Get the students to fill the board with their most interesting four-year-old questions

2.    Get the students to fill the board with their most interesting four-year-old questions.

Variations

This can be used with various question situations. The following examples work well:

-     Ask the students to imagine a court room-the prosecution barrister is questioning a defense witness. Tell the students to write a dozen questions the prosecution might ask.

-     What kind of questions might a woman going to a foreign country want to ask a woman friend living in this country about the man or the woman in the country? And what might a man want to ask a man?

-     What kind of questions are you shocked to be asked in an English-speaking country and what questions are you surprised not to be asked?

Achievements

Grammar:	By+time-phrases Past perfect
This activity also works well with: present perfect+yet, like doing, like having done, and modals   Level:	Lower intermediate
Time:	20-30 minutes
Materials:	Set of prepared sentences

Preparation

1.    Think of your achievements in the period of your life that corresponds to the average age of your class. If you’re teaching seventeen-year-olds, pick your first seventeen years. Also think of a few of the times when you were slow to achieve. Write the sentences about yourself like these:

By the age of six I had learnt to read.

I still hadn’t learnt to ride a bike by then.

I had got over my fear of water by the time I was eight.

By the time I was nine I had got the hang of riding a bike.

By thirteen I had read a mass of books.

I’d got over my fear of the dark by around ten.

 

2.    Write ten to twelve sentences using the patterns above. If you’re working in a culture that is anti-boasting then pick achievements that do not make you stand out.

3.    Your class will relate well to sentences that tell them something new about you, as much as you feel comfortable telling them. Communication works best when it’s for real.

In class

1.    Ask the students to have two different colored pens ready. Tell them you’re going to dictate sentences about yourself. They’re to take down the sentences that are also true for them in one color and the sentences that are not true about them in another color.

2.    Put the students in fours to explain to each other which of your sentences were also true of their lives.

3.    Run a quick question and answer session round the groups e.g. ‘At what age had you learnt to ski/dance/sing/ play table tennis etc by?’ ‘I’d learnt to ski by seven.’

4.    Ask each students to write a couple of fresh sentences about things achieved by a certain date/time and come up and write them on a board. Wait till the board is full, without correcting what they’re putting up. Now point silently at problem sentences and get the students to correct them.

Variation

You can use the above activity for any area of grammar you want ti personalize. You might write sentences about:

-      Things you haven’t got round to doing (present perfect + yet)

-      Things you like having done for you versus things you like doing for yourself

-      Things you ought to do and feel you can’t do (the whole modal area is easily treated within this frame)

Reported advice

Grammar:	Modals and modals reported
Level:	Elementary to intermadiate
Time:	15-20 minutes
Materials:	None

In class

1.    Divide your class into two groups: ‘problem people’ and ‘advice-givers’.

2.    Ask the ‘problem people’ to each think up a minor problem they have and are willing to talk about.

3.    Arm the ‘advice-givers’ with these suggestion forms:

You could…	You should…	You might as well…
You might…	You ought to…	You might try…ing…

4.    Get the class moving round the room. Tell each ‘problem person’ to pair off with an ‘advice-giver’. The ‘problem person’ explains her problem and the other person gives two bits of advice using the grammar suggested. Each ‘problem person’ now moves to another ‘advice-giver’. The ‘problem people’ get advice from five or six ‘advice-givers’

5.    Call class back into the plenary. Ask some of the ‘problem people’ to state their problem and report to the whole group the best and the worst piece of advice they were offered, naming the advice-giver e.g. ‘Juan was telling me I should give her up.’ ‘ Jane suggested I ought to get a girlfriend of hers to talk to her for me.’

Variation

If you have a classroom with space that allows it, form the students into two concentric circles, the outer one facing in and the inner one facing out. All the inner circle students are ‘advice-givers’ and all the outer circle students are ‘problem people’. After each round, the outer circle people move round three places. This is much more cohesive than the above.

Picture the past

Grammar:	Past simple, past perfect, future in the past
Level:	Lower intermediate
Time:	20-40 minutes
Materials:	None

Class

1.    Ask three students to come out and help you demonstrate the exercise. Draw a picture on the board of something interesting you have done. Do not speak about it. Student A then writes a past simple sentence about it. Student B write about what had already happened before the picture action and student C about something that was going to happen, using the appropriate grammar.

I got up at eight a.m.

 

I’ve just got off the bus

 

I’m going to work today

2.    Put the students in fours. Each draws a picture of a real past action of theirs. They pass their picture silently to a neighbor in the foursome who adds a past tense sentence. Pass the picture again and each adds a past perfect sentence. They pass again and each adds a was going to sentence. All this is done in silence with you going round helping and correcting.

  Impersonating members of a set  

Grammar:	Present and past simple-active and passive
Level:	Elementary to intermediate
Time:	20-30 minutes
Materials:	None

  In class

1.    Ask people to brainstorm all the things they can think of that give off light

2.    Choose one of this yourself and become the thing chosen. Describe yourself in around five to six sentences, e.g.:

I am a candle

I start very big and end up as nothig

My head is lit and I produce a flame

I burn down slowly

In some countries I am put on Christmas tree

I am old-fashioned and very fashionable

3.    Ask a couple of other students to choose other light sourses and do the same as you have just done. Help them with language. It could be ‘I am a light bulb-I was invented by Edison.’

4.    Group the students in sixes. Give them a new category. Ask them to work silently, writing four or six forst-person sentences in role. Go round and help especially with the formation of the present simple passive (when this help is needed).

5.    In their groups the students read out their sentences.

6.    Ask each group to choose their six interesting sentences and then read out to the whole group.

Variation

The exercise is sometimes more excitingif done with fairly abstract sets, e.g. numbers between 50 and 149, musical notes, distances, weights. The abstract nature of the set makes people concretise interestingly, e.g.:

I am a kilometre.

My son is a metre and my baby is centimetre.

On the motorway I am driven in 30 seconds. (120 kms. per hour)

We have also used these sets: types of stone/countries/items of clothing (e.g.socks, skirts, jackets/times of day/smells/family roles (e.g.son, mother etc.)/types of weather.

Rationale

The sentences students produce in this exercise are nor repeat runs of things they have already thought and said in mother tongue. New standpoints, new thoughts, new language. The English is fresh because the thought is.

 Listening to people No backshift

Grammar:	Reported speech after past reporting verb
Level:	Elementary to lower intermediate
Time:	15-20 minutes
Material:	None

In class

1.    Pair the students. Ask one person in each pair to prepare to speak for two minutes about a pleasurable future event. Give them a minute to prepare.

2.    Ask the listener in each pair to prepare to give their whole attention to the speaker. They are not to take notes. Ask the speaker in each pair to get going. You time two minutes.

3.    Pair the pairs. The two listeners now report on what they heard using this kind of form:

She was telling me she’s going to Thailand for her holiday and she added that she’ll be going by plane.

The speakers have the right to fill in things the listeners have left out but only after the listeners have finished speaking.

4.    The students go back into their original pairs and repeat the above but this time with the other one as speaker, so everybody has been able to share their future event thoughts.

Incomparable

Grammar:	Comparative structures
Level:	Elementary
Time:	15-20 minutes
Materials:	None

In class

1.    Tell the students a bit about yourself by comparing yourself to some people you know:

I’m more … than my husband.

I’m not as…as my eldest boy.

I reckon my uncle is … than me

Write six or seven of these sentences up on the board as a grammar pattern input.

2.    Tell the students to work in threes. Two of the three listen very closely while the third compares herself to people she knows. The speakers speak without interruption for 90 seconds and you time them.

3.    The two listeners in each group feedback to the speaker exactly what they had heard. If they miss things the speaker will want to prompt them.

4.    Repeat steps 2 and 3 so that everybody in the group has had a go at producing a comparative self-portrait.

One question behind

Grammar:	Assorted interrogative forms
You can adapt this by preparing your own question sets for different interrogative structures   Level:	Beginner to intermediate
Time:	5-10 minutes
Materials:	One question set for each pair of students

In class

1.    Demonstrate the exercise to your students. Get one of them to ask you the question of a set. You answer ‘Mmmm’, with closed lips. The student asks you the second question – you give the answer that would have been right for the first question. The student asks the third question and you reply with the answer to the second question, and so on. The wrong combination of question and answer can be quite funny.

2.    Pair the students and give each pair a question set. One student fires the questions and the other gives delayed-by-one replies. The activity is competitive. The first pair to finish a question set is the winner.

Question set A

Where do you sleep? (the other says nothing)

Where do you eat? (the other answers the first question)

Where do you go swimming?

Where do you wash your clothes?

Where do you read?

Where do you cook?

Where do you listen to music?

Where do you get angry?

Where do you do your shopping?

Where do you sometimes drive to?

Question set B

What do you eat your soup with?

What do you cut your meat with?

What do you write on?

What do you wipe your mouth with?

What do you blow your nose with?

What do you brush your hair with?

What do you sleep on?

What do you write with?

What do you wear in bed?

What do you wear in restaurant?

 

Question set C

Can you tell me something you ate last week?

Tell me something you saw last week?

Is there something you have come to appreciate recently?

What about something you really want to do next week?

Where have you spent most of this last week?

Where would you have you liked to spend this last week?

Where are you thinking of going on holiday?

Which is the best holiday place you have ever been to?

Variation 1

Have students devise their own sets of questions to then be used as above.

Variation 2

Group the students in fours: one acts as a ‘time-keeper’, one as a ‘question master’ and person 3 and 4 are the ‘players’.

The ‘question master’ fires five rapid questions at player A which she has to answer falsely. The ‘time-keeper’ notes the time questioning takes. The ‘question master’ fires five similar questions at B, who answers truthfully. The quickest answerer wins. (The problem lies in choosing the right wrong answer fast enough.)

Possible questions:

How old are you?

Where do you live?

Which color do you like best?

What time is it?

How did you get here?

 

What time did you get up today?

What did you have for breakfast?

Where does your best friend live?

What sort of music do you dislike?

How many brothers and sisters do you have?

 

Movement and grammar Sit down then

Grammar:	Who + simple past interrogative/Telling the time
Level:	Beginner to elementary
Time:	10-20 minutes
Materials:	None

In class

1.    Ask everybody to stand up. Tell them you’re going to shout out bedtimes. When they hear the time they went to bed yesterday, they shout ‘I did’ and sit down. You start like this:

Who went to bed at two a.m.?	Who went to bed at quarter to two?
Who went to bed at ten to two?	Who went to bed at half past one?

2.    Continue until all the students have sat down.

3.    Get people back on their feet. Ask one of the better students to come out and run the same exercise but this time about when people got up, e.g.

Who woke up at four thirty this morning?

Who woke up at twenty to five?

4.    Repeat with a new question master but asking about shopping, e.g.:

Who went shopping yesterday?

Who went shopping on…(day of the week)

Only if

Grammar:	Polite requests, -ing participle Only if + target verb structure of your choice
Level:	Elementary +
Time:	15-20 minutes
Materials:	None

In class

1.    Make or find as much space in your room as possible and ask the class to stand at one end of it.

2.    Explain that their end is one river bank and the opposite end of the room is the other bank. Between is the ‘golden river’ and you’re the ‘keeper’ of the golden river. Before crossing the river the students have to say the following sentence:

Can we cross your golden river sitting on your golden boat?

3.    They need to be able to say this sentence reasonably fluently.

4.    Get the students to say the sentence. You answer:

Only if you’re wearing…

Only if you’ve got…

Only if you’ve got … on you

5.    Supposing you say ‘Only if you’re wearing trousers’. All the students who wear trousers can ‘boat’ across the river without hindrance. The others have to try to sneak across without being tagged by you. The first person who is tagged, changes places with you and becomes ‘it’ (the keeper who tags the others in the next round).

6.    Continue with students saying ‘Can we cross your golden river, sitting on your golden boat?’ ‘It’ might say, ‘Only if you’re wearing ear-rings.’ etc.

Variation 1

To make this game more lively, instead of having just one keeper, everyone is tagged becomes keeper. Repeat until everyone has been tagged.

 Meaning and translation Two-word verbs

Grammar:	Compound verbs
Level:	Upper intermediate to advanced
Time:	40-50 minutes
Materials:	One Mixed-up verb sheet per pair of students. The Jumbled sentences on a large separate piece of card

In class

1.    Pair the students and ask them to match the verbs on the mixed-up verb sheet you give them. Tell them to use dictionaries and to call you over. Be everywhere at once.

Mixed-up verb sheet
Please match words from column 1 with words from column 2to form correct compound verbs.
Column 1	Column 2
back-	dry
cross-	soap
ghost-	treat
soft-	write
blow-	reference
double-	cross
ill-	dry
spin-	comb
cold-	manage
double-	feed
pooh-	read
spoon-	pooh
court-	glaze
dry-	clean
proof-	shoulder
stage-	martial
frog-	march
wrong-	record
toilet-	foot
tape-	train
short-	change
rubber-	feed
force-	stamp
field-	test
cross-	question
cross-	examine
cross-	check

Key to first group of verbs:

To back-comb/to cross-reference/to ghost-write/to soft-soap/to blow-dry/to double-cross/to ill-treat/to spin-dry

Key to the second group of verbs:

To cold-shoulder/to double-glaze/to pooh-pooh/to spoon-feed/to court-martial/to dry-clean/to proof-read/to stage-manage

Key to third group of verbs

To frog-match/to wrong-foot/to toilet-train/to tape-record/to short-change/to rubber-stamp/to force-feed/to field-test/to cross-question/to cross-examine/to cross-check

2.    Ask them to take a clean sheet of paper and a pen or pencil suitable for drawing. Tell them you’re going to give them a few phrases to illustrate. They’re to draw a situation that brings out the meaning of the phrases. Here are the phrases – do not give them more than 30 seconds per drawing (they will groan):

To toilet-train a child

To soft-soap a superior

To force-feed an anorexic

To court-martial a soldier

To back-comb a person’s hair

To cross-examine a witness

To spin-dry your clothes

To cold-shoulder a friend