Conversation cards (Present Simple)

One activity I like to do with beginner and intermediate classes to really focus on conversation is to give them "conversation cards".  When we have finished a lesson (for example: present simple) and before we have a test or quiz, we spend maybe 30 minutes on the conversation cards.

There are two ways I like to use these cards.  Either the students have permanent partners or groups and simply swap cards when they are finished with another group, or they rotate their partners as well.  To rotate partners, I like to have the student who just answered a question take that card and now ask it to a new partner.  That way, they are familiar with the vocabulary and context of the question and can explain it to the new partner.

The questions are intended to have grammar the students should be familiar with, and generally vocabulary they have seen before, but it keeps them excited to throw in a few strange questions (ex: "Do you like to look at the moon at night?") and new vocabulary (ex: "Do you like to ride a roller coaster?"). 

They are intended to be a challenge, but a controlled challenge, and generally the students finish the activity feeling more confident about being able to respond to a variety of topics.

Here is the two page present simple conversation cards. 

Here is a blank template of the cards so you can write in your own questions.

Teaching Adverbs of Frequency

One of the lessons I had a lot of opportunities to teach starting out at my school was the adverbs of frequency.  I got the beginner lessons pretty frequently, and it was beginning to feel like I would forever be talking about what someone always or never did.

The charts below are a cleaned up version of the worksheet I often used with beginner students.  The first worksheet uses "Do you play...." (Yes/No) questions.  The second worksheet uses "How often..." questions.

After we had done an intro lesson to the construction of sentences with adverbs of frequency (always, usually, often, sometime, rarely, never) this worksheet was a good conversation activity and final practice.  Students were encouraged to interact with the entire class, not only their neighbors.  It usually involves walking around, so it is also useful for breaking up a long lesson.  It took about 20 minutes to actually do the activity, not counting time explaining.

To play: One student asks a question (ex: Do you play soccer on the weekend?) and another student responds with their answer (ex: Yes, I always play soccer on the weekend).  The student who asks the question then makes a check or an ex or some kind of mark on the "Always" box under "play___ ?".

I initially intended this activity to be a type of Bingo, where students had to complete an entire row to "win", but most students were simply happy to engage in the conversations and have all the information in front of them to work from.

It works well for a mix of speaking ability, since the lower level students can simply write a phrase into the chart headings (ex: play tennis ?) and repeat the question to all their classmates, while more advanced students were able to construct more and more complicated questions as time went on.

This worksheet directs the questions at "you" but of course, it can be adapted for other subjects. (ex: "Does your sister play volleyball?" / "Yes, she sometimes does." )

Download the first worksheet here.   Download the second worksheet here.

StoryCorp worksheet about Ronald McNair

Here's one more resource for tonight:

NPR (National Public Radio) is a treasure trove of ESL teaching tools for the upper levels with the extensive free audio/visual materials they host on their site.  They have news articles ranging from serious political topics for the argumentative students, to business news for the money-minded, to culture pieces that everyone can learn from.

I particularly enjoy using their StoryCorp audio clips, since they are authentic American stories that are usually short (about 3 or 4 minutes) and all come with transcripts (if you look closely at the website).  The people being interviewed use extremely authentic language, and it's a great tool for breaking down real American English.

They usually have a...sad...focus to them however, as a drawback.  I certainly had to veto quite a few I was listening to since they were making me tear up.

Only this past year did I discover Animated StoryCorp which has very useful videos accompanying some of the stories.

I watched the animated story about Ronald McNair, an African American astronaut who was on the Challenger Shuttle, with a private student recently and we both found it to be a GREAT discussion piece.  I recommend watching it with higher-level students if you are discussing racism or race relations, plans for future occupations, or space travel, as it has elements of all three.

I prepared a list of useful vocabulary, content questions and discussion questions as well, if they are beneficial to anyone.

Here is the pdf download link.

Hopefully a start of some useful teaching resources

As I've gotten more involved in teaching ESL to adults, I've created a boxful of games, worksheets, and assorted pictures and papers that others might find helpful for either using directly in class or getting some good ideas for more personalized ideas.  Since I have benefited greatly from the generosity of other teachers posting their materials, I'm offering these resources for anyone to use in the classroom, and to adapt as they would like.  If you have any questions about using them, or suggestions for how to make them better, feel free to post a comment.

I'm in between jobs at the moment due to moving to Canada from Chicago, so hopefully the next month will see a lot of these resources getting on the internet, but we'll see how I do.

The first one is a simple board game template to practice "be going to" and time expressions for the future such as "tomorrow", "next week", "in two days".

The students work in small groups, ideally no more than four as the pace starts to slow down the more students you add to a group.  This game works particularly well at getting all levels involved as it encourages the higher level students to help out weaker students, and there is a lot of repetition for the weaker students to pick up on example answers.  The more advanced students will take the game as an opportunity to have a conversation as well, especially with some helpful encouragement.

In the past I have used coins as the "dice", moving two spaces for head and three spaces for tails, since I didn't have access to dice.  However, using coins in this way definitely makes for A LOT of repetition, be that good or bad.

There is also the problem that different groups of students will finish at different times, but they are generally happy to play more than once.

Download the pdf of the board game

Especially since this is the first resource I am sharing, please report any issues your are having with the download process or errors I might have made in creating the game.

Thanks!