image id=”3553″ size=”full” link_type=”custom_url” link=”#” target=”false” caption=”false” align=”left”] [/mp_span] [mp_span col=”9″] [mp_text] Recently I published a post on Speed Reading. The post contains a game which you can play on your computer. However, most of my students have a smart phone but no internet connection. Therefore, it is much more effective to…
In English there are many words which have the same or very similar meaning. Words that have the similar meaning are called synonyms. In this post, I am going to present synonyms for the words DIFFICULT and HARD. <!– wp:more –> In this post, there are two quizzes to practise the new vocabulary and an…
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…