ESL and Restaurant Menu Activities
Click here to get access to hundreds of restaurant reviews teeming with beautifully written, natural English words and phrases. Insiders (i.e. fellow ESL student-teachers at Columbia University) tell me that using YELP.com to teach authentic English is becoming increasingly more popular. Here’s some food for thought: Some of my best lessons have been when I used food as the teaching theme. I recall an activity I did in class where students were required to describe the most famous food in their home countries, find images on google, and instruct their fellow classmates on how to make it. The students truly enjoyed the activity.
Writing a Resume
Click here to download this resume writing activity. The activity consists of two parts. In the first section, students will view a sample resume. Teachers should preview each part of the resume and ask students about their experiences and educational backgrounds in order to further familarize them with the content. After students become comfortable with the parts of the resume, teachers should have them work on the second part of the activity by completing the information in the sample resume. In order to expand this activity, teachers can have students rewrite their resume drafts using Microsoft word and engage in peer editing.
Business English Activity-Presenting Graphs
Click here to download a business English Activity. In this activity, students will view a graph of food sales at a fictitious company called Daily Food Company. The students will then take on the role of a company representative and discuss the results of the graph in a role-play. At the end of this activity are comprehension questions to access the students’ understanding of the role-play and the graph.
My advice for teachers is to have students also create graphs of their own company’s sales performance or print out the information from the web. Then the students will have the opportunity to present their company’s information while using the role-play as a prompt.
Teach Obama’s inaugural address
Obama’s election as the 44th president of the United States was one of the most profound events in the history of the United States. I believe that it is imperative for educators to spread the word as to the significance of his victory and its impact upon modern society as well as future generations.
Click here to access Obama’s inaugural address in its entirety.
Here are some questions (based on the inaugural address) that you could ask your students about the speech to start up a great classroom discussion.
- What is a crisis? Give some examples.
- Who founded (started) your country? When did he or she found your country?
- Where is Gettysburg? What happened there? Why did Obama talk about Gettysburg?
- America uses a lot of oil currently. Is there a better, more environmentally friendly resource that Americans should use?
- What does “toil” mean? Have you ever toiled at work before?
- Is your society multicultural like America or is it homogeneous? Name some ethnic groups in your country. What foods do they eat? What drinks do they drink? What music do they like?
- Which famous American city did levees break and cause a flood? What is famous in that city?
- How will Obama change America?
- Did you like Obama’s and Michelle’s clothing during the inauguration?
You can show your students a clip of the address here.
Writing in ESL-Obama’s letter to his children
If your students are interested in the current president and his family, here is a letter that I am sure they will be very happy to read. Obama recently wrote a letter to his two daughters praising them for their efforts and ability to endure throughout the campaign and also informing them of the hope he has for them as well as the children of the country. If you were to use this letter to teach English in your classroom, I recommend using it in advance classes, though portions could be utilized to teach lower level classes as well. You can access the letter in its entirety here.
Teaching students to write emails in English
Click here to download this template for teaching students how to write emails. The template contains a sample business English letter and a template for students to write their own letters. Teachers can alter this activity to suit their needs.
Teaching Pronunciation with minimal pairs and lolipops
The video clip above is from the 2006 film The Pink Panther, starring Steve Martin as a French man named Clouseau. Clouseau, the main character of the film, goes to meet with a reknown “accent coach” to improve his English pronunciation. Unfortunately, despite his coach’s efforts, he is unable to improve very much.
For me, the video above highlights some of the difficulties involved in improving our students’ pronunciation. On one hand, Clouseau seemed very motivated, though it seems that he was impervious to any sort of meaningful correction. In the real world however, when we overly demand that our students pronounce words perfectly, we might discourage them from speaking at all, especially in an EFL environment.
Do you find that your English lessons often resemble the accent coach’s lesson above? What can be done to improve how we teach pronunciation in ESL/EFL?
Over the years, I have come to use minimal pair activities to teach students. Having taught in Japan, I found that many students had difficulties pronouncing and hearing L and R. The use of minimal pair activities increased my students abilities to recognize different sounds. Click here to download a minimal pairs activity.
Also, last year, I was fortunate enough to observe a class where the students were all given lolipops and sheets with tongue twisters on them. The students were asked to put the lolipops in their mouths while they read the tongue twisters. Afterwards, they were placed in groups to talk about the placement of their tongues on the lolipop as they read the worksheet. This enabled students to analyze their own pronunciation and compare it with others.
ESL and Student film production revisted
In the video above, Professor Randall Saddler, of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, outlines how students can learn English through creating movies. He breaks the film making process down into four parts which will enable learners to improve their abilities:
- “Preproduction” (Planning out the script)
- “Postproduction” (Redrafting and editing)
- “Constructive Criticism” (Students can critique each others work after they post it on the class blog)
- “Presentation” (Students give speeches about their movies and reflect on the movie making process)
(”A movie making esl class,” December 2008).
I like the professor’s activity for two reasons: The first is that students are able to learn English in an exciting and more personal manner as opposed to being boringly drilled in the mechanics of the English language. The second reason I like this activity is that students are not only able to learn English but are also able to develop their abilities to use new technology (such as blogs and equipment for film production).
Last year in May, I posted an activity which also focuses on Script writing in the ESL/EFL classroom. I was actually able to present the activity at a JALT (Japan Association for Language Teaching) conference in October of 2008.
If you’re interested in my version of the ESL movie activity, you can download it here along with the related worksheets.
Furthermore, if you’re interested in seeing how Dr. Randall helps his students develop their movie making abilities, the school blog is here.
planetdustin. (2008, December 4). A movie making esl class [Video File]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39o0bh42C_c
Learn English through newspapers
Click here to access newspaper and listening ESL activities via the Learning Edge.These activities consist of vocabulary building, writing, and role play exercises and can be adapted to any level. I have used some of these activities in an ESL class I taught during the Fall of 2008. It was very effective, especially given the fact that my students were beginners.
In order to help my students further engage the newspaper activities, I designed exercises to assess their comprehension of Issue 9 , one of the final issues on the Learning Edge.
You can download those comprehension questions I designed here.
Learn Grammar with Bill Gates
Students can learn English with Bill Gates as he gives a speech (with subtitles) at Harvard University.The grammatical structures are presented in the following order:
1. Present perfect progressive
2. Causatives
3. Conditionals\
4. Past perfect and “use to”
5. Simple past
Students can also learn how to give a speech in English as well as how Americans use humor to make their speeches more interesting. Teachers might have students compare the way Bill Gates gave this speech with how a person of similar status in their country might give the same speech. If anyone else can think of any other ways to use this video to teach ESL/EFL courses, please comment below![Video via Smart Teaching Online–a great website which offers online English courses]
If your students are interested in computers or Bill Gates, I recommend the following book!
Teachers can take easy-to-read excerpts from the book above and use them in class to teach grammar, new vocabulary etc. In addition, students can engage in recitation during their spare time to improve their pronunciation.
