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FULLCIRCLE
ACTIVITY
GUIDE
FOR
TEACHING ENGLISH
AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
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TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Grammar Activities
The Present 1
The Past 4
The Future 6
Vocabulary Activities 8
Phonology Activities 10
Speaking Activities 11
Writing Activities 13
Listening Activities 14
Reading Activities 16
01
Grammar
Activities
The Present
Lets have a look at the Present Form and Use and then some activities to use in the
Practise and Production stages. Below is a reminder of all the forms, uses and examples
of the Present Tense:
P RES EN T
TENSE FORM USE EXAMPLES
NEGATIVE
Thailand isn't getting wealthi-
Is not / Isn't er each year.
and Are not /Aren't
QUESTION
Have you eaten dinner yet?
Has / Have
PRESENT SIMPLE
Presenting the Present Simple requires you to remind students of the "s" or "es" in the third person or
he/she/it part.
PRESENT CONTINUOUS
This tense describes an action that is happening right now or around the time of speaking.
The Past
Lets have a look at the Past Forms and some activities you can use in the Practise and
Production stages of the lesson.
PA S T
TENSE FORM USE EXAMPLES
QUESTION
Did you work there long?
Did
NEGATIVE
The teacher asked when he
Was not / Wasn't wasn't working on his project.
and Were not / Weren't
PAST SIMPLE
Actions that are finished in the past.
You can use ago and last week/year/month to show when it happened.
PAST CONTINUOUS
A moment in the past.
PAST PERFECT
An action that happened in the past before something else happened in the past.
The Future
Lets have a look at the Future Forms and some activities you can use in the Practise
and Production parts of your lesson.
F U TU RE
TENSE FORM USE EXAMPLES
QUESTION
Will he run today?
Will
FUTURE SIMPLE
Future Simple Activity:
Look at predictions by using famous people.
What will they be doing in 2030?
He will be ......
In reality, we normally use the future simple only when we have just decided to do something or to
express a
promise.
I'll have the cheeseburger
I'll finish the work, I promise
FUTURE CONTINUOUS
Future Continuous Activity:
Show a timeline.
9 PM 10 PM
PAST FUTURE
Lesson idea for the future is to give students a diary with booking and meeting put in . Give the students
some questions and get them into pairs. For example:
What will you be doing on the 3 October?
Can we meet?
No, I will be meeting with Mr Smith.
FUTURE PERFECT
Future Perfect Activity:
Lesson idea is to use setting goals and targets for your life and career and school, and also predictions
about the world.
08
Vocabulary
Activities
PRACTISE ACTIVITIES
Drilling (Controlled Practise):
A good way to practise a new word is by using Drilling. You can choose to do a whole class drill or you
can go around the class and get a student to repeat after you individually.
Notebook:
Then its time for your students to record their work in their notebooks. Most of the time students will do
this automatically. However, its a good idea to remind them and get them to make notes of any board
work, especially new words.
Dictionary:
Ask your students to use a bilingual dictionary to look up new words and make a note of them.
YouTube:
Play a YouTube video and ask the students to write as many words as they hear.
Map:
Ask students to draw a map of their journey to work. Then ask them to give directions to someone who
does not know the route.
Students as teachers:
This is a great lesson. Whenever I use peer to peer teaching I am always impressed with the standard of
the lesson. Ask the students to prepare a mini lesson on a new word using whatever they want to
introduce the new word. This could include synonyms/anonyms or a presentation or realia.
Splat:
Splat is a great game. Write the keywords on the board and ask two students to come to the front. Read
out the definition and the first person to splat the word wins. This is a great game for reviewing
vocabulary.
09
Pictionary:
This is a great game. Ask one of the students to come to the front of the class and show them the target
word. Then get them to draw the word and the rest of the class guesses the meaning.
Drama:
Firstly create a list of target words to be used in the lesson. A good lesson to practice drama is to create a
soap opera. Divide the group into small groups and ask them to write a short soap opera using some of
the target words on the list. This is a great fun activity.
Memory games:
Show a picture on a PowerPoint presentation on a topic you are covering in the class. For example, an
office. Find an image on the Internet and display it on your PowerPoint. Show the image for a few min-
utes and then hide it and ask the students to remember as many of the objects they saw. Get them to
write them down. You can have a competition to see who got the most words.
M&M Game:
Firstly get a load of M&M's.
List a number of topics you have studied during the last few weeks. Give each topic a color correspond-
ing to the color of the M&M. Then divide the class into small groups and give them a handful of choco-
lates. The students can eat the chocolate if they can think of a vocab word associated with each color.
For example, the topic Travel is given a red color. If the group has received 7 red M&M's they must think
of 7 words associated with travel. They can eat each of the red M&M's when they write down the word.
Others:
Crosswords
Matching pictures to words
Anagrams
Antonyms
Word Searches
10
Phonology
Activities
PRONUNCIATION ACTIVITIES
Map:
Use a Map of anywhere: get your students pronouncing the names of the cities and also get them to
write these place names using the Phonemic Chart. You can ask them to get in to teams and come to
the board to write these names while the other teams guess.
Homophones Game:
This is where two words sound the same but have different meanings.
Flashcards:
Use flashcards and the phonemic chart to show students how to correctly pronounce words.
Minimal Pairs:
These are words that only differ in one sound like cat and cut or sheep and ship.
There are many different variations on Minimal Pairs. Here are a few:
a) Minimal Pairs Bingo: set up a bingo card with minimal pairs on the cards. For example, cat
and cut, sheep and ship, but and bat, uncle and ankle. Call out the words and get your students to fill in
their cards. Once a student has all the words BINGO!
b) Minimal Word Splat: this is a good activity where you write the minimal words on the board
and two students stand at the front. You or its even better of you can get another student to call out the
words so that they can practise their pronunciation. The two players have to hit the word on the board.
Other students can help but beware of the volume!
c) Stand up and sit down: You explain to the students that when they hear one sound they stand
up and when they here another they sit down. You can vary the sounds in accordance with the phone-
mic chart.
Speaking
Activities
Lets look at some Activities which could be used for the Practise (Controlled) and Production (Free)
stages of your lesson:
COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
A communicative activity is where you can get a pair of students to help each other complete a task. By
giving each of the pairs a slightly different version of the resource they can ask questions to each other
and complete the activity. The resource you can use can be anything you can thing of: a pizza menu, a
train timetable, an instruction manual. If you use a pizza menu then you can hide prices and ingredients
from the students. Their job is to ask each other questions like "how much does the ham and cheese
cost?" or "Whats in the the Hawaiian ?" Again with any activity pick a few resources which are relevant
to the age group. You can also also give the students new vocabulary and grammar structures in the
presentation section of the lesson.
This can be used for Controlled Practise if you give your learners scripted questions and it can also be
used for Free Practise by asking them to create their own questions.
Extension of discussions:
Once you have got your students talking then you can encourage them to keep talking about anything
related to the subject. Go around the the room and start eliciting information form them by asking
open questions and giving positive feedback. Use positive language like wonderful, fantastic, and
unbelievable.
This could be used as a Production Activity.
Adding in discussions:
Once you practised an activity then try to start getting your students talking about things that interest
them and ask them to give opinions. Talk about your favourite food and restaurant.
This could be used as a Production Activity.
Role plays:
Another great way to get students talking is to do role play acting. A good role play would be ordering
some food from a restaurant or booking a flight on the telephone. You would get the students in pairs
or in small groups and assign them characters. A difficult customer is a good one.
This could be used as a Controlled Activity or Production Activity.
12
Interviews:
A job interview is another activity that works well. You would introduce all the vocabulary and gram-
mar structure in the presentation part of the lesson and then get students interviewing each other in
their pairs.
This could be used as a Controlled Activity or Production Activity.
Debates:
You can create debating teams to discuss a topic in the news or current.
This could be used as a Production Activity.
Expressing an opinion:
When you have a discussion lesson, then its a good idea to introduce some good grammar structures
to the students. For example, I believe, I think and the negatives as well. This is also a good opportunity
to introduce Modal verbs to show the degree of certainty. For example, might, may or could.
This could be used as a Production Activity.
Interjecting:
For discussion activities, its also a good idea to teach a way to interrupt a person speaking using:
Could I stop you there?
Excuse me?
This could be taught in the Practise Stage of the lesson.
End a discussion:
For a discussion activity its important to show students how to end the conversation. You can teach
the following constructions:
In summary
In conclusion
This could be taught in the Practise Stage of the lesson.
Writing
Activities
Gap fill activities:
Choose a paragraph from a magazine or from the Internet and take some of the words out, particularly
adjectives and adverbs. Ask you students to add their own descriptive words. This is a good writing activity
for beginner levels.
Project Work:
Create a group project which includes informal, formal, guided and free writing to be presented as a
PowerPoint to the class, displayed as a poster around the school or in the classroom or put onto a Wikis-
paces or blog site.
Speed Date!
Like speed dating get your students to sit opposite each other. Time your students for 1 minute and ask
them to tell each other as many adjectives and adverbs as possible.
Adjective/Adverb game:
Each student writes his or her name vertically. If you are teaching in Asia and many of your students are
using nicknames get them to write their full name down vertically. Then ask them to write an adjec-
tive/adverb for each of the corresponding letters. Then peer to peer assess their work using pair work of
group work to check whether they are truly adjectives or adverbs. You can extend this activity by asking
the students to construct sentences using their adverbs/adjectives.
Student quizzes:
A good activity to use is to get students to write their own quiz questions in groups and then for each of
the groups to ask each other group the questions.
If:
You can use if with more advanced classes given students the chance to express themselves.
14
Listening
Activities
CHOOSING A LISTENING ACTIVITY
One of the most important parts of a listening lesson is choosing the right material. Choosing text that
creates interest and a motivation to want to listen will mean a successful lesson. Lets consider the choic-
es which are available to you when you choose listening material.
School Trip:
A good activity is a school trip or excursion with adult learners. Depending on their level you could go
and watch a movie or a play or visit a museum or attraction with an English speaking commentary
Using YouTube:
Select a short clip and see if you can transcribe it for your students. This is a great opportunity for you to
add a clip to your blog or Wikispaces site. Activities might include gap fill exercises in the pre-listening
stage. YouTube has many different clips for you to use for your listening activities.
LISTENING ACTIVITIES
Here are a number of activities you could use if you are not ready to introduce authentic listening activi-
ties.
Family Tree:
Give the students a copy of a family tree and then make up some listening text so that students can
identify
members of the family.
Picture Sounds:
Give students some pictures of animals and make up some listening text so that the students can identify
the type of animals.For example, you could make a recording or say "It has four legs and you can ride it
with a saddle." The student will choose the picture of the horse. You can also do this with different types
of clothing.
Map Skills:
You could also use a map to teach listening skills and read out directions on a map grid. Play the game in
teams with prizes of M&M's.
15
Picture dictation:
You read out some text and the student attempts to draw what they hear.
Simon Says:
Games like Simon says, where the teacher gives instructions and the student must follow the direction.
As students reach intermediate levels then you can move onto more authentic listening work, which will
involve some real life scenarios.
LISTENING ACTIVITIES
Songs are a wonderful way to motivate students and have fun. One of the most memorable lessons I have
taught was to class of 50 beginner language learners. We looked at the song "Yesterday by the Beatles. It
was a superb lesson. The latest research on teaching suggests that using songs in the classroom is one of
the best ways to get students learning. You can use songs to show grammar structure, pronunciation,
stress and rhythm. Certain songs will also allow your students to access culture. As we said at the start we
want our students to be life long learners and to have an interest in getting better and better at English in
and outside the classroom.
Pre-listening Activity:
Present any new grammar or vocabulary that might come up in your song. Make sure you add context to
the lesson by choosing an appropriate song. Explain the song you have chosen and create a mind map on
the board with words that are in the song and ask them to make predictions of words that might hear.
Elicit information about the kinds of songs. For example, rock, pop, love, etc. Ask the students what their
favourite songs are.
Listening Task:
Play the song the first time asking one or two questions or asking them to fill in the gaps from the script
you have given them. Play the song a second time asking more detailed questions.
Cooler:
Get students to do a Karaoke of the song with you providing the lyric sheet.
Reading
Activities
CHOOSING A READING ACTIVITY
When to come to choose an appropriate text the most important piece of advise is to choose some-
thing the students will enjoy and have fun completing.
READING ACTIVITIES
When we looked at the Lesson Structure for Reading we showed you how to teach a reading lesson
with an appropriate text. We also explained that you are looking to develop certain skills while reading.
Its also very important that you ask the right sort of questions, which we looked at in the previous
section, and also give learners varied activities to enrich the reading experience. Here are a few ideas
that you can incorporate into a reading lesson remembering that you are trying to balance the intensive
and extensive reading experience:
Graded questions:
Global questions: This type of question checks whether your students have understood an idea,
which is central to the whole text. Students have to have read the whole text to be able to answer a
global question. A good idea is to put global questions as pre questions so that the student has to read
the text and is reading for purpose.
Specific questions: focus on a point of detail. Students can normally find the answers to specific
questions from just one sentence.
True or False statements: This is a more thorough way of checking comprehension as it gives
you a chance to check straight away. You could ask the students to raise their hands. Alternatively you
could get students into teams and with one person from the side acting as true and the other as false.
You then read out the sentence and the student has to choose a chair to go and sit on, either true or
false.
Multiple choice questions: Give you students a choice of answers to check understanding of the
meaning of the text.
17
Grammar Activity:
This is a good activity to use in the presentation or first practise activity. You will ask students to
identify vocabulary related to a certain topic and also identify parts of speech.
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