Vocab, Speaking and Writing Prompts – ‘Take Your Pick’
Useful Vocabulary, Speaking and Writing Prompts for Language Classrooms As a language teacher, I am always on the look out for interesting activities. Especially speaking and writing prompts. Mainly, because I use them to help my students with vocabulary recall, new vocabulary and develop grammar structures in the language classroom. Where Did The ‘Take Your Pick’ Vocabulary Prompts Come From? Last week, I found this ‘I Spy’ worksheet whilst browsing the web. I felt it was a brilliant starting point for revising vocabulary and learning new words and perfect inspiration for speaking and writing. What Is This Activity Useful For? Whilst it’s not quite the traditional guessing game of ‘I…
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…
Jenga Activity for Spontaneous Speaking – Language Tip of the Week
Jenga Activity for Spontaneous Speaking Language Classroom Teaching Tip of the Week This week’s language classroom teaching activity of the week is an add-on to my recent post, Low-Prep Spontanous Speaking Activities for the Language Classroom (go and check it out later if you haven’t seen it yet). Here, you will find a brilliant, fairly low-prep ‘Jenga’* activity for spontaneous speaking, perfect for your French, German, Spanish or English language teaching classroom. I bought some Jenga* sets from Tesco a few years ago for £7 each. I’ve managed to find this unbranded Jenga* Set on Amazon for £5.94 with free delivery for orders over £20. If you haven’t got any yet, I’d…
Spontaneous Speaking Cups – Languages Activity
Speaking Cups – Spontaneous Speaking Activity for The Language Classroom Spontaneous speaking has always been a skill that I struggle to facilitate in the languages classroom, especially with lively French and German GCSE students who often need a lot of structure to flourish with speaking activities. It’s a shame, seeing as it’s a necessary skill to have in order to communicate in a foreign language! However, with the new GCSE specifications, spontaneous speaking is the skill that I am really trying to develop in my classroom to help prepare my students for the general conversation section of the AQA GCSE French and German speaking examinations, as well as, simply, to…
Speaking Languages Spontaneously with Questions
Speaking languages spontaneously can be quite of daunting, especially at in a GCSE French, German or Spanish classroom. However, one of my professional targets this year is to develop my application of teaching spontaneous speaking in languages at GCSE (in my case, that’s French and German), and so I am always on the look out for exciting speaking activities that will really help learners to be able to develop this skill within the classroom. I have found many activities through fantastic teachers on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest who willingly share their ideas, but I want to improve my own creativity in the classroom and have therefore developed an activity to…
Qualified German and French Teacher – Simplifying Language Learning
