My English Pages

Students introduce themselves
The most important issue an efl or esl teacher faces in the first day of school is to alleviate the stress generated by the encounter. I suggest an activity for the students to  introduce themselves to each other. The activity will make everyone feel at ease. The lesson plan is described below.
5 questions as a starter
Instead of urging students to introduce themselves by giving their names and some other information about themselves (which are usually forgotten immediately after the activity), put them in a context. For example, tell …

Vocabulary Prediction Lesson Plan
These activities can be used to refine understanding of students vocabulary schematic knowledge and activate vocabulary related to the same semantic network. They can be done as pre-reading activities or as a game.
Pre-reading activity

The teacher tells the student that they are going to read a text about for example environment.
The teacher writes the topic on the board.
Students predict the vocabulary items that may appear in the passage.
The teacher writes the suggested words on the board and asks for the reason of the students’ choice of words or …

This activity requires that students have some knowledge of relative clauses. The aim of the activity is to help students distinguish restrictive (defining) relative clauses from non restricitive (non defining) clauses.
The activity

Write on the board the following two sentences:

Michael Jackson, who was a famous singer, died of an overdose.
The man who sent the anonymous letter is the real murderer.

Ask students to do the following:

Underline the relative clauses.
Underline the relative pronouns.
Decide which relative clause is important and necessary to the meaning of the sentence.
Decide which relative clause is not necessary to …

Dictation
Dictation is not considered an old fashioned activity any more. A lot f teachers have discovered that it’s a rich mine for developing learners vocabulary and structural competence. The teacher’s role in modern variations of this activity is no longer considered central. Learners are given more control of the activity.
Here are my previous posts about what dictation is and its variations:

Why Dictation?
Play-Stop-Go-Back Dictaion

The activity I suggest in this post is another alternative to traditional dictation.
Dictogloss

Write a short text using a limited set of previously taught vocabulary.
Read the text at …

Standard vs Slang
EFL learners have difficulty understanding and interacting with native speakers because the nature of native speakers language differ more or less from the artificial language that we, as EFL teachers, use in the classroom.  That’s why, it would be a good idea to teach slang to EFL students to bridge the gap between the language of the books that we usually teach and the language of  every day life that our learners would be forced to understand and use when facing authentic situations and interacting with native speakers.
The …

Using songs
Songs are an effective way learn English because of many reasons:

Dictation machine
Dictation is one of the oldest activities. It is thought, unduly, to be an old fashioned, teacher-centered and uncommunicative activity. Nevertheless, it still has its place in ELT. The activity that I will present in this post is a variation of the traditional dictation. You can look for more variations in my previous post about why teachers should use dictation in English language teaching.

Advice
This activity teaches students expressions of advice (asking for and giving advice.) The materials needed are sheets of paper and pens or pencils. The activity takes about 50 minutes.

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a tool that uses a relaxed, informal atmosphere combined with lateral thinking to solve problems. In spite of its importance in the generation of new ideas, many students do not have enough training to use it. This activity will teach students to brainstorm effectively. It can be carried out in a one-period session.  No materials are required apart from a pen or pencil and sheets of paper.

Writing a persuasive essay
This activity teaches students to write persuasive essay. The activity takes about 2-3 session periods.