Give them time to compare their drawings. The drawings often make misunderstanding manifest

3.    Give them time to compare their drawings. The drawings often make misunderstanding manifest.

4.    Split the class into teams of four. Tell them you’re going to show them Jumbled sentences (see below) and their task will be to shout out the unjumbled sentence. The first team to shout out a correct sentence gets a point.

Jumbled sentences

Will still can you and it it dry retain its spin shape

You can spin-dry it and it will still retain its shape

Cold him we shouldered first at

At first we cold-shouldered him

Our ill ancestors treated they

They ill-treated our ancestors

Clean it don’t dry

Don’t dry-clean it

Black frog they Maria to the marched him

They frog-marched him to the Black Maria

Double your windows glaze to like we’d

We’d like to double-glaze your windows

Pooh just his poohed offer they

They just pooh-poohed his offer

Don’t soap me you soft dare

Don’t you dare soft-soap me!

The world of take

Grammar:	Some basic meanings of the verb take
Level:	Intermediate to advanced
Time:	40-50 minutes
Materials:	Set of sentences below (for dictation)

In class

1.    Put the students in small groups to brainstorm all the uses of the verb take they can think of.

2.    Ask each group to send a messenger to the next group to pass on their ideas.

3.    Dictate the sentences below which they are to write down in their mother tongue. Tell them only to write in mother tongue, not English. Be ready to help explain any sentences that students do not understand.

The new president took over in January.

The man took the woman’s anger seriously.

‘You haven’t done the washing up, I take it,’ his wife said to him.

The little boy took the old watch apart to see how it worked.

‘I think we ought to take the car,’ he said to her.

This bloke always takes his problems to his mother.

‘We took the village without a shot being fired,’ she told him.

‘Take care’ the woman said, as she left home that morning.

He took charge of the planning team.

The woman asked what size shoes he took.

‘Yes I really take your point’ he told her.

‘If we go to a movie,’ she told her boyfriend, ‘it’ll really take you out of yourself.’

The news the boy brought really took the woman aback.

The chair asked him to take the minutes of the meeting.

‘You can take it from me, it’s worse than you think’

4.    Ask the students to work in threes and compare their translations. Go round helping and checking.

5.    Check that they’re clear about the usual direct translation of take into their language. Now ask them to mark all the translations where take is not rendered by its direct equivalent.

Problem Solving A dictionary game

Grammar:	Comparatives, it (referring back)
Level:	Elementary (or as a review at higher levels)
This activity provides good skills practice in scan reading a dictionary   Time:	45 minutes
Materials:	One dictionary per two students

Preparation

On the board write the following:

Abcdifghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

It’s got more letters than…

It’s got fewer letters than…

It’s the same length as….

It’s earlier in the dictionary than…

It’s later in the dictionary than…

It’s further on…

Back a bit.

The first letter’s right

The first two/three/four letters are right

(or you could dictate this to the students if you want a quiet settling in period at the start of the class)

In class

1.    Explain to the students that you’re going out of the room for a short time and they’re to select one word for you to guess when you come back. They find the word in their dictionaries.

2.    Go back in and have a first wild guess at the class’s word. The students should tell you whether their word is longer, shorter or the same length as your guess and whether it’s earlier or later in the dictionary. Here is an example (teachers can correct pronunciation as they go along ):

teacher:	Middle
students:	It’s shorter. And it’s later in the dictionary.
teacher:	Train.
students:	It’s Earlier. It’s Got The Same Number Of Letters.
teacher:	Plane.
students:	It’s Later.
teacher:	Rains.
students:	It’s Later. It’s Got The Same Number Of Letters.
teacher:	Seat.
students:	It’s Longer.The First Letter Is Right. It’s Later In The Dictionary.
teacher:	Stops.
students:	It’s Earlier.
teacher:	Skirt.
students:	It’s Later
teacher:	Spend.
students:	The First Two Letters Are Right. It’s Later.
teacher:	Spine.
students:	It’s Later.
teacher:	Spore.
students:	The First Four Letters Are Right. You’re Really Warm Now. It’s A Bit Further On.
teacher:	Sport.
students:	Yes.

3.    You can write the words you guess and notes of the students’ answers on the board as you go along, to help you to remember where you are. At the beginning, you can prompt the students by asking questions such as ‘Is it shorter, longer or the same length as my word? Is it earlier or later in the dictionary?’ etc.

4.    When the students have got the idea of the game, reverse the process; you think of a word (one from a recent lesson works well) and students guess. You give them information as to length, place in dictionary and any letters they’ve guessed right.

5.    Now hand over the exercise to the students. They should scan their notes, textbooks and /or minds (but not dictionaries) and create a short wordlist. Then in pairs or small groups they can repeat the activity.

Rationale

This is a good game for teaching scan reading and alphabetical order when using dictionaries. The revision or introduction of the grammatical structures in a meaningful context is disguised since the students usually see this is vocabulary game. Because it has a pretty tight structure and build-up, it’s a good exercise for establishing the principle of group/pairwork with a class that does not take readily to working in different formats.

Note

With some classes we have asked the students to analyze their own guessing processes. Some students have written interesting short compositions on the best guessing strategies.

  Eyes

Grammar:	‘Second’ conditional
Level:	Lower to upper intermediate
Time:	30-45 minutes
Materials:	None

In class

1.    Ask a student to draw a head in profile on the board. Ask the student to add eyes in the back of his head.

2.    Give the students this sentence beginning on the board and ask them to complete it using a grammar suggested:

If people had eyes in the back of their heads, then they … would/might/could/would have to … (+ infinitive)

For example:

‘If people had eyes on the back of their heads they could read two books at once’ (so two pairs of eyes).

3.    Tell the students to write the above sentence stem at the top of their paper and then complete it with fifteen separate ideas. Encourage the use of dictionaries. Help students all you can with vocabulary and go round checking and correcting.

4.    Once students have all written a good number of sentences (at least ten) ask them to form teams of four. In the fours they read each other’s sentences and pick the four most interesting ones.

5.    Each team puts their four best sentences on the board.

6.    The students come up to the board and tick the two sentences they find the most interesting. The team that gets the most ticks wins.

Note

Students come up with a good range of social, medical and other hypotheses. Here are some examples:

… then they would not need driving mirrors.

… they would make really good traffic wardens.

… then you could kiss someone while looking away!

 

Umbrella

Grammar:	Modals and present simple
Level:	Elementary to intermediate
Time:	30-40 minutes
Materials:	One large sheet of paper per student

In class

1.    Ask a student to draw a picture on the board of a person holding an umbrella. The umbrella looks like this.

2.    Explain to the class that this ‘tulip-like’ umbrella design is a new, experimental one.

3.    Ask the students to work in small groups and brainstorm all the advantages and disadvantages of a new design. Ask them to use these sentence stems:

It/you can/can’t…

It/you + present simple…

It/you will/won’t…

It/you may/may not…

4.    For example: ‘It is easy to control in a high wind’, ‘You can see where you’re going with this umbrella’

5.    Give the students large sheets of paper and ask them to list the advantages and disadvantages in two columns.

6.    Ask the students to move around the room and read each other’s papers. Individually they mark each idea as ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘intriguing’.

7.    Ask the student how many advantages they came up with and how many disadvantages. Ask the students to divide up into three groups according to which statement applies to them:

I thought mainly of advantages.

I thought of some of both.

I thought mainly of disadvantages.