“Every weekend I go on the cottage in the nature” (a.k.a. translations to combat L1 (Czech) interference and learn idioms)

The sentence in the title above is beloved of English teachers across the Czech Republic. It’s all due to L1 interference, as with many of these things. One of my classes asked me to help them notice their Czenglish mistakes and try to do something about them. I looked back over old writing and speaking notes and asked around in the staffroom to collate a list of common mistakes, then created the first three sets of materials below.

I asked the students to translate their versions of each group of sentences, trying to write small enough that they could write corrections in the box if necessary (I told them they would get a ‘clean’ version of the sheet later). I then showed them each group of words on the Powerpoint presentation and drilled any difficult sentences / any which they had all made a mistake with. We talked about why Czech people make these mistakes (on a sentence-by-sentence basis) and I encouraged them to highlight anything which they got wrong and need to learn. We also discussed the Czech equivalents (I crowdsourced these from my Czech friends on facebook, so feel free to correct any mistakes you find!). I sent them the presentation after the lesson so that they can look at it whenever they like.

Czech sentences for students to translate

Common Czenglish mistakes and how to correct them

Czenglish Powerpoint presentation

The second set of materials were adapted from the fascinating Omniglot website. I had to edit some of the English on there as not all of them were correctly translated. This was a final ‘fun’ lesson with a CAE group and we spent a long time discussing how to use the idioms and whether there are differences between the use of the equivalents in Czech and English. First, they attempted to translate any of the idioms which they knew already (not many!). I had cut up the ‘answers’ cards before class. They used them to find the rest of the phrases and checked them against my master list.

Czech idioms and their English equivalents (worksheet)

Czech idioms and their English equivalents (answers)

The final step was to play a game I learnt from Anette Igel. Lay the cards out as a board game, with the Czech on one side and the English on the other (back-to-back). Take a counter. Roll the die, move the counter, then translate the idiom you land on to the other language. For instance, if you land on “knedlik v krku”, you have to say “a frog in my throat”. If you are right, turn the card over so you can see the English side. The next person to land on it has to translate it back into Czech. We decided to award one point for each complete circle of the board you did. I lost by quite a long way

The students really enjoyed playing the game, and learnt some more colourful language on the way.

Feel free to download / adapt these in any way you choose, and if you need any help or would like to know how to do a similar thing with your local language, please let me know in the comments below.

Enjoy!

CAE Speaking Part 3

Here is a presentation I made to help out my CAE students with their final preparation for the speaking exam. I hope your students find it useful too. I used some information from the Splendid Speaking website, which has some excellent tips for many Cambridge exams.

Articles Flowchart: Final Draft (I hope!)

Anybody who’s been following my blog is probably sick of this flowchart by now (first draft, second draft, third draft), but I’m planning for this to be the last post relating to it!

I’ve now used it in class, so have hopefully ironed out most of the problems. I corrected a couple of typos, an incorrect colour (which meant I miscounted the number of each article needed to complete the worksheet) and added a modifier to the musical instruments section. If there are any more, PLEASE let me know so I can annoy people with a fifth post!

Enjoy!

Articles Flowchart worksheets (.doc format)

Articles Flowchart answers (.doc format)

Articles Flowchart worksheet (.pdf format)

Articles Flowchart answers (.pdf format)

Articles Flowchart: Third Draft (Student Worksheet)

Here’s the last draft (I hope!) of the flowchart (first draft, second draft), this time as a worksheet for use in class. The complete flowchart with all of the answers is in the second draft. Here’s an articles lesson plan I posted earlier.

It’s available for download, and I’d be interested to know if you use it in class/if there’s anything I should change. Please credit the source. Enjoy!

.docx format

.pdf format

Articles Flowchart: Second Draft

So here’s the second draft of the articles flowchart in two formats (.pdf and .doc). I posted the first draft earlier – thanks to @cerirhiannon for giving me some suggestions to improve it. They are downloadable (click ‘view on slideshare’ and download from there) and could be used as reference materials for your students to decide/learn how to use articles in English. If you think there is anything missing (it’s quite likely!) please let me know. I would be interested to know how you use the sheets. I also wrote a post with an articles lesson plan which you might like to look at.

Articles Flowchart: First Draft

I’ve just created this flowchart to help my Czech students choose the correct articles.

It’s not finished yet – when it is, I’ll upload a downloadable version. You can click the image to see it full-size, and your browser should let you zoom in and out.

I have two questions for you:

• Does it make sense?
• What have I forgotten? (I know there are some things, but I can’t think of them!)

Thanks!

Update: I posted the second draft this evening, taking into account feedback received on Twitter.

How to join in with #eltpics

Made using shapecollage.com

All of the pictures in the image above are taken from the #eltpics photos on Flickr. #eltpics was started in October 2010 when three teachers (@VictoriaB52, @vickyloras and @cgoodey) decided to tweet pictures to each other on a given theme each week. As Victoria said in this interview with tefl.net:

The idea blossomed, so we asked ELT folk on Twitter to join in and share our diversity. In 3 weeks [we had] over 200 images from 20 countries on our Flickr site.

As of this week, we’re up to 3000 images in 30 categories including all of the following:

Made using wordle.net

You can see the 10 most recent pictures in the bottom-right hand corner of this page.

So how can you join in?

1. If you are not a member of Twitter, sign up for free.

2. Find out the topic for the week by searching for the #eltpics hashtag or asking @sandymillin, @fionamau or @cgoodey (the current curators of the site). A new topic is announced every Sunday. (By the way, if you have any topic suggestions, feel free to let us know!)

3. Choose the photos you want to share and upload them to a site like flickr, yfrog or twitpic. You can also use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck. Please ensure that the photos are your own and that you have the copyright.

4. Tweet the links to the pictures you want us to upload. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #eltpics so we can find them! If you want to help us out, you could also mention the set you want us to add the photo to.

5. Sit back and wait for us to tell you they have been uploaded. If we don’t reply within a couple of days, please let us know, as we sometimes miss one or two pictures.

Using the pictures

All of the photos are shared under a Creative Commons licence:

Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

If you’re not happy with your pictures being shared and used in this way, please don’t send them!

Once they are on the flickr page, all of the images are available for teachers to use in their classrooms, for materials or for teaching-related blogposts. We would love to hear how you use them.

Links

• Ideas for using the 2000th #eltpic on Ceri Jones’ blog
• Ideas for using the 3000th #eltpic on Infinite ELT ideas
• Ceri’s presentation from the 2011 IATEFL Conference on ‘Unleashing the Power of Images‘, including many #eltpics, as well as an interview in which she talked about them
• And another one from Ceri: this time, a guest post on Ken Wilson’s blog suggeting ways to use two of the images
• A ‘weather’ worksheet made using #eltpics
• Phil Bird describing #eltpics and crowdsourcing
• Adam Simpson advertising his #eltpics
• Cecilia Coelho’s lesson plan challenge, inspired by an #eltpics suggestion
• Chiew’s lesson plan and mind-mapping ideas with suggestions for how to use pictures in class
• From my own blog: Story prompts with #eltpics and Emotions wordclouds (including an #eltpics slideshow)
• A post from Denise including ideas for websites which you could use with #eltpics

How to give presentations in English

I created this set of resources for an Intermediate-level group. We used them over a series of five 1-hour lessons, with opportunities during the lessons for students to personalise the phrases. After each lesson I used Edmodo to share the part of the presentation we had done so that students could go over it again at home.

Notes:

• Although it looks like it says “an Internet”, when you download the presentation you will find “an Internet connection”
• The video links should all take you to youtube.
• The ‘structure’ slide is also clickable and takes you to the relevant section of the presentation.
• The slides with the phrases look messy here, but when you download it you should see that they work as a series of elicitation prompts. To see the phrases without downloading and clicking through the entire presentation, you can look at the ‘Did you remember?’ slides. These are also the best ones for the students to print as they should contain all of the most useful information. I know that having completely gapped sentences is difficult for students that first time they see the presentation, but in the lesson I skipped past them to the ones with the first letters and told students they would be more useful when they looked at the slides again.

We finished the unit yesterday, and next week they will do their own presentations for assessment. I will record them and give feedback based on language and technique.

Feel free to download the materials and adapt them as you see fit (crediting the source please). They are designed to be a cross between teaching materials and a presentation that could present to your group, demonstrating the techniques.

I would be grateful for any feedback you can give me so that I can improve them for future groups.

Enjoy!

Spanish Train by Chris de Burgh (linking words for fluent speech)

Alright, I admit it. I love Chris de Burgh. And while this is very unfashionable, I’m not ashamed in the slightest!

This week I was doubly grateful to him for providing me with an interesting story for my students to listen to (following on from ‘Story Prompts with #eltpics‘ last week) and a way to revise linking words when speaking quickly.

I showed the class the first slide of the presentation and asked them to decide what the story of the song is. They had to include something about all of the pictures in their story.

Once they had shared the stories, they listened to the song to find out who had the closest version. (The link in the presentation should take you to the video below)

I then showed them the pronunciation slides and elicited the rules.

Finally they practised saying lines from their own copies of the lyrics.

As their homework, they should find a poem or song of their own and record it, paying particular attention to the linking sounds.

Other ‘story songs’ by Chris de Burgh that you might find interesting include:

• Making the Perfect Man
• Waiting for the Hurricane
• Patricia the Stripper
• Brother John
• A Spaceman Came Travelling

Enjoy!

Describing graphs

Here is a set of worksheets I made last year. I used them over a series of lessons with various groups at Intermediate and Upper Intermediate level. (They may take a while to load on this page)
Some of the activities are taken from other sources, in which case they should always be credited. If you believe I have used something which is uncredited, please let me know.
Feel free to use and adapt the worksheets however you see fit. They can be used in whatever order you see fit. I have tried to arrange them here with the more specific items at the beginning and the general summaries at the end. If you think any of the answers are missing or any of the information is incorrect, please let me know too.
Enjoy!