Tag Archives: activities

• Most Confusing ESL Pronunciation Mistake (Includes Interactive Exercises)

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Cover pron shot

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

There has been a consensus among the many professionals that I have asked that dropping the final consonants on words causes the most communication breakdowns. I’ve had to decipher things like:

“I cou-n do my homewo cu I fe si.” (I couldn’T do my homeworK because I felT sicK.)

“Do you wan ah to chew a new topi?” (Do you wanT uS to chooSE a new topiC?)

If we just respond by asking, “What did you say?”, the speaker will merely repeat what s/he had said, perhaps a bit louder.

I developed a set of exercises that have proven to be effective in developing students’ self-awareness in the cause of some of their communication breakdowns. So now, if we ask “What did you say?”, the speaker will have a sense of the cause of the breakdown and of a way to adjust what they had said.

What you’ll find in the downloadable exercises

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• Fun Writing-Class Activity: Writing Hints and Solving Mysteries about Classmates

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REV Cover neighbor shot
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

This posting is an updated version of a post from April 10, 2018:  • Writing Class Person Description Activity: Fun, Lively and Productive

I knew that this activity worked well with my ESL students. However, I hadn’t realized what they were experiencing internally until I did it myself.

Several of my colleagues and I decided to try out some activities by putting ourselves in the roles of students. And this was one of them.

In brief, we were randomly and secretly assigned one of the colleagues in the room. On a paper with only a number, we described the colleague physically and/or their personality and/or habit etc. Next we put all our papers on a stack, mixed them up and then each of us taped one on the wall. After that, we walked around reading the description and writing on a paper the name of the colleague being described. Finally, we shared our decisions with each other.

My insights into what students experience during this activity

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• Getting The Most Out of Information-Gap Chart Activities PART 2 (Vocabulary Reinforcement)

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Cover info gap 2 shot

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)

You can see my video discussing Part 1 & Part 2 here: VIDEO Getting The Most Out of ESL Information-Gap Activities: Six Recommendations

I have found these information-gap chart pair-activities to be a great go-to interactive activity when I’d like to review and reinforce vocabulary words and conversation strategies. And best of all, they are quite easy to make and customize.

In my previous posting, PART 1, I shared a chart in which the categories were:

Relationship         Personality         Birth Year

Cover Info Part 1 shot

See • Getting The Most Out of Information-Gap Chart Activities PART 1

I had made that one because I wanted to review vocabulary for relationships like cousin, nephew, niece, and aunt, and for personalities like serious, cool, and funny.  Later in the course after students had developed more vocabulary, I revised the chart to so that they could review:

Slide 1 less familiar

I’ve also made charts that included some of these categories:

Slide 2 categories

Here are two sites that have been helpful for the vocabulary in these categories:

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• Getting The Most Out of Information-Gap Chart Activities PART 1

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Cover info Part 1 shot

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)

You can see my video discussing Part 1 & Part 2 here: VIDEO Getting The Most Out of ESL Information-Gap Activities: Six Recommendations

At first glance, these activities can appear to be just a fun way for students to interact with each other. However, the more I’ve worked with and developed them, the more I realize what an effective skill-building tool they can be.

For this PART 1 posting, I’ll…
1) briefly review what an information gap activity is.
2) describe three important ways to make these most effective for students and the mistakes that teachers sometimes make with these.

In my next posting, PART 2, I’LL …
3) explain ways to customize them to review and reinforce vocabulary words and conversation strategies.
4) include more samples of these types of information-gap activities.

Here is an example of an information gap activity and a common mistake teachers make with them.

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