Pictionaries are a powerful method of teaching new vocabulary. In pictionaries, you can see the word and its meaning at the same time, and thus it is easier to remember it. Moreover, good pictionaries are appealing and they attract learners to explore them. Therefore, it is a good idea to include them in your…
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…
Recently, in the post called Questions with Like, I asked you to choose the activity you would like me to write about. Most of you voted for a Speaking activity, so I prepared a set of speaking activities to practice the prepositions of place. I have already created a post on prepositions, so this…
As I wrote before, irregular verbs are the most important thing for all students of English to learn. However, it is not easy to master them. That is why Fluency and I started to collaborate on a series of posts that deal with teaching just the irregular verbs.ADVERT:[showmyads]In this post we are going to…
In my opinion, irregular verbs are the most important thing one has to learn in English. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that students know them. However, teaching them is not easy. There are no rules, and the number of new words that students manage to commit to memory is quite low. Thus the teaching…
Jason R. Levine produces some of the best videos for teaching and learning English online. You probably know his super famous rap on irregular verbs. However, for this post we agreed to create materials for another one of his videos. You will find materials here for his video on collocations with the verb HAVE.…
Most placement tests are for adults. There are few placement tests for young students. Thus, when a teacher tries to test his or her students’ proficiency in English using a standard placement test, the students quickly become discouraged because they don’t understand anything. Then the final results tell you nothing about the students´ knowledge.…
I like teaching prepositions of place. I can use the Cuisenaire rods, and my students can be creative in many ways and use English a lot. Here I would like to share the activities I use to teach prepositions of place. In this post you can find the following activities: a mind map, an…
I always loved the word formation part of the FCE test. This was the part of the test where I always scored really high. However, some of my students don't. So I sat down and tried to find out why I have been so successful in this part of the test. And the result?…
For an unknown reason many elementary textbooks teach HAVE GOT at the very beginning. Students find it difficult and they get confused. Moreover, they get even more fed up when they learn that the Americans do not use this form. But I have to teach the grammar, so there is no use crying over…
Conditionals scare students to death. They seem complicated and difficult to understand. But as I explain, they only seem to be like this. In fact, they are quite simple and easy to comprehend. In this post, I will try to keep things as simple as possible. I will deal only with one type of…
Extensive reading is one of the most useful language learning activities students can do. However, to be useful, the students have to know 95 per cent of the words in the text. To achieve this, you either have to choose a really simple text or you have to pre-teach the vocabulary. ADVERT: [showmyads] As…
Teaching irregular verbs in context is not only useful, but rewarding too. A short story attracts the attention of students and can be used in many communicative activities. Unfortunately, there are not many short stories which can be easily used for teaching the past tense. Advert: [showmyads] Luckily, my friend Lynne Blackburn sent me…
Present simple is one of the most important tenses in English. It is quite easy to teach and learn but it must be done properly. In this post I am going to teach some vocabulary first and then teach the forms using the verbs. ADVERT: [showmyads] In this post you can find a worksheet,…
Most of the people who learn English spend their life in an office. Therefore it is neccessary for them to learn the names of the equipment there. ADVERT: [showmyads] In this post I introduce 25 office vocabulary items in an infographic and a video. You can then practise all the words in interactive quizzes…
It is very popular to teach vocabulary in lexical sets. It is easier to explain the meaning and you can present quite a few items at one time. Moreover, the presentation can look good and induce the students to study the words. ADVERT: [showmyads] Surprisingly, research shows that it is not so effective as…
The difference between LITTLE and FEW, especially when you add A LITTLE and A FEW, causes a lot of problems event to students whose English is really good. In this post I try to teach the difference in a graphical way. Having studied the infographic, you should try the interactive quiz and check whether…
Today I experienced the great teaching moment when one of my not so proficient students said that she can understand the grammar perfectly and that it is really easy. I was exalted. I was teaching present continuous tense and the students really liked it and at the end of the lesson they were able…
The usage of the words SOME and ANY is really easy. However, some textbooks like to mix this grammar with the concept of countability and thus they confuse the students. These two words have very little to do with countability. In my opinion their usage is dependent on completely different factors. In this post…
Prepositions are one of the favourite test items. They appear at tests like FCE or CAE and if you know them then you can get a lot of points. Moreover, if you use the prepositions correctly, people find it easier to understand you. The aim of this post is to teach several high-frequency phrases…