Fun Speaking Activity for First Lesson in Language Classrooms
Want to get some weird looks and questions from your family when packing for a new term of college? Get some toilet roll out…! Ready for a fun speaking activity during first lessons in any language classroom. The ‘Loo’ Roll Speaking Activity For First Lessons Today, I started back at college, teaching a speaking and listening course. This ‘loo’ roll activity for speaking was the first fun speaking activity that I learnt during my teacher training course in 2009. I often use it to get students to talk about themselves from the outset of a new course or class. It works for post beginners, intermediate and advanced speakers and allows them…
Great Speaking Ideas for First German or Language Lesson Back
Start As You Mean To Go On with Any Of These 5 Amazing Speaking Activities for the First German Lesson Back (or French, English, Spanish or any other language!) How I do enjoy the first German lesson back after a summer holiday! I also love my first French lessons back and my first English lessons back too at the start of a new term! It’s a great opportunity to show your passion for the language you teach and re-enthuse your students to feel the same way. Who has ever done a ‘find someone who’ speaking activity in their first German lesson back? Me. It meets the criteria of speaking task.…
Spontaneous Speaking with Video Clips in Language Learning
How To Improve Your Speaking with Short Video Clips Short video clips are fantastic prompts for spontaneous speaking practice when it comes to learning any language. “Videos generate visual stimulants that wake up the brain cells and demand focused attention” which can be used to enhance the language learning process. This post on using video clips for spontaneous speaking practice in language learning comes mainly from personal experience. Although “most teachers regard video as useful input” (Warwick University – Video For All). So…read on to see how using short video clips helped me to overcome my fear of spontaneous speaking, and to see some great websites with excellent short video…
Emojis Verb Builder To Learn and Revise Verbs
Use Emojis To Revise and Learn Vocabulary Last year, I wrote a post entitled Emojis Vocabulary Builder. Students receive a worksheet with chunks of emojis based around different themes. They annotate the sheet to revise vocabulary or develop their bank of vocabulary. Surprisingly, the worksheets were very well received by modern language teachers and students! Thanks to Twitter, I learnt that today, 17th July, is #WorldEmojiDay. At the same time, I also learnt that Apple will be adding a ‘yawn’ emoji – cue favourite, newest, overused emoji! Therefore, I decided to adapt my emoji vocabulary builder activity even further and make it perfect for language learners who want to learn…
Useful Time Fillers for All Language Classes
Use Time Wisely with These Time Fillers for Every Language Classroom From my experience of teaching French and German GCSE and A Levels, I know there is not a lot of need for time fillers. Mainly, because there is so much content to get through! Nevertheless, I believe the time fillers below would be useful for any language classroom, either as a filler activity, or to use as a teaching activity to practise speaking, listening and writing, as well as revision of vocabulary, and translation skills, for example. 1. Chinese Whispers Aim: To communicate a word, sentence or chunk of speech from person to person and see how much of the…
