SOURCE: ENGLISH PAGES

LESSONS

Why Do Teachers Need Lesson Plans?

A lesson plan is a lesson “project” written down on paper. It is only a “project” because a lot of unpredictable events occur in the
classroom. It is also a dreaded part of instruction that most teachers detest. It nevertheless provides a guide for managing the learning
environment. As one of the teacher’s roles is that of designer and implementer of instruction, the preparation of lesson plan will
ensure the organization of the English lesson according to some criteria. Regardless of the format, all teachers need to make wise
decisions about the strategies and methods they will employ to help students move systematically toward learner goals. The more
organized a teacher is, the more effective the teaching, and thus the learning, is. Writing daily lesson plans is a large part of being
organized.

Goals
Teachers need to have a precise notion of educational goals / objectives / standards / competences
Content
Content is chosen according to the level and needs of the learners. It must be interesting and appealing to them.
Instructional procedure
The effective teacher also needs to develop a plan to provide direction toward the attainment of the selected objectives. Teachers
must decide how to sequence the teaching items according to the methodology and approach they opted for. Sequencing may be from
easy to difficult, from known to unknown, from familiar to unfamiliar …
Timing
The effective teacher certainly controls the way time is used. Effective teachers systematically and carefully plan for productive use
of instructional time.
Evaluation procedure
There should be some kind of feed back tasks to highlight lesson deficiencies.
Finally, even teachers who develop highly structured and detailed plans rarely strictly stick to them. Such rigidity would probable
impede, rather than help, the teaching-learning process. The elements of your lesson plan should be thought of as guiding
principles to be applied as aids, but not blueprints, to systematic instruction. Precise preparation must allow for flexible delivery.
During actual classroom interaction, the instructor needs to make adaptations and to add artistry to each lesson plan and classroom
delivery.
In the next post I will present a sample of a lesson plan. check it out.

The Importance of Lesson Planning

Why is lesson planning important?
•Why is lesson planning important?
•How is lesson planning important for the teacher? For the learners?
•What do you take into account when you design a lesson plan?
•What constant components are there in your lesson plan?
See Lesson Plan 1-25 pictures
Lesson Planning – Components of a lesson plan
Lesson planning
A lesson plan provides a guide for managing the learning environment. As one of the teacher’s roles is that of designer and
implementor of instruction, the preparation of lesson plan will ensure the organization of the English lesson according to some
criteria. In this post I will present the components of a lesson plan.

Components of lesson plans

Lesson plans must include these components:
1.Information about the learners.
2.Objectives:
Lesson plans must involve  a unifying theme, an overall general purpose to accomplish by the end of the lesson period.  They
must include clear statements of what learners will be able to do by the end of the lesson. For example:
•Enable learners to…
•or by the end of the lesson students will be able   to…
3.Procedure
•Logical sequencing
•Who does what?
•How much time?
•How to do?
•What to do?
4.Aids
Realia, data show, audio-visual aid…
5.Anticipated difficulties and reserve tasks
•What might go wrong?
•How to deal with it?
6.Follow up and assignment.
•Prepare a follow-up that help students personalise their new knowledge.
•Assign a homework whenever possible to keep learners busy at home.
•Include an evaluation to get feedback at the end of each unit.

Things to consider when preparing lesson plans

Here are  a few things to consider:
•Be clear about what you want to include in your lesson. Having a an overall knowledge of what you want to accomplish will
provide clarity and cohesion to your lesson.
•A lesson must have a unity.  There should be a kind of natural movement from one section to another.
•A lesson plan shouldn’t be too challenging or too easy. Predetermine whether or not you are trying to accomplish too much or
whether or not your activities are far below students abilities. This has important consequences as far as students motivation is
concerned.
•Prepare reserve activities in case of  unpredictable events.

Ten hints for Lesson Plans

Lesson management
As a teacher you may sometimes be stuck in unpredictable circumstances, it is advisable to plan beforehand for these kinds of
situations. Knowing exactly what you will introduce in your lesson will relieve you from so much stress and will undoubtedly give
you a clear idea of what may go on during a lesson.

Hints for lesson plan

1.Prepare more than you need.
It is advisable to have an easily presented, light reserve activity ready in case of extra time.
2.Be prepared to cut down some parts of your lesson.
You may be forced to sacrifice some activities when you run out of time. Note in advance which component(s) of the lesson you
will sacrifice if you find yourself with too little time to do everything you have planned.
 3.Vary types of activities.
Learners differ, cognitively and affectively. So prepare something for everyone. For example, don’t stick to group work or pair
work. Devise some activities for shy students to have the opportunity to work individually. Similarly don’t use text-based
activities all the time. You may try picture graphs or listening materials.
4.Logical stages
The stages of the lesson plan should be logical. Things should flow smoothly. Prepare pre-lesson, while-lesson, and post-lesson
stages. Make sure your plan includes:
– an opening with a review of previous lessons or a warm-up to activate learners schemata,
– the main part of the lesson where you present the target language,
– an after-part of the lesson where you strengthen acquisition and actually use appropriately,
– a follow-up where learners personalize the newly acquired competencies.
5.Take into consideration learners’ abilities.
Students’ competencies may differ and you may be in front of low-ability students and very competent ones in the same class. To
deal with this situation apply a differentiated pedagogy.
6.Keep an eye on your time.
Appropriate timing is of paramount importance. A session shouldn’t end in the middle of an activity. Make sure you are aware
during the lesson of how time is going.
7.Preserve the unity of your lesson.
For example, you may want to use a text as a reading activity to introduce a grammatical structure you will teach at a later stage.
8.Homework
When you assign homework, be clear, and give precise instructions.
9.Include some humor
At the end of the lesson learners’ attention is at a low ebb, and you may run out of time before you finish explaining. One way to
liven up the atmosphere is by introducing humor.
10.Group work
If you are doing group work, give instructions, and make sure these are understood before handing out materials. If you do it the
other way around, learners will be looking at each other and at the materials you have given them, and they are less likely to
attend to what you will have to say.

14 Lesson plan tips for English Language Teaching

Lesson Plan Tips
The following lesson plan tips are intended to help teachers design lessons that meet their learners’ needs and be aligned with the
target standards. It is needless to say that it is of paramount importance to prepare lesson plans that include clear objectives, engage
learners through the activation of their prior knowledge, raise their awareness about the target language through contextualized
situations and help them personalize it through expansion activities.

Quick lesson plan tips

A teacher preparing a lesson plan

While preparing your lesson plan, it is wise to follow these tips to cater for learners’ needs:
1.Identify clear objectives that are relevant to the target standards. It is important that these objectives should be stated at the
beginning of the lesson plan. For example, the objective of a lesson about the present continuous would go like this: “by the end
of the lesson, learners will be able to form and use the present continuous to describe actions happening at the time of speaking“.
Notice that this objective is specific and measurable.
2.Create learning activities based on the identified objectives.
 3.Start with activities that get the students into the mood to learn. These activities should be in the form of warm-ups and
shouldn’t last more than 2 to 5 minutes. Warm up activities don’t have to be related to the objectives of the lesson. Examples of
warm-up activities include tongue twisters, riddles, command drills, etc.
4.Activate prior knowledge through lead-in activities. These activities focus on what learners already know. The teacher should
build on this prior knowledge to go a bit above their current level of proficiency.
5.Contextualize language. Present the target language structures through clear situations, preferably through a text (spoken or
written.) We never learn structures in isolation of the context where they are used.
6.The presentation should be efficient in terms of economy and ease. It should also be appropriate to SS needs.
7.Avoid long explanations and prepare instead discovery activities which help raise students awareness about the target
structures.
8.Guide students through well-formulated questions.
9.Increase wait time. After you ask questions, give students the opportunity to think before they answer. Being in a hurry to get a
quick answer will not be of any help to your students. Instead, increasing wait time after asking a question will create a
heightened level of involvement.
10.Promote cooperative learning. It is very helpful to design lesson plans that involve varied modes of work such as pair work,
group work or teamwork.
11.In the skill-getting phase of the lesson, introduce various activities. The lesson plan should include:
– accuracy and fluency activities;
– spoken as well as written productions;
– receptive as well as productive learning;
– visual as well as kinesthetic learning styles;
–…
12.Start from easy to more challenging activities.
13.In the skill using phase of the lesson, give an opportunity for language use in meaningful situations.
14.In the expansion phase, help SS transfer newly acquired language. For example, the lesson plan should normally include
activities that help students use the target structures to talk about personal situations.

Lesson Plan Sample

In this post I will present a sample of a lesson plan that I personally use. But before you proceed reading, you might be interested to
know why teachers need lesson plans.

Although a lesson plan doesn’t necessarily equate a successful lesson,  it will undoubtedly ensure a coherent view of the teaching
procedure in the teacher’s mind.  A well organized lesson plan serves as a guideline for managing the
learning process and outlines beforehand the decisions he must make about the methods, techniques
strategies and procedures he opted for.
A lesson plan should include the following points:
•Date
•Lesson / unit number and title
•The course (reading, listening, dictation, …)
•Instructional aids , materials and tool needed
•The goals or standards
•the lesson outline
•The timing.
•Assignments (class or home assignment)
Here is a lesson plan sample:
Date Lesson N° Unit
Instructor Topic
Objectives / Standards …
Instructional tools, materials, aids
Lesson Outline Time
Assignment
Notes
Lesson plans are not the bible. Unpredictable events happen in the classroom. Teachers should be ready at any moment to change
,add or improvise lesson delivery.
How to teach the simple present tense?
Difficulties
When teaching the simple present tense, there are several considerations teachers have to take into account. First, some irregular
verbs may confuse students. For instance, the verb ‘have‘ and ‘be‘ have different forms in the simple present (has, am, are,…) A
second concern is related to the dropping of the ‘s’ of the third person singular which many students seem to forget. Another
difficulty is the spelling of the forms that take the ‘s’ of the third person singular. Sometimes, only ‘s‘ is added (close – closes) while
in some forms ‘es’ is added (watch – watches.) Finally, interrogative and negative forms that necessitate the auxiliary ‘do‘ may
represent another challenge for beginner students.

Contrasting tenses
Bearing in mind the above difficulties, I usually try to teach a tense by contrasting it with another tense. For the simple present tense,
I contrast it with either:
•the present progressive tense (I’m reading a book now; I always read it in the morning),
•or the simple past (I usually play tennis on Sundays, but last Sunday I didn’t play tennis; I was ill)
Contrasting tenses gives students the opportunity to make finer distinctions between tenses and locate situations in time. Learners
will also be able to discover nuances in meaning as well as in structure. IN the case of the simple present, my ultimate aim is to make
students understand that this tense is used to describe routines, habits, daily activities, and general truths.

Tips and procedure to teach the simple present tense

1. Introduce the simple present and the present progressive through situations.
A. What am I doing now? (pretend to be reading a book)
B. Reading.
A. Yes I am reading a book at the moment. I read a book every week.
2. Write similar examples on the board.
•I am watching TV now. I watch TV every evening. I love watching movies.
•I am playing soccer. I play soccer every Sunday. I like soccer, but I don’t like tennis.
•I am driving to work now. I drive to work every morning. I live far away from work.
•I am having lunch now. I usually have lunch at home. I don’t like to have lunch in a restaurant.
3. Draw a table on the board like the one below and ask students to identify the actions that are routine habits or facts and those that
take place at the time of speaking.

 Routines, facts, and habitual actions Actions that take place now
I watch TV every evening. I am watching TV now.
I like playing soccer. I am playing soccer.
I don’t like playing tennis. I am driving to work now.
… …
4. Introduce a) interrogative forms and b) third-person singular forms, negative and affirmative.
•Do you like playing soccer?
Yes, I like playing soccer, but I don’t like playing tennis. My sister doesn’t like playing tennis. She likes playing volleyball.
•Does Yor sister have a lot of friends?
No, she doesn’t have many friends. She’s unpopular.
•Do your parents like watching action films?
No, they don’t; they prefer love stories.
Ask students to complete this chart:

 Affirmative Forms Interrogative forms Negative forms

I like playing soccer Do you like playing soccer? I don’t like playing tennis
My sister likes playing volleyball  … …
… … …
5. Introduce adverbs of frequency and prepare a questionnaire like the following:
Choose the appropriate choice for you:
• I eat breakfast in the cafeteria.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
 • I drink strong coffee in the morning.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I have lunch at a fast food restaurant.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I eat fruits after lunch.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I have dinner at home
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
6. Students read their preferences. The other students listen and take notes. Then they write short paragraphs about their partners.
My partner never has breakfast in a cafeteria. He sometimes has strong coffee…
7.  Ask students to come up with examples of the simple present.
• My name is…
• I am from…
• I … every morning.
• I work  in …
• I like…, but I don’t like…
• I go to…. school.
• I go to bed at…
Walk around and provide any help. Then ask students to write a paragraph using the examples they provided.
8. Later, it would be a great idea to help students distinguish between the simple present and the simple past. Provide examples like
the following:
• I go to the movies every Saturday, but last Saturday I didn’t go to the movies I stayed at home. I was ill.
• They always have breakfast at home, but last Sunday they didn’t have breakfast at home. They went out early in
the morning.

Vocabulary Building Lesson Plan

From alphabet to writing a story
By the end of this activity students will learn 26 new words and use them in sentences or to write a story.  The materials required are
a dictionary, paper, pen or pencil. The activity takes about one or two class periods

The activity
•Students look through the dictionary and then define one word from each letter of the alphabet.
•Each selected word should be new.
•After they define all 26 words, students must copy them in their vocabulary notebook.
•Then, they must write one sentence for each of the 26 words.
•Make sure that they use each word correctly.

Follow up
Students use some of  those 26 words in a story. They must underline each of those selected words in the story.

Teaching Reading Strategies

What distinguishes good readers from bad readers is the extent to which they master some specific reading strategies. In this article,
there is a clear description of what students should be able to do to become good readers.

The writer explains how students should:

•activate their knowledge (schemata),
•ask questions before reading
•use words to see (visualize)  meaning
•determine important information
•summarize and synthesise

READING STRATEGIES
 Teaching Reading Strategies So Students
Develop Reading Skillsby Janna RobinJuly 19,
2010
In their comprehensive and invaluable book, Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for
Understanding and Engagement, Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis posit 8 tenets of good
reading.
Good Readers:

1. Become aware of their thinking as they read

2. Monitor their understanding and keep track of meaning
3. Listen to the voice in their head to make sense of the text
4. Notice when they stray from thinking about the text
5. Notice when meaning breaks down
6. Detect obstacles and confusions that derail understanding
7. Understand how a variety of strategies can help them repair meaning when it breaks down
8. Know when, why, and how to apply specific strategies to maintain and further understanding

While these are things good readers already do—on automatic pilot practically—struggling readers need to be taught, step-by-
step, how to become good readers.

Teaching and Learning the Reading Skills

Contrary to some teachers’ beliefs, teaching these skills explicitly to even our good
readers in not (at all) redundant or a waste of their time. Consider the benefit of knowing,
rather than just unconsciously doing—how it empowers them—helps them transfer their
knowledge across assignments and disciplines. It gives them the metacognitive
awareness to make them aware of what they do. This self-awareness leads to
autonomous and independent learning: any educator's goal for the learner.

The value is great in a different way for our struggling readers. In their case teachers need
to make the connections for them. Rather than simply tell students these are skills they
need to have, teachers need to break these skills into teachable strategies because it is
necessary to equip students with means by which to become good readers. We can’t just assume it will happen. Having the list of
8 skills doesn’t actually result in students having these 8 skills. Only teaching them does.

Strategy Instruction supports Skill Development

I distinguished between strategy and skill in following transparent way for my

students.

A skill is what you want to be able to do.

A strategy is how you achieve that skill.

One of the things that is so wonderful about the book by Harvey and Goudvis is that
they don’t leave teachers stranded with just the skills. They offer the scaffolding of the
strategies to teach students to have these skills. The difference is subtle, but has
enormous implications.

So in order to be able to do the eight skills, above, students need to learn 1-6, below.

1. Activating Background Knowledge (Schema) by making connections,

2. Questioning to propel readers forward
3. Making inferences—reading between the lines
4. Visualizing—using words to see meaning
5. Determining importance—understanding the author’s purpose (while this is mostly taught with non-fiction texts, I think it’s
essential with the fictive structure as well, since many students need to anchor their comprehension according to what the author
wants them to know)
6. Summarizing and synthesizing [ppt link no longer available]

Enter the necessary, albeit awkward, Think Alouds (aka Modeling)

It’s not enough to tell students about these skills. We need to show them. Show them what good readers do, how their minds
work, how they make meaning from reading. And the only way to show them is to model—to do it ourselves, and eventually to
have students do it.

The first time I modeled a reading strategy, I didn’t announce it, I just put a poem on the overhead, and started taking to it. I
started with asking questions. Of it—of the poem, not of the students. It was perhaps one of the most awkward and embarrassing
moments of my teaching career. There was dead silence, there were perplexed stares. I really had needed to specifically articulate
what I was about to do, and why. Not only would this have made the whole scenario a little easier on us all, it would have made
my purpose transparent, which students always appreciate and benefit from.

I highly recommend the following texts for further classroom-ready reading support. You can read and implement the content
simultaneously, making the useful, practical and immediately meaningful to your practice and your students’ learning.

• I Read it But I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers
• When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do
• Mosaic of Thought

Seven stages for a successful reading lesson plan

Successful reading lesson plan
In this post, you will have an overall view of the stages involved in a successful reading lesson plan. These stages are all based on
theoretical principles that have been tested and applied successfully in teaching reading comprehension.
The focus will be on:
•The basic principles underlying teaching reading comprehension skill.
•The stages of the reading lesson plan.

Basic principles of a reading comprehension lesson plan

Reading comprehension is one of the four skills that language learners have to acquire. The other three skills are listening, speaking
and writing. Designing a successful reading lesson plan requires knowledge of the theoretical premises underlying this skill.
Follow this link for a detailed review of these reading comprehension principles.
Here is a summary of the most important principles for a successful reading comprehension lesson plan:
Reading comprehension is purposeful
We read for different purposes.
•Sometimes we read to get specific information (e.g. a date, a figure,etc.)
•Other times we want to get an overall idea of the text.
•There are times when we want to read just for pleasure (e.g. reading a poem, a novel, etc.)
•In some cases, the reader is interested in reading between the lines to infer the author’s attitudes.
 Purpose of reading comprehension
Skills and strategies
Good readers are skilled because they use reading comprehension strategies.
The difference between a skill and a strategy lies in the fact that a strategy is planned while a skill is an automatic action:
Reading strategies are deliberate, goal-directed attempts to control and modify the reader’s efforts to decode text,
understand words, and construct meanings of text. Reading skills are automatic actions that result in decoding and
comprehension with speed, efficiency, and fluency and usually occur without awareness of the components or control
involved.”
Afflerbach et al. (2008)
Here is a list of the most used reading comprehension strategies:
•Skimming refers to the process of reading a text quickly to get a general idea of the text.
•Scanning is reading a text in order to find specific information such as figures, dates, or names.
•Using background/prior knowledge to understand the text. This is also referred to as activating schematic knowledge.
According to schema theory, good readers make sense out of what they read by relating the topic of the passage to what they
already know.
•Making predictions. This refers to the act of encouraging learners to actively predict what the text is about, based on text
evidence such as headings, pictures graphs, etc.
•Generating questions. Learners are guided to think ahead and generate as many questions about the text as possible.
•Guessing the meaning of difficult words and expressions from context.
•Making connections. There are three types of connections: readers are encouraged to make connections to themselves, to the
world and to other similar texts.
•Using graphic organizers.
•Inferring the author’s attitude.
Explicitly teaching the above strategies allows learners to deal with any type of text.
Cognitive processing
There are three types of cognitive processing:
1.Top-down:
This refers to the use of prior knowledge to make sense of the text instead of depending on the actual words of the text to get
meaning.
2.Bottom-up:
Relying on the smaller units/bits of the text to understand it. These units include the phonemes, the syllables and the words that
constitute the building blocks of any passage.
3.Interactive model:
This combines both the advantages of top-down and bottom-up processing.

Types of reading lesson plans

There are two main types of reading lesson plans:
1.Intensive reading
Breading intensively, we are concerned with every detail related to the text.
2.Extensive reading
Reading as much as possible, without concerning oneself with every detail.
The above theoretical principles are of paramount importance to design a successful reading lesson plan. The following are the most
important stages to bear in mind when preparing a reading comprehension lesson.

Seven steps to design a successful reading lesson plan.

1. The aim
What is your objective when designing your lesson? Do you want your learners to:
•Be able to read for gist?
•Be able to read for detailed information?
•Be able to preview/survey a text?
•Be able to use prior knowledge to understand a text?
•Be able to locate referents?
•Be able to infer meaning from context?
•Be able to summarize a passage?
•Be able to speed read?
•Be able to think critically?
•…
2. Preparation
To prepare your learners for the reading tasks, start with
•A warm-up such as a tongue twister, a command drill, or a riddle. This shouldn’t take more than 2 or 3 minutes.
•A lead-in. This stage is intended to prepare the learners to the reading task. Examples of lead-ins include: vocabulary pre-
teaching, discussing a quote related to the topic, a word list that the SS have to study in groups to guess which words will be used
by the writer in the text, etc.
Think of a task that will help the SS read and understand the text.

3. Strategy teaching and modeling

Depending on the aims of the lesson, choose a strategy (e.g. activating prior knowledge, predicting, guessing the meaning of difficult
words from the context, questioning, summarizing, using graphic organizers….) and teach it explicitly using another short text (just
to demonstrate how the strategy should be used.)

4. Strategy use/practice.
Learners have to use the strategy you explained in the previous stage. They have to apply it to understand the current text.

5. Comprehension Tasks
For a deeper understanding of the text, assign comprehension exercises such as:
•Finding an appropriate title for the text.
•Locating referents (i.e. what do these words refer to?)
•Sentence completion
•Matching
•Comprehension questions,
•True or false statements,
•Chart completion (i.e. information transfer)
•….
6. Reviewing
Reviewing consists of checking to what extent the learners understood the text and how much they can recall. This can be done in
different ways:
•Retelling the story
•Writing a short paragraph using the ideas they got from the text.
•Using graphic organizers to organize what they have learned from the text
•Completing a chart with the most pertinent information from the passage.
•Summarizing the text.
7. Connecting
Learners have to connect what they have read with themselves, with the world, and with other related texts they have read.Teachers
in this stage typically try to answer the follwing question:
How does the topic of the passage relate to the learners’ lives?
Finally, here is a summary of the most important principles underlying teaching comprehension skills:
 •Reading is purposeful
•Choose appropriate texts
•Vocabulary knowledge facilitates comprehension
•Opt for activities that focus on skills integration
•Knowledge of text type and format is important
•Explicitly teach and model reading strategies
•Reading activities start from general to specific
•Devise a well-structured lesson plan

Logical order in writing

This activity teaches students how to organize their writing in a logical order. The whole class participates in the writing process, but
the activity is best done in group work. It doesn’t require any materials apart from pens or pencils and sheets of paper. It can last for
about 40 minutes.

The activity
•Divide the class into different groups of 5 or 6 students.
•Make sure every student has a blank piece of paper and pen or pencil.
•A sentence is written on board to serve as the starting point:
Example:”Suddenly, the teacher fell while he was walking in the courtyard.”
•The first student in the group copy the sentence and add one more that makes sense logically.
•The student pass the paper to the next student in the group, and that student adds another sentence that is also in logical order.
•The activity goes on until time is up.
•At end, the representative of each group reads the final writing product.
•When all the groups finish reading the writing product, they discuss which story is the most amusing, sad, attractive, hilarious…

Follow up
As a homework students rewrite the story to be handed in to the teacher for correction.

One Act Play Writing Lesson Plan

One-act play
This is an activity that teaches students writing skills. The students have to write a one-act play using process writing. It is done
individually or in pairs and may be carried out over several weeks. No Materials are required.

The lesson plan

After reading one-act plays or scenes from plays, students are asked to write a short one-act play which involves two characters
•First students imagine the situation they want to write about and write it down on a blank sheet of paper.
•Then they brainstorm the situation to come up with ideas involving:
•the details of the characters,including their relationship and the nature of the problem being explored  (two friends, son and
father, daughter and father, husband and wife …),
•the topic they are talking about,
•the problem that arises in their conversation,
•the time and background of the conversation (the setting)
•how the plays starts and how it ends
•the costumes…
•Students may work by themselves or may work with a partner.
•The drafting is done at home.
•The editing is done in the classroom with the help of classmates or the teacher
•Students perform their one-acts for classmates.
•Each class chooses the best play and is performed for a school contest to choose one play of high quality.
Follow up
The elected play may be sent to local professional actors who come to the school to perform the play professionally for the students.
The winning playwrights act as  “directors” for the professionals.

EFL and ESL environment activity – mini research

EFL/ESL environment activities
Over the past few years, the environmental problems have gained a recognition around the world. “Green” issues have turned up as
the subject of newspapers, magazines, TV documentaries, news report… This can be an invaluable source  for EFL and ESL teachers
to devise activities that would link the classroom to the world.
The following activity teaches students to undertake a mini research.

Aims:
•To increase awareness of the nature and the extent of environmental problems around the world.
•To practice reading, note-taking, speaking, and written composition.

materials:
•A worksheet with a chart listing the names of 5 countries with environmental problems (a sample of such a chart is shown
below)
•Collect magazines/newspaper articles, books that provide enough information about the activity

China France Brazil India Australia

Location
Population
Major industry
Natural resources
Major Energy sources
Environmental problems
Procedure
•Divide the class into pairs and assign each pair one of the countries.
•Provide the books, magazines and newspapers to the students.
•Explain the task. They are to work in pairs using the references to find required information about the assigned countries.
•Pairs work together to fill in the appropriate boxes in the chart;
•Students take turn reporting their research findings to the class.
•While listening the class attempts to complete the information missing in their charts. Students may ask for repetition and
clarification if necessary.
•Conduct a whole class discussion based on theses questions:
•Which countries have similar environment problems?
•Which countries have environmental problems similar to your country?
•Suggest solutions to these problems.

Follow up
Students write a paragraph about each country. this can be done as a homework.
Keeping a journal – a writing activity
Keeping a journal
Keeping a written record of what students have done each day, have thought about, or imagined can be a good way to train their
writing skills. This activity teaches students to keep writing regularly in a journal . The materials needed are notebooks and pens. The
journal is to be handed in to the teacher on regular basis ( once a week / a fortnight/ month.) The teacher should not over correct
students writing as this may discourage them. Some succinct comments, however, are welcome.
The activity:
•Tell students that they should keep a journal.
•Tell them that they are free to write about whatever they want.
•They should not care about the length of their production. Their writing may be one sentence long :)!  or it may enclose a
number of paragraphs.
Prompts:
Sometimes students get lost about what they may write about. It would be wise to give them ideas to help them get started. Here are
some prompt ideas:
•Telling about oneself
What happened on my way to school
What I did last night / last weekend
What I am doing tonight /or next weekend
The funniest thing I ever saw was…
Let me tell you about…
I like to …for many reasons.
I know how to …. First…
I just learned facts about…
Let me tell you about…
It’s fun to …. First you…
Many changes happen to …as they grow.
Let me tell you about my dream school…
Let me tell you about my dream teacher…
These are the things I would like to change about myself.
What I really enjoy doing.
What really bothers me
What really excites me
What really frightens me
What really astonishes me
My worst concern is…
I feel miserable  when…
The most frightening thing I ever saw was…
My favorite movie is …
My favorite tv program is …
My favorite subject is …
My least favorite subject is …
When my neighbors moved away
I really hate it when…
I remember when I was …years old and…
I remember when I first ate … and…
I remember when I first met …and…
When I get old…
Ten things I want to do in my life time are the following…
Love / friendship /happiness  is…
When I leave school…
My most embarrassing moment
My favorite trip
In 20 years, I will be…
My worst mistake was…
•Fantasizing
My pet turned into a monster….
I woke up this morning the size of a mouse…
I woke up one morning and everything was strange…
My pet talked to me …
My dog thinks he is an artist
My friend the giant
My talking pen told me…
My magic car…
Suddenly I was invisible…
The day my dog wore a jacket…
The day I became a cloud…
The day I flew…
The day I became an angel/ a dentist/singer / artist…
The day I met Robin hood…
The night the Martians landed…
Halloween night was…
The night I saw a monster…
The night the lights went out…
•What if I . . .
If I could fly I would…
If I could have a worm farm…
If I could move anywhere in the U.S. (world, state, etc)…
If I could apologize to one person…
If I could make all the rules…
If I could speak to animals…
If I could meet a star…
If I could ride on the Magic School Bus…
If I had 3 wishes, I would wish for…
If I had $1,000,000…
If I had a twin…
If I had an airplane
If I were stranded alone on an island / in an elevator…
If I were trapped in an elevator…
If I were stranded in the woods…
If I were invisible…
If I were the teacher…
If I were principal…
If I were a monster/bird/star, I would be…
If I lived in a castle…
If I lived in a cave…
If I won the lottery
•Telling about things
My ball
My desk
My room
My computer
My dog house
the tree next door
Our kitchen
My hide place
My pen
My bed
Teddy bear
Animals
My shoes
Aliens
Pets
Haunted houses
Chores
Homework
 •Talking about people
Thieves
Clowns
George Washington
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lincoln
Columbus
Thomas Alva Edison
Benjamin Franklin
Rosa Parks
Leonardo da Vinci
Picasso
Salvador Dali
Charlie Chaplin
Children
Doctors
Teachers
Scientists
Lawyers
Mechanics
Artists
Singers
Writers
Dancers
Dentists
Fire Fighters
Police Officers
Secretaries
Actors
Athletes

Elaborating and expanding sentences

This activity teaches students how to add details to sentences. The materials required are crayons or colored pencils and drawing
paper. The activity can last for 40 minutes.

Before you start, brainstorm

•Read the sentence: I see a house.
•Ask students to visualize and draw a picture using only the information given in the sentence.
•Next, read the sentence: I see a white and blue house with three  small windows and a large garage.
•Students  draw a picture based on just the details given.
•students tell  which sentence gave them the information needed to visualize.
•Students tell why they were able to draw a more detailed picture.
The activity
•Write sentences on the board.
Examples:
•I like pizza.
•My uncle lives in a house.
•They watched a serial.
•I went home.
•Ask students to add details to the sentences so that they can be richer in terms of information they carry.
•They can add adjectives (hot pizza/big house/ …), adverbs (they watched the serial silently/ went home happily/…), nouns, …
Follow up
Students with the most appealing sentences write them on the board to be copied.
Subject-Verb Agreement Lesson Plan
This activity will help students be able to identify the verb and the subject of any sentence and discover how the verb must agree with
the subject in number regardless of the word (s) or phrases between them.

The lesson
1.Write the following sentences on the board.
•Nancy plays basketball every Sunday.
•The children don’t like this food.
•Sara meets her boyfriend regularly
2.Students underline the subject and the verb in each sentence.
3.Students should discover subjects and verb agreement in English.
4.To check understanding of the rules, assign the following task.
a. The coffee on the table (is, are) too hot.
b. Alan (write, writes) good poems.
c. These cars (cost, costs) a lot of money.
d. The teacher (isn’t, aren’t) happy today.
e. That girl(don’t, doesn’t) seem to be happy.
f. My new friend (hasn’t, haven’t)  got a bike.
g. Those houses (are, is) very old.
h. The girls over there  (is, are) very nice.
i. John (study, studies) Chinese on  Mondays.
j. I (hop, hopes) to have a lot of friends.
5.Students exchange sheets to correct and score their sentences.
The sentences should be chosen according to the level of the students. Notice that the above examples are all in the simple present.

Easy spelling words activity – a lesson plan for beginners

Easy spelling words activity
This easy spelling words activity can be adapted to teach the alphabet or review vocabulary for elementary students or beginners. No
materials are required apart from sheets of paper, pens, and the board. The activity may be carried out in ten or fifteen minutes. The
activity aims at developing accuracy as well as a sort of classroom interaction.
•Materials: sheets of paper, pens, and the board.
•Level: elementary students or beginners.
•Aims: accuracy at spelling words.
•Timing: ten to fifteen minutes
Before you start the activity
Spell a name slowly to the students, writing it on the board as you do so. Ask the learners “whose name is it?”  Tell them to try to
guess as soon as possible, before you reach the end.
The activity
•Divide the class into teams.
•Spell the name of a student;
•Tell them to write the letters as you speak.
•As soon as a student thinks s/he knows whose name you are spelling, s/he should put up his/her hand.
•S/he should not call out the name till s/he is allowed.
•The first learner to put up his or her hand may try to guess the name. If s/he is wrong the other gets a point.
•Go on spelling the name till someone guesses right.
Follow up
Encourage students to spell names to each other. This will probably lead to more student-student interaction and foster a learner-
centered environment in the classroom.
Variation
This activity can also be used to revise vocabulary. You may spell words instead of names!
The students work in pairs. Each decides on a previously taught set of words and ask each other to spell those words. The may use
model questions and responses like the following:
•How do you spell…?
•Can you spell the word….?
•Good job!
•Fair enough!
•Good answer!
•Well done!
•Try again!
•Sorry, something is wrong!

The elements of a paragraph

This activity helps students identify the elements of a paragraph and learn how to write a paragraph. The materials required are
envelopes containing individual sentences, a tape and sheets of paper.The paragraphs can be taken from books or written by the
teacher and are arranged in a series of individual sentences using a large font.

Objective
Students learn the elements of a good paragraph.

Procedure
•Divide students into groups of four.
•Give each group an envelope containing sentences.
•Students work to place the paragraph in the correct order and tape the sentences in place on a sheet of paper.
•Students identify the elements of a paragraph, namely, topic sentence(TS), supporting details(SD), concluding sentence(CS).
•Call on one group to read the paragraph to the others. Have all students who created the same paragraph raise their hands.
•Have other groups share their paragraphs if they are different.
•Allow students to discuss the order and decide which order is best. It is possible to have more than one answer.
•Let students decide if the meaning of the paragraph changes with the order.
•Each group is given a topic and writes their own paragraph using the TS, SD and CS approach.
•Students share and critique paragraphs.

Follow up
•Write topics on the board and allow students to choose one.
•Students individually write a paragraph.
•Peer correction using a checklist.

Action verbs game for English language learners!

Action verbs game
This is an action verbs game. Nothing can be more motivating and effective in a language teaching classroom than doing things with
words. This game helps students review action verbs and fosters their long-term retention of these verbs. The materials needed are
action cards and dice. Each action card must contain five action verbs and can vary in difficulty depending on your grade level. The
activity should be done in groups of 3 to 5 students.
 
Materials:
•Cards
•Dice

Level:
•Beginners.
Timing
•About 15 minutes.

Objectives:
•Revising action verbs
•Fostering retention of the action verbs.
•Bringing lively action into the classroom.

Action verbs activity

This activity aims at revising action verbs. It is designed for beginners and might take about 15 minutes. The materials needed are
dice and cards.
Procedure:
•Give 1 dice and 1 card for each group. Action cards are simply index cards with numbered action verbs on them. The verbs
should be numbered 1-6
•Each group receives one action card and one dice.
•The game begins when you call “action” and ends when you call “cut”.
•The first player rolls the dice and must read the verb with the corresponding number. Then, they must physically perform or act
out the verb. If they are unable or unwilling to perform it, they lose their turn. This continues around the group until you call
“cut”.
•Choose verbs that may bring fun, action, and motivation to the game.

Variation
This activity can be done to revise other language points like:
•adjectives,
•adverbs,
•and prepositions.

Food vocabulary activity

Activity:

This activity can be used to review vocabulary related to food, dishes, food cultural
differences, healthy and unhealthy food…
Objective:
to introduce new vocabulary related to food, to  know about eating habits in different
countries.
Procedure:
•Students are given a text and a set of pictures presenting cooking vocabulary.
•They should match sentences and  pictures and make up a list of new vocabulary.
•Then they are given a list of places where people can eat, so they could match a
place and its short description given orally or on another card.
•Students discuss various diets and types of food.
•Students say what dishes are associated with different countries. ( e.g., sashimi –
Japan, dim sum – China, pelmeni – Russia, Yorkshire pudding – England, etc.)
•Working in groups, students should make up a list of healthy and unhealthy diets,
prove their choice and exchange ideas.
•The teacher asks them to discuss the medical importance and benefits of eating healthy.
•Students should describe healthy foods they eat in their native country.
•In groups, students create a healthy menu for a dinner.
•They are encouraged to use familiar and simple recipes.
•The teacher asks each group to present their recipe to the rest of the class.
•They can also give an example of an unhealthy menu with lots of calories and so on.
Find more:
•material on food vocabulary
•quizzes on food vocabulary
“I have a dream” – writing activity
I Have A Dream…
This lesson plan activity relates the classroom to the problems the world is facing. It takes as the starting point one of te most
beautiful speeches about civil rights. The objectives are the following:
•Students will be able to write about a real-world problem facing their school, community, city, state, country, or ten world.
•Students will demonstrate in writing solutions to problems relating to their lives and the lives of others.

Procedure:
This lesson plan activity can be done as follows:
•Read the story, A Boy Named Martin to the students.
•Then discuss any feelings the story might spark and how Civil Rights have changed things since Martin Luther King, Jr. was a
boy.
•Next, read Martin Luther King , Jr’s, “I Have A Dream” Speech.
•Students brainstorm dreams they might have …
•Students choose one problem to write about and offer possible solutions.
•This activity can be integrated with a thematic unit or taught as a writing lesson.

Teaching cause and effect

A lesson plan in three steps
The objective of this activity is to help students understand cause and effect relationships, recognize
them when reading and use them in their writing and speaking.

Activity:
Step 1:
•Read a short story to the class.
•After reading the story, ask the class comprehension about why particular events took place.
•Students draw a chart with two columns, causes and effects.
•Students complete the chart with causes and effects as they occur in the story.
Step 2
•Make a list of possible causes and have students brainstorm for possible effects.

Causes Effects
John sleeps late …
Nancy was ill …
He was driving very fast …
Possible linking words: so, as a result, consequently, that’s why
For example:
•John sleeps late… (so, he always goes late to work…)
•Nancy was ill… (so she didn’t go to school…)
•He was driving very fast… (so he had a terrible accident…)
•Make a list of possible effects and have students brainstorm for possible causes.

Causes Effects
He fell asleep …
They got married …
He had a terrible headache …
 Possible linking words: because, as, for, since
For example:
•He fell asleep… (because he was tired…)
•They got married… (because they were in love …)
•He had a terrible headache… (because he had been working all day long…)
•Students add more cause and effects to the lists to ensure comprehension.
•Students discuss the examples they provided in pairs and write down a sentence with cause and effect.
Step 3
•Students work in pairs to identify cause and effect relationships from a printed story or passage.
•Each pair makes a large chart of causes and effects found in the story.
•After all students are finished, the charts are displayed for all to see and discuss.
More on cause and effect

Introducing yourself and family members

This is an activity that will help students develop both the vocabulary related to “family” and the ability to talk about themselves and
family members. Materials required are papers and pencils. The activity can last about
30 minutes.

Objectives
•Oral practice of family vocabulary.
•Introducing themselves and other members of  their families.
Procedure
•The class is divided into groups of four learners.
•The teacher shows the students a simple drawing sample of the members of a
family, and briefly introduces each to the whole class in English.
•The teacher writes the relevant vocabulary on the board.
•Each student has to draw a simple picture with every member living in their houses
on the paper.
•Every member in the group has to introduce his family members in the picture to the other members of the group.
•After the group discussion, one person in each group introduces one picture of his/her group to the whole class.
More on the same language point:
•Family members
•Introducing yourself

Bingo With Opposites

This game can be used to review vocabulary such as opposites. But it might be adapted to teach any language point. Some of its
advantages are the following:

1.Students learn through doing.

2.It brings variety to the English class and contribute to create a low affective filter and enhance motivation.
3.can be adapted to review any language point
Objectives:
•Reviewing opposites
Implementation
Students draw a grid with25 cells.
In Each cell, there should be an adjective studied previously. (The adjectives may be suggested by the teacher.)
The teacher then reads a text or separate sentences containing opposites of the above adjectives while students listen.
When students hear a sentence containing an opposite of the adjectives in their grids, they tick the corresponding cell.
Once they mark off five numbers in a row, they have achieved a bingo and won. The game can then stop there or continue so that
other students can achieve a bingo.
Find here more materials:
•a list of opposites
•opposites quiz
Grammar review lesson activity for beginners
Grammar activity
This is a grammar activity for beginner or pre-intermediate students. It is designed to review grammar at the end or at the beginning
of the year. The worksheet includes important elements of grammar and each item challenges learners knowledge of a specific
grammar point.
Another grammar review activity can be found here:
Grammar Review Activity
 
The activity
•Students work in groups to answer the exercise below.
•Class correction.
•Learners identify grammar areas that they need to understand.
•Students use their grammar summaries to revise the lessons related to the areas they have identified.
•Prepare a new quiz focusing on the the grammar elements the students have revised.
•They work individually to answer the exercise.
•They compare and discuss answers.
•Class correction.
The worksheet
Choose the correct answer
1.He is a _________ worker.
a. slow b.  slowly
2.He ___________ fish.
a. wants b.is wanting
3.I’m going to the supermarket ______ some fish.
a.  to buy b. for buy c. for buying
4.My friends are at the stadium. They  __________________ a football match.
a. watching b. are watching c. watch
5.He enjoys __________ .
a. to read b. read c. reading.
6.Marrakesh is one of  _______________ cities I have ever been to.
a. more interesting b. the most interesting c. the interestest
7.  __________ to school everyday?
a. Do you go b. are you going c. you go
8. ________ TV yesterday evening?
a. Did you watch b. Do you watch c. are you watching
9. ______   Paris ?
a. Did you ever be to b. Do you be to c. Have you ever been to
10.He runs fast_________  is very old.
a. in spite of b. despite c. although

ELT Games – Find the mystery person!

Find the mystery person!
Objectives:
•describing
•vocabulary:
•adjectives (black, white, tall, long…)
•clothes
Skills: writing, reading, listening and speaking.
Implementation
Student A leaves the room.
The other students choose a secret person and write a short description of him/her. They then ask Student A to return and read the
description.
Student A must find the mystery person.  To make the game more challenging a time limit can be set.
A variation of the game:
Divide the students into teams. The team with the higher score wins.

ELT games – Chain game!

Chain game!
Objective:
•Revising vocabulary
•Spelling
Implementation
Students are set in a circle. They choose a word which is written on a sheet of paper.
Every student writes a new word that starts with the last letter of the previous word.
Example:
go – out – tea – arm – meet ….
The spelling must be correct.
When a student makes a mistake s/he leaves the game.
A variation of the game:
The game can be carried out orally. But more speed is required in this case

Writing Tasks! Are They Time Consuming? (2)

Although writing tasks can be time-consuming when assigned in the classroom, it would be a huge mistake to reduce the frequency
of its assignment. On the contrary, teachers should try hard to make it part and parcel of every classroom activity as they offer an
opportunity to gain feedback, learn more about our students, and lead them to reap the fruit of creativity. In my last post, I promised
to share some time-saving writing tasks that can be integrated with other language activities. Here they are!

Poems:

writing
Hear me, what I am talking about here is not a long, intricate poem. It’s just a 2 – 6 line poem. Best assigned to practice some
language points such as:
•grammatical categories:
Write a poem having this form.
1. Noun
2. adjective + and + adjective
3. verb + adverb
4. Like or as …
5. If only …
Example:
 Politician
phoney and false
lying desperately
like a mocking bird
if only I had the key to the bird cage

Of course, you can think of other combinations 

•Simile, metaphor
Write a poem having this form.
1. X is like/as Y
2. X is Y
Example:
She is like a flower
She’s my angel
Again different other combinations are possible!
Short messages:
Why don’t we take advantage of the growing communication technologies? Instant short messages are growing at a very fast rate
outside the classroom. It would be a good idea to use them within the classroom.
Students may exchange short messages at the beginning of each English session. The messages may contain just a  greeting or
personal information.
Examples:
“hi how are u today?”
“Today I was mad at my brother. He spoilt my bike”
“You look terrific in your new dress”
Summaries:
They can be summaries of reading texts, conversations, discussions…
Quick write:
Students write quickly something they can use to contribute to a discussion. This can take the form of a sentence, a phrase, a short
paragraph, notes … two requirements are needed though: set a time limit and tell the students not to worry much about mistakes.
Slogans:
Students choose a product and write a short easily remembered phrase, a slogan. The slogan can be fictive or real. They decide. You
accept the choice.
Mottoes:
Ask your students to write a short sentence or phrase that expresses a belief or purpose:
Example:
“Work hard, play hard”.
In a nutshell, writing teaches creativity, production, and organization of ideas. It would be a huge mistake to overshadow its
importance and reduce the frequency of its assignment.

Teaching activity: compound nouns

Compound nouns
This activity teaches students compound nouns, their form and meaning. The materials required are cards and pens or pencils. It can
last for 30 minutes.
The activity
•On different cards, write down half of a compound noun and then the other half on another card.
•Try to use a few compound nouns that students might not be familiar with.
•Mix up the cards and have each student choose one.
•Then tell them that they should find the other half of their compound noun.
•Students get up and move around.
•Once a student has found his or her pair, check that they are matched up correctly and have them sit together.
•Students will enjoy action, especially those students who can’t stand still to work!
Follow up
After all the students have found their respective halves, write all the compound nouns on the board and have the students define
them.

Thanksgiving Activity
Thanksgiving
By the end of this activity students will be able to write a poem about what they are thankful for. The activity can be carried out in
about 30 minutes.
Preparation (10 min)
•Write the word thanksgiving on the board
•Ask students to mention any thing they know about the word.
•Ask them why the first pilgrims celebrated it?
•Elicit from them things they should be thankful for.

The activity (20 min)

•It’s time students show how thankful they are.
•Tell students to draw a table like the following and show that they are thankful for the things they own, the people around them
and any other things…

I am thankful for…
Things People other
1. 1. 1.
2. 2. 2.
3. 3. 3.
4. 4. 4.
•When they finish they write a poem about what they are thankful for…
Here are more links to Thanksgiving activities:
•Reading comprehension text about Thanksgiving
•Thanksgiving poem
•Listening to a song: Be Thankful by Sarah Connor

Travel Vocabulary Lesson Plan

Travel vocabulary
Level: beginners
Objectives: travel vocabulary, learners cooperation, writing a paragraph using travel vocabulary
Materials: worksheets containing the task below.
Time:  about 10 minutes.

The activity
•Divide the students into small groups.
•Hand out the worksheet containing the matching task below.
•Students work together to do the task.
•When they finish, representatives of each group write the answers on the board.
•Answers are compared and discussed to find the right answers
•The new vocabulary is written down on students’ notebook.
•Assign a homework: ask students to find pictures related to the activity.
Follow up
Students write a paragraph about what they do when they travel.
When I travel, I pack up my … and …. a taxi to the airport. I buy a newspaper from …. Then, I…

The worksheet
Travel Places
Match the following travel words with the places.
A. Buy tickets 1. Information desk
B. Get the train schedule 2. At the pay phone
C. Make a phone call 3. Airport
D. Check my luggage 4. Newsstand
E. Eat something 5. Baggage check
F. Wait for the train 6. Train station
G. Buy a newspaper 7. Snack bar
H. Catch the train 8. Waiting area
I.  catch the plane 9. Ticket office

Vocabulary Building
From alphabet to writing a story
By the end of this activity students will learn 26 new words and use them in sentences or to write a story.  The materials required are
a dictionary, paper, pen or pencil. The activity takes about one or two class periods

The activity
•Students look through the dictionary and then define one word from each letter of the alphabet.
•Each selected word should be new.
•After they define all 26 words, students must copy them in their vocabulary notebook.
•Then, they must write one sentence for each of the 26 words.
•Make sure that they use each word correctly.

Follow up
Students use some of  those 26 words in a story. They must underline each of those selected words in the story.

Grammar Poem Lesson Plan

Grammar poem
This is an activity that helps students develop an awareness of both grammar and writing skills. It can be carried out in a one-period
session.  No materials are required apart from a pen or pencil and sheets of paper.

The activity
It’s just a 2 – 6 line poem. Best assigned to practice some language points such as grammatical categories.
•Review grammatical categories.
•Tell students to come up with examples of grammatical categories.
•Tell students that they have to write a poem having this form.
1. Noun
 2. adjective + and + adjective
3. verb + adverb
4. Like or as …
5. If only …
Of course, you can think of other combinations:)
•Provide an example like this one:
Politician
phoney and false
lying desperately
like a mocking bird
if only I had the key to the bird cage
•Give students time to read and understand the poem meaning and its structure.
•As a homework or in class they write similar poems
•Peer editing and final draft to be handed in for correction

Expressions of Advice Lesson Plan

Advice
This activity teaches students expressions of advice (asking for and giving advice.) The materials needed are sheets of paper and pens
or pencils. The activity takes about 50 minutes.

The activity
•Teach students expressions of advice.
•Asking for advice:
What do you suggest?
What do you advise me to do?
What should I do?
What ought I to do?
If you were me what would you do?
•Giving advice:
If I were you, I would…
Why don’t you…?
You’d better…
You ought to/should…
If you take my advice, you…
•Give students a set of problems to discuss:
•A bad headache
•You need to give up smoking. You can’t figure out how.
•A problem with a school subject.
•Your PC broke and you need money to buy a new one.
•You can’t sleep at night.
•Learners discuss and suggest solutions to these problems.
•Students write down a short exchange using expressions of advice.
•A: Asks for advice.
•B: Gives advice.
•Tell students that now they have to write down  problems they are facing in their lives. Problems with
•parents,
•school,
•health,
•friend,…
•Each student writes a short note to a classmate stating his problem and asking for advice.
•Each student write a response to his classmate suggesting an advice.

Variation
This activity may work pretty well using technology. You may encourage learners, for example, to use mobile short messages, twitter
or emails to practice expressions of advice.
More on:
•Asking for and giving advice
Lesson Plan – Identifying Words in a Song
Using songs
Songs are an effective way learn English because of many reasons:
•Songs introduce authentic language .
•They involve target language cultural aspects.
•They can be used to teach various language points.
•Using songs is a nice and joyful activity to foster listening skills.
•Songs are fun.
To see why teachers should use songs in ELT read this previous post:
•Why teachers should use songs in EFL and ESL classes?
The materials needed are the following:
•Find a suitable song for your class and have copies of the lyrics. (To find some interesting songs for your students go to this
page: Songs and lyrics for EFL and ESL students)
•A set of cards for each group of 5 students. Each set of cards contains about 20 words. Some of these words are taken from the
song. The others are not, but are similar in meaning or sound to the words from the song.

The activity
•Give each group the set of words.
•Tell students that they have a few minutes to lay out the cards and decide what they think the song is about.
•To  help students brainstorm, ask a few questions:
•Do you think it’s sad or happy?
•Is it a love song?
•‘Why? Which words make you think that?
•Tell the students that in fact only some of these words are in the song, and that they’ll listen to the song to find out which.
•If they hear one of the words, they should grab that card.
•The students in each group should compete to grab as many correct words as possible.
•They’ll get +1 point for correct cards and -1 point for wrong cards.
•I play the song once for students to listen and ‘grab’.
•I then ask students how many cards they’ve got. I hand out the lyrics and ask students to find their words.
•The student with the highest number of points of each is the winner.

Follow up
As a follow-up you may use the lyrics for a variety of purposes, for example as a text for reading comprehension or language work,
or for the class to sing together.

Persuasive Essay Lesson Plan

Writing a persuasive essay
This activity teaches students to write persuasive essay. The activity takes about 2-3 session periods.

The activity
•Tell students to choose an item of clothing, food, drink, … to advertise to the class.
•Students write a short commercial to advertise the product.
•Class votes on most convincing (persuasive) commercial.
•Discussion about persuasion and how it was used in the short commercials.
•Give complex, debatable topics (capital punishment, abortion, corporal punishment, etc.) to discuss. These will help provoke
thought and trigger reactions.
•The oral debate of the topics  allows students time to develop opinions and share ideas.
 •Without any guidelines students are instructed to write an essay on the topic.
•Tell students that opinion words (such as think, feel, in my opinion, etc. ) make the essay sound weaker. They should be avoided
in a persuasive essay.
•Briefly review students on formal writing style and essay formats, then discuss other guidelines for persuasive essays. The
following are some key factors to discuss:
•Do not use contractions
•Use formal language
•Write in first or third person only
•Do not use “opinion words”
•Have a strong introduction which states your view on the situation
•Wrap up with a strong conclusion
•Now have students write a 250-300 word persuasive essay.

Examples of topics for persuasive writing

The following are some good topic ideas for persuasive essays collected from various sources:
•We spend billions of dollars on space discovery while millions of people die in Africa. Do you think this is fair?
•There has been discussion of raising the legal driving age. How do you feel?
•Should professional athletes be paid more than teachers?
•Should public school students wear uniforms?
•Should prayer be allowed in public schools?
•Should capital punishment be banned

Brainstorming Lesson Plan

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a tool that uses a relaxed, informal atmosphere combined with lateral thinking to solve problems. In spite of its
importance in the generation of new ideas, many students do not have enough training to use it. This activity will teach students to
brainstorm effectively. It can be carried out in a one-period session.  No materials are required apart from a pen or pencil and sheets
of paper.

The activity
•Elicit from students different ways to generate new ideas.
•Tell the students that they are going to try  an activity called brainstorming to generate ideas.
•divide the class into two groups.
•Assign one student in each group to be a leader. Give the group leaders the following tips:
•First group leader:
Encourage other students to contribute ideas on how to improve this English class. But, you do not want to waste any time. If
a student states an idea which seems useless, tell the student “That’s no good” or “Bad idea”, then move on to another
student.
•Second group leader:
Encourage the other students to contribute ideas on how to improve this English class. Ask one student in the group to write
down all ideas. Praise students’ contributions and don’t criticize any of the ideas. Make sure all ideas are accepted and
written down.
•Give students ten minutes to do the brainstorming activity.
•Get feedback from students about the brainstorming. Ask which group produced more ideas and which group enjoyed the
activity more.
•Group leaders read out their slips of paper.
•Students guess which group was brainstorming the right way.
•Write these rules of successful brainstorming on the board:
•All ideas are accepted and written down.
•Generate as many ideas as possible.
•Unusual, even seemingly irrelevant ideas are welcome
•You may use other students’ idea and expand on it
•Criticism is banned at this stage.
•Using these rules students brainstorm other topics.
•When they finish, groups choose their three best ideas and write them up on the board.
Follow up
Students write an essay about the topic they brainstormed.

Lesson Plan: Play-Stop-Go-Back dictation

Dictation machine
Dictation is one of the oldest activities. It is thought, unduly, to be an old-fashioned, teacher-centered and uncommunicative activity.
Nevertheless, it still has its place in ELT. The activity that I will present in this post is a variation of the traditional dictation. You can
look for more variations in my previous post about why teachers should use dictation in English language teaching.
This dictation activity allows students to recognize language in  listening and  writing. It is different from the traditional dictation
because:
•the learners themselves control the dictation,
•it allows for all learners of all levels to participate actively.
The activity doesn’t require any materials apart from sheets of paper and pens or pencils.

The activity
•Prepare a short text which contains language points students need to work on.
•Write on the board “play”, “stop” and “go back”.
•Elicit the meaning of these terms from learners.
•Tell the students that you will function like a machine ( cassette player)
•Explain to students that you will be playing a short text that they should write down as accurately as possible.
•Tell them that at any time they can ask you to stop and go back to a particular point in the text.
•When students are ready,  stand still at the front of the class.
•Don’t speak until a students shouts “play“.
•Read at a slow-normal speed; don’t utter words separately.
•let the class take complete control, stopping only when they ask you to by saying “stop, go-back”.
•The dictation goes on until all the students feel satisfied with their text.
•They may want  to play the cassette again. In this case the only thing they need to do is shout “play” again.
•Give students a few minutes to compare their texts.
•Hand out copies of the original text for them to check against.

Variation
As a variation, before handing out the original text for students to check against,  ask them to re-dictate the text to you. When writing 
try to keep any mistakes they utter. As you finish guide  learners to identify the mistakes if there are any. Then work on these
mistakes.

Third Conditional Lesson Plan

Third conditional sentence
This activity presents third conditional sentences. Students will be able to identify conditional sentence type three, its meaning and
how it is formed.

The activity
1.Find an appropriate story to teach conditional sentences type three.
2.For example, tell the students this story:
“When John was 25, he had to choose a career:
a. To become an English teacher.
b. To become a businessman.
He finally decided to become an English teacher , because he wanted to be able to travel around the world and work at the same
 time.  If he hadn’t become an English teacher, he wouldn’t have moved to London. He could have become a businessman of
course. If he had become a businessman, he could have earned a lot of money.”
3.Tell the students that the story contains two conditional sentences.
•Ask them to identify them and
•Elicit the form.
Here are the examples:
If he had not become a teacher, he would have moved to London.
If he had become a businessman he could have earned a lot of money.
Elicit the form:
If + had + past participle + would + have + past participle
4.Ask the students some concept questions to check understanding:
A. Did John become a teacher? (Yes)
B. Did he move to London? (Yes)
D. Are we talking about the past, present or future? (The past)
5.Cut up third conditional sentences.
6.Divide the students into pairs and give each pair a set of cut up sentences which they must re-organise into a third conditional
sentence.
7.When they think that the sentences are correct, they should call you over to check them.
8.When they finish, ask them to write the sentences down in their notebooks.
9.When all the pairs have finished re-organising the sentences, you can do some feedback and write them up on the board and
ask the students concept questions (like in stage 4) about each sentence, to check comprehension.
10.On the board, write four beginnings of 3rd conditional sentences and ask students in pairs to discuss how they would finish
the sentences.
a. If I hadn’t gone to primary school, I …
b. If I’d traveled to China last year, I …
c. If I’d met an alien last night, I …
d. If I’d decided to stop my education earlier, I …
11.Elicit endings from various students and write the best one for each sentence up on the board.

Follow up
Write on the board:
“Have you ever had to make a really big decision?
Can you imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t made that decision?”
Ask students to discuss the questions in pairs and monitor carefully to see if they are using the correct forms. Then ask them to write
down third conditional sentences based on their discussions.

Women in History Lesson Plan

Women in History
In this activity students are encouraged to do a research and write a biography about a prominent woman who made history.

The activity
•Ask Students when the International Women’s Day takes place.
•Ask about what the celebration stands for.
•Students read a text about a prominent woman. This is a list of websites providing interesting material about women. More links
can be found at Larry Ferlazo.
•Women Who changed the world
•Fight for Women’s rights
•Provide a form for students to fill (see the form bellow.)
•Ask students to do research about a famous woman.
•They write a biography about the famous woman they did research about.

The form
Name ________________________ Date ____________________
 Women in History – Biographical Data Form
Directions:
Pick a woman who helped shape history and write a short biography about her life using the following
guidelines.
Name :_______________________________
Year of Birth: ________________
Place of Birth: ___________________________
Who did she help? :_______________
State their single greatest accomplishment:____________________
Describe the accomplishment in detail: _____________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
How did she achieve this feat? __________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Year of Death (if applicable): ____________________

Standard VS Slang Lesson Plan

Standard vs Slang
EFL learners have difficulty understanding and interacting with native speakers because the nature of native speakers language differ
more or less from the artificial language that we, as EFL teachers, use in the classroom.  That’s why, it would be a good idea to teach
slang to EFL students to bridge the gap between the language of the books that we usually teach and the language of  every day life
that our learners would be forced to understand and use when facing authentic situations and interacting with native speakers.

The activity
•Ask students whether they have problems understanding conversations in British or American movies.
•Brainstorm the reasons why they may have difficulty fully understanding native speakers language.
•Explain that slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker’s  language.
•Give examples of slang language for students to study in groups. (See bellow.)
•Students do a matching exercise to get explanation of the slang vocabulary items in the examples given earlier. (See bellow.)

Examples
1.What an awesome sunset today.
2.He had to barf because he drank too much alcohol.
3.Your ideas about politics are all wet.
4.You cannot get a girlfriend if you act dorky.
5.Shut up! You are such a big mouth.
6.Her ex-boyfriend was dirt / a dirt bag.
7.The whole idea was a bust.
8.He’s an ace reporter who always gets a good story.
9.This is a really cool place to work.
10.I need more time to cram for the test.
11.If you make another boo boo like that, you won’t have a job.
12.He is really a chicken.
13.He has a really cushy job.
 14.Investing in the stock market can be dicey.
15.At the wedding he had a flashback of his old girlfriend
16.More than twenty companies in the district went bust during the last three months.
17.That guy is a zero
18.The company received a kickback from the politician during the recent elections
19.His salary is thirty grand
20.Do you want rice or spuds for dinner?

Matching task
Slang vocabulary Expalnantion
1. ace a. great
2. all wet b. very good
3.  airhead c. vomit
4. boo boo d. a stupid person
5. awesome e. completely wrong
6. chicken f. talk too much
7. big mouth g. mistake
8. barf h. good
9. cram i. coward
10. cool j. study hard
11. grand k. easy
12. zero l. risky
13. flashback m. awful person
14. spuds n. memory
15. go bust o. forced to close because it is financially unsuccessful
16. kickback p. strangely
17. dorky q. money paid illegally for favorable treatment
18. dirt or dirt bag r. potatoes
19. dicey s. unimportant person
20. cushy t. thousand dollars

Teaching Restrictive and Non Restrictive Relative Clauses

This activity requires that students have some knowledge of relative clauses. The aim of the activity is to help students distinguish
restrictive (defining) relative clauses from non restrictive (non defining) clauses.

The activity
•Write on the board the following two sentences:
•Michael Jackson, who was a famous singer, died of an overdose.
•The man who sent the anonymous letter is the real murderer.
•Ask students to do the following:
•Underline the relative clauses.
•Underline the relative pronouns.
 •Decide which relative clause is essential and necessary to the meaning of the sentence.
•Decide which relative clause is not really essential and provide only extra information to the meaning of the sentence.
•identify which clause is put between commas.
•Learners agree on definitions of restrictive and non restrictive clauses.
•Restrictive relative clauses (also called identifying relative clauses or defining relative clauses) give detailed
information defining a general term or expression. They are not put between commas.
•Non- restrictive relative clauses (also called non-identifying relative clauses or non- defining relative clauses) give
additional information about something, but do not define it. They are put between commas.
•Students identify in the sentences above which clause is restrictive and which one is non restrictive.

Practice
Study the following examples and complete the chart:
1.These are the regions which have been affected by the flood.
2.My grandmother, who is dead now, used to teach English in Egypt.
3.The museum, which we have never visited, is organizing a retrospective exhibition which will include more than 100 works of
art by the Impressionist Salvador Dali
4.They’re the people who want to sell the shop.
5.Paris, where John lives, is the destination for my next vacations.
6.The actress is now playing a woman whose husband was killed in the second World War.
The chart
Relative pronoun Clause Restrictive or non restrictive
… … …
… … …
… … …
Follow up
Students complete the following sentences using appropriate relative clauses:
1.Barack Obama…
2.The girl…
3.My mother…
4.The boy….
5.The house….
6.My elder sister…

Introducing-oneself-activity as an icebreaker
Icebreaker activity
This icebreaker activity can be adapted for intermediate and advanced levels and is appropriate for all ages. No materials are needed.
The learners usually take about fifteen minutes to carry out the activity. In addition to the fact that it adds some fun to the classroom,
it provides opportunities for incidental learning.

Students introduce themselves

The most important issue an EFL or ESL teacher faces on the first day of school is to alleviate the stress generated by the encounter. I
suggest an activity for the students to introduce themselves to each other. The activity will make everyone feel at ease. The lesson
plan is described below.
Five questions as a starter
Instead of urging students to introduce themselves by giving their names and some other information about themselves (which are
usually forgotten immediately after the activity), put them in a context. For example, tell them to imagine that they are at a party
where they have to know each other by asking questions. Here is how the activity could go:
•After introducing yourself, tell students to imagine that they are at a party.
•Get the students up and let them move instead of sitting tense and anxious.
•Before they start moving around, have each of them prepare 5 questions to ask other members of the group, questions about
name, age nationality, favorite things, etc, depending on their level of proficiency.
•Give them time to ask at least three people in the group some of the questions they have prepared.
•Then after they go back to their seats, have each student stand up and tell his or her name.
•When a student gives his or her name,  have classmates tell what they know about that person based on the answers to the
questions he or she was asked by these classmates.

Command drills with prepositions

Command drills
Command drills are a great way to teach many language points. The language activity described in this lesson plan has as an
objective to teach students prepositional phrases through commands and write a paragraph using these prepositional phrases.

The activity
Here is the activity procedure:
•Introduces prepositions and explain their meaning.
•Write the prepositions on the board.
•Call out a command for students to perform. For example:

Command Action
under the chair students drop under their chair
on top of the table they sit on top of the table
next to the door they stand next to the door
around the desk they wrap their arms around their desk
in front of the window they stand in front of the window
on the left of the board they stand on the left of the board
in your bag they put their hands in their school bag
You can involve students to take turns calling out the commands for the rest of the class to perform.

Writing a description
After performing enough actions to practice  prepositions, ask students to write a paragraph describing their living room or their
bedroom. They can use the following phrases:
1.in the corner, …
2.next to the bed, …
3.on the wall, …
4.on top of the table, …
5.in the middle of the room, …
6.under the window,
7.on the left of the door etc.
When the students are finished describing their rooms they exchange their paragraphs  for peer editing. Give them enough time to
proof read it. Then they take turn reading them. Later, students vote for the best description.
Follow up
Split students into groups of  four and ask them to prepare prepositional phrases to use as commands for other groups to perform.
advantages of this lesson plan:
•It’s a fun activity.
•Students learn while playing.
•They use language to perform things.

Writing a Group Poem

Writing a group poem lesson plan
This lesson plan encourages fluency, team work, accuracy,  and allows learners to their feelings. The activity is best done in groups of
4 students.
The activity
•Open a discussion on a subject of interest to the students. (e.g. the environment, family, love…)
•Encourage students to express their inner most feelings about the topic.
•The class is split into groups of 4.
•The class must agree on a title.
•Explain that each group will make a joint poem
•Each student will write 2 lines.
•The group must then decide on the order of the poem (which lines come first, which next…)
•Group editing using dictionaries and other resources. They check spelling, grammar, punctuation…
•The groups’ poem is handed in to the teacher.
•A representative of each group reads out each verse.
•The class decides which poem is the best.

Dictogloss – Another Variation of Dictation

Dictation
Dictation is not considered an old-fashioned activity any more. A lot f teachers have discovered that it’s a rich mine for developing
learners vocabulary and structural competence. The teacher’s role in modern variations of this activity is no longer considered
central. Learners are given more control of the activity.
Here are my previous posts about what dictation is and its variations:
•Why Dictation?
•Play-Stop-Go-Back Dictaion
The activity I suggest in this post is another alternative to traditional dictation.

Dictogloss
•Write a short text using a limited set of previously taught vocabulary.
•Read the text at natural speed.
•Students are allowed to take notes.
•Read it again, at natural speed.
•Don’t slow down or repeat anything.
•Groups of students try to reconstruct the entire text word for word.
•Allow students to discuss to reconstruct the text.
•Allow students to come up with new words to complete the task if they got stuck on the condition that they don’t change the
overall meaning of the text .
Follow up:
•Write the original text on the board
•Tell the students to check if their reconstructed text is similar to the original one.
•If yes, tell them to write the story again in their own words.

Word Prediction Lesson Plan

Vocabulary Prediction Lesson Plan
These activities can be used to refine understanding of students vocabulary schematic knowledge and activate vocabulary related to
the same semantic network. They can be done as pre-reading activities or as a game.

Pre-reading activity
•The teacher tells the student that they are going to read a text about for example environment.
•The teacher writes the topic on the board.
•Students predict the vocabulary items that may appear in the passage.
•The teacher writes the suggested words on the board and asks for the reason of the students’ choice of words or for the meaning.
•Students are then given a passage to check their prediction.

Prediction game
•Divide the students into small groups.
•The groups may be given a short lapse of time to generate as many words  related to the topic as possible.
•Groups then compare their lists of words explaining or defending their choice of words.

Rationale
An important element is that students should explain their choice of words. By doing so they are not only refining their understanding
of the vocabulary items but also activating other words in the same semantic network.

Variation
Predicting which vocabulary will appear in a text:
•The teacher gives the title or topic of a reading text and a list of words.
•Students then go through the list in small groups predicting which words will appear in the reading  text.
•Students must explain their choice.

Predicting the topic

•The teacher writes some key words related to a topic on the board.
•Students are asked to predict the topic of the text they are about to read.
•After the students have predicted the topic, they can be asked to predict other vocabulary items related to it

Conclusion
These activities help students to:
•reinforce understanding of vocabulary,
•activate the existing semantic networks,
•facilitate automatic lexical access.
Command Drills
An activity for beginners
During the first sessions with beginners, my students are not required to speak. Instead, they concentrate on obeying simple
commands in the target language. The objective of these commands is to connect physical activity with meaningful language use as a
way of instilling concepts. These command drills are usually used as a receptive practice for different language points including:
•Vocabulary
•To practice classroom vocabulary items such as door, board, desks, teacher, students, book, pens, bag, ruler…
•to present the parts of the body (nose, head, hair, eyes, foot, tongue…)
•Or any other vocabulary
•Grammar
•Pronouns (me, you, him, her, us, them…)
•Tense (to practice the imperative)
Command drills can also be used as a nice ice breaker activity. They create a lot of fun in the classroom while students get to know
each other’s names and respond physically to meaningful language use.

How to use command drills?

Command drills can take the form of:
•individual
•or whole class commands.

Whole class command drills

After a short introduction of key vocabulary items like parts of the body, school things etc, I use whole class command drills. The
vocabulary can be introduced simply by pointing to objects or by performing actions. Then I use commands like the following:
•Stand up / sit down
•hold up your hands
•show me your book/(blue) pen/ ruler/ear/eyes/mouth…
•Touch your head/shoulder/ear…

Individual command drills

I may also use individual drills to help students introduce their names or to check students comprehension of vocabulary or grammar.
Here are examples of individual commands:
•Please, tell me what your name is / Please, your name…
•Ok Leila, stand up please.
•Go to the board.
•Walk to the door.
•Write your name.
•Write number 1, 2, 5, 8…
•Show me the window.
•Point to your classmate Lisa / point to the teacher….
These demands eventually become more complex. For example, “Walk to the door” becomes “Stretch your arms while you walk to
the door” or “touch your ear while you write your name on the board”…etc  Students later become more actively involved, verbally
and creatively.
As you can see Command Drills can be used to introduce a wide range of language items for beginners who will be able from the
start to understand and perform actions in the target language. The activity is inspired from the Total physical Response method.

Alliteration lesson plan

Alliteration activity
The objective of this lesson plan is to help students understand the use of alliteration, repeating the same letter sound at the beginning
of two or more words in a sentence,  and review adjectives and adverbs.
The activity
•Write on the board a sentence with alliteration:
Example: sweet smell of success
•Ask students to tell you what they notice when they read the above sentence.
(Repetition of the same sound)
•Tell them that this is a stylistic device called alliteration.
•Give them a list of words and ask them to underline those that begin with the same SOUND.
Example:
chart, cat, know, care, cool, choir, choice, come.
•Students should be able to distinguish between the letter and the sound. For instance, although know starts with the letter k, it is
pronounced /n/ and although choir starts with the letter c it is pronounced /k/
•Write the word cat on the board. Then ask them to provide words that start with the sound /k/:
•an adjective (cool, cute, crazy…)
•a verb (climbed, caught, killed, crawled, came…)
•an adverb (carelessly, carefully, kindly, cautiously…)
•Then tell students to write a sentence using the above words.
Example: A cute cat crawled cautiously

Follow up
Write a letter on the board and ask students to write
•a sentence with alliteration
•and draw a picture depicting that sentence.
They may use a dictionary.

Writing an autobiography lesson plan

Autobiography lesson plan
This is lesson plan is about writing an autobiography. Students will work individually in pairs, in a group and as a whole class. They
provide ideas, write first draft, edit and type the final draft in the computer lab.

The activity
•Teacher elicits a definition of autobiography. You may use a short autobiographical story.
•Brainstorm ideas about information they could include in autobiographies.
•Write all ideas mentioned by the students on the board.
•Students in groups organize the information into categories. You may use a graphic organizer.
•They write a rough draft using the information in their graphic organizers.
•Then students work in pairs to edit the autobiographies. Provide a checklist for students to use for editing.
•Optional. Tell students to provide photos to use as illustrations.
•Students use the computer lab to type their autobiographies.

Follow up
Students exchange autobiographies. As a homework they read each others autobiographies and find similarities and differences
between their own autobiographies and their classmates. A class discussion can be scheduled for the next session.

Contractions, Plural Names, and Possessives Lesson Plan

One of the difficulties of English is identifying and recognizing contractions, plurals and possessives. This worksheet provides
students opportunity to practice these forms by editing sentences containing mistakes in these forms.

The activity
•Review the differences in form between contractions, plural names, and possessives
•Give examples such as the following:
 Contraction He is = He’s
Plural name the Johnsons
Possessive Nancy’s book
•Give the students the exercise below to be done individually.
•Group correction.
•After correction, students work in groups to  divide the corrected sentences into three groups, namely those which use
contractions, those which use plural names, and those which use possessives.

The Exercise
Correct the following sentences.
Example:  Hes from Morocco. — He’s from Morocco.
1. What is Leilas phone number?
2. Wheres John?
3. The Tanaka’s are here.
4. Shes really awesome.
5. I like your sisters dress.
6. They’re at their uncles house.
7. The Lynch’s are from Australia.
8. Its a nice song.
9. I know  Lisas friend.
10. We live next to the Brown’s.

How to teach the present perfect simple?

Many teachers find it challenging to teach the present perfect. This is due to a number of reasons.

1.First, the present perfect is not really a present tense.

2.It is composed of the auxiliary have and a past participle.
3.The past participle itself is a real challenge for students, particularly the irregular forms
The following lesson plan provides ideas on how to teach this tense.
1. Start by giving examples of present perfect:
•Last week, I watched three movies.
•This week, I have watched only one.
2. Elicit the form of the present perfect simple.
•Have + Past Participle.
Remind students that the past participle of regular verbs is formed by adding -ed to the base form of the verb
•play = played
•visit = visited
•receive = received
However, the past participle of irregular verbs have special forms and have to be learned by heart:
•be = been
•come = come
•do = done
3. Help students make a distinction between finished and unfinished actions:
•Last week, I watched three movies. (Ask students: is last week finished?)
•This week, I have watched only one. (Ask students: is this week finished?)
Then draw a table like this:

 Finished Unfinished
Last week This week
 Yesterday  Today

Ask students to complete the table with time expressions like yesterday, this morning, in 1992, today….
Ask students to give you examples of finished actions and unfinished ones.
•I visited my uncle twice last week. But, I have visited him only once this week.
•I wrote three poems last month. But this month I have written only one poem.
•I called my girlfriend five times yesterday. But today, I have called her six times.
4. Once students grasp the contrast between finished and unfinished actions, you can proceed to present new uses of the present
perfect.
A. Have you ever…?
Use personal experience to teach this structure.
•Have you ever seen an Indian movie?
•Have you ever played golf?
•Have you ever met  a world champion?
•Have you ever written a poem?
B. Actions that happened in the past but whose effect is still in the present.
•Why don’t want to eat lunch with us? –  Because, I’ve already eaten it.
•Why don’t you want to read that book? – Because I’ve read it before.
•Why is he sad? – Because he has lost his purse.
C. Present Perfect with since and for
The best way to teach the present perfect with since and for is to use a time line.
•1990 – Nancy moved to New York.
•1992 – She was appointed as a teacher in Jesse Jackson high school.
•1994 – She married Alan.
Then Students may come up with examples like:
•Nancy has lived in New York since 1990 / for … years.
•She has been a teacher since 1992 / for….years.
•She has been married to Alan since 1994 / for.. years.

Tips to practice the simple present tense

When teaching and practicing the simple present tense students must understand that the present simple is used to describe routines,
habits, daily activities, and general truths. The following practice tips range from mechanical drills to meaningful practice.  Teachers
can adapt them to fit their students needs.

Oral drills
•Students practice forming simple present negative statements.  The teacher provides a sentence in the affirmative; students
change it to the negative.
Example:
Teacher: My father watches TV in the evening.
Students: My father doesn’t watch TV
•You can also use the same type of drill to practice question forms and short answers.
Example:
Teacher: Does your father watch TV at 4 o’clock in the morning?
Students: No he doesn’t.

Meaningful practice
For a more meaningful way to practice the simple present tense,
You can also practice the simple present in a more meaningful way.
1. For example to practice simple present statements with adverbs of frequency, the teacher calls on students individually to provide
sentences with always, usually, often, sometimes, rarely, or never to describe their usual habits.
Example:
Teacher: Nancy, ‘read the newspaper’.
Nancy: I never read the newspaper.
2. devise a questionnaire:
1.What’s your name?
2.Where do you live?
3.What do you do?
4.What do you do in your free time?
5.What sport do you like?
6.Do you practice it?
7.When and where do you practice it?
Then proceed as follows:
•Students answer the questions. Help them by providing verbs they will probably need.
•Students work in pairs to ask and answer the questions.
 •Students write a paragraph about their partners and read it loud.
3. Here is another activity to consolidate the use of the simple present:
•On the board, draw a chart with many columns each labeled with a different job.
•Students are put into groups.
•Each group is given individual sentences on slips of papers. Each sentence describes an activity a person would do in one of the
jobs indicated on the chart. For example: ” a mechanic repairs cars”, “a journalist writes articles”…
•Make sure that groups understand the meaning of the sentences and provide help.
•Students read the sentences and match them with the jobs.
•A representative of each group is asked to write on the board sentences underneath the appropriate job.
3. A variation of the previous activity.
•Ask students to provide a description of jobs.
•Then they take turns reading descriptions.
•The other students try to guess the job.
4. You can also use a chain game to practice the simple present for routines and habitual action.
• Ask students to continue a story. Start the story as follows:
“My cousin always has a busy day. He gets up early in the morning. At 5:00 o’clock, he goes jogging…”
•This must be written on the board and ask students to continue the story.
•Each student adds a new sentence to continue the story.
Exercises:
Put the words in brackets in the correct form of the simple present.
e.g : John (work)… in a restaurant.John
works in a restaurant.
1. The sun (rise)… in the east.
2.My parents (like )… slow music very much.
3.I always (drive)… to work.
4.Nancy (do )…. Judo.
5.Leila (drink )… four cups of coffee a day.
Circle the correct answer
1. Sue / I like jogging in the morning.
2.Alan / I usually writes reports in his job.
3.Bill / Sara and Sue always cleans her room.
4.Tony / we visit this museum regularly.
5.I / Leila watches soap opera.
Circle the correct answer
1.Do / does Leila like swimming?
2. Where do / does Alice and Alan live?
3.What time do / does the sun rise?
4.Do / does the Smiths go to this restaurant?
5. What do / does you think of the new manager?
Put these sentences into the negative form
1.The sun rises in the east.
It….in the west
2. They speak Spanish in Spain.
They… Chinese in Spain.
3.Vegetarians eat fruits and vegetables.
Vegetarians…meat.
4. They drive on the left in Britain.
They… on the right.
The elements of a short story lesson plan
This lesson plan helps students explore the different elements of a short story. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to come
up with a definition of the short story and know the elements that constitute it. Online materials may be used to carry out the lesson
plan. More than one session may be needed to deliver it.

 The activity
•Ask students what a short story is. Write any suggestions on the board.
•Present in the form of a worksheet the characteristics that define a short story:
1.  Length: a classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting.
2. Prose as opposed to poetry
3. Fiction, narrative.
4. Concise: information offered in the story is relevant to the tale being told.  This is unlike a novel, where the story can diverge
from the main plot
•Ask students to come up with a definition that might look as follows:
“A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in a narrative format. This format tends to be more
pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas  and novels.” (Wikipedia)
•Next, ask the students to further examine the uniqueness of the short story by reading a short story like The Necklace by Guy de
Maupassant.
•Students make a first report on:
1. the title,
2. characters,
3. setting,
4. plot,
5.  climax,
6.  and conclusion.
•Let the students answer questions about the short story. Here is an online copy of questions about The Necklace:
“The Necklace” – Questions
•Assign more short stories to be read and studied as extensive reading.

How to teach the simple present tense?

Difficulties
When teaching the simple present tense, there are several considerations teachers have to take into account. First, some irregular
verbs may confuse students. For instance, the verb ‘have‘ and ‘be‘ have different forms in the simple present (has, am, are,…) A
second concern is related to the dropping of the ‘s’ of the third person singular which many students seem to forget. Another
difficulty is the spelling of the forms that take the ‘s’ of the third person singular. Sometimes, only ‘s‘ is added (close – closes) while
in some forms ‘es’ is added (watch – watches.) Finally, interrogative and negative forms that necessitate the auxiliary ‘do‘ may
represent another challenge for beginner students.

Contrasting tenses
Bearing in mind the above difficulties, I usually try to teach a tense by contrasting it with another tense. For the simple present tense,
I contrast it with either:
•the present progressive tense (I’m reading a book now; I always read it in the morning),
•or the simple past (I usually play tennis on Sundays, but last Sunday I didn’t play tennis; I was ill)
Contrasting tenses gives students the opportunity to make finer distinctions between tenses and locate situations in time. Learners
will also be able to discover nuances in meaning as well as in structure. IN the case of the simple present, my ultimate aim is to make
students understand that this tense is used to describe routines, habits, daily activities, and general truths.

Tips and procedure to teach the simple present tense

1. Introduce the simple present and the present progressive through situations.
A. What am I doing now? (pretend to be reading a book)
B. Reading.
A. Yes I am reading a book at the moment. I read a book every week.
2. Write similar examples on the board.
•I am watching TV now. I watch TV every evening. I love watching movies.
 •I am playing soccer. I play soccer every Sunday. I like soccer, but I don’t like tennis.
•I am driving to work now. I drive to work every morning. I live far away from work.
•I am having lunch now. I usually have lunch at home. I don’t like to have lunch in a restaurant.
3. Draw a table on the board like the one below and ask students to identify the actions that are routine habits or facts and those that
take place at the time of speaking.

 Routines, facts, and habitual actions Actions that take place now
I watch TV every evening. I am watching TV now.
I like playing soccer. I am playing soccer.
I don’t like playing tennis. I am driving to work now.
… …
4. Introduce a) interrogative forms and b) third-person singular forms, negative and affirmative.
•Do you like playing soccer?
Yes, I like playing soccer, but I don’t like playing tennis. My sister doesn’t like playing tennis. She likes playing volleyball.
•Does Yor sister have a lot of friends?
No, she doesn’t have many friends. She’s unpopular.
•Do your parents like watching action films?
No, they don’t; they prefer love stories.
Ask students to complete this chart:

 Affirmative Forms Interrogative forms Negative forms

I like playing soccer Do you like playing soccer? I don’t like playing tennis
My sister likes playing volleyball  … …
… … …
5. Introduce adverbs of frequency and prepare a questionnaire like the following:
Choose the appropriate choice for you:
• I eat breakfast in the cafeteria.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I drink strong coffee in the morning.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I have lunch at a fast food restaurant.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I eat fruits after lunch.
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I have dinner at home
a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
6. Students read their preferences. The other students listen and take notes. Then they write short paragraphs about their partners.
My partner never has breakfast in a cafeteria. He sometimes has strong coffee…
7.  Ask students to come up with examples of the simple present.
• My name is…
• I am from…
• I … every morning.
• I work  in …
• I like…, but I don’t like…
• I go to…. school.
• I go to bed at…
Walk around and provide any help. Then ask students to write a paragraph using the examples they provided.
8. Later, it would be a great idea to help students distinguish between the simple present and the simple past. Provide examples like
the following:
• I go to the movies every Saturday, but last Saturday I didn’t go to the movies I stayed at home. I was ill.
• They always have breakfast at home, but last Sunday they didn’t have breakfast at home. They went out early in
the morning.
Seven picture activities for English learners
Picture activities
These are seven picture activities that English teachers can use in EFL or ESL classrooms. They can be used to teach vocabulary
writing or grammar.
1. Identifying pictures
You need to choose appropriate pictures to practice language items such as colors, clothes adjectives, the present continuous,
prepositions… The teacher sticks the pictures on the board and number them. S/he describes one of the pictures and the students try
to guess the number.
2. Memorizing details of a picture
The teacher shows a picture and then hide it. The teacher reads out statements about the picture and the students answer with true or
false.
As a variation of this activity, instead of reading out statements about the pictures, the students write themselves true statements
describing the picture. They later compare their statements in pair or group work.
3. Picture dictation
The teacher chooses a picture according to the level of the students. S/he describes the picture without showing it to the students. The
students’ task is to draw the picture as accurately as possible. This activity is best used to teach different types of vocabulary,
including preposition of place (in the middle, on the left, on, in, under, above…)
4. Partially covered picture
The teacher chooses a picture and cover it partially. The students try to guess the things in the covered part.
5. Humor
Choose funny pictures and let the students explain why the pictures make them laugh.
6. Story
Choose a picture that can be used to prompt the imagination of the students and ask the to write a story about the picture.
7. One-word picture
Choose pictures that reflect a controversy and ask students to describe the pictures by providing just one word for each picture, a
word that best summarizes the pictures.

Spelling bee activity

A spelling bee is a competition where contestants are asked to spell words. The origin of the spelling bee is believed to be in the
United States. Nowadays, spelling bee events are organized in many parts of the world. As an EFL or ESL activity, spelling bee can
be devised as a group or class activity that provides a fun way to practice spelling.

One of the meanings of the term ‘bee’ is the following:

A social gathering where people combine work, competition, and amusement
The word bee is also used in the following idioms:
•busy as a bee meaning occupied,
•a bee in (one’s) bonnet meaning an obssesion.
For EFL or ESL students, spelling bee can be carried out in different ways:
•competitively
•noncompetitively
•individually
•or in a team.

Guidelines
To prepare a spelling bee activity the following guidelines must be followed:
•Start with easy words so as not to intimidate participants especially in noncompetitive cultures.
•Reduce the affective filter. If particpants feel uncomfortable, they won’t get involved in the activity.
 •Speak slowly and clearly.
•Repeat the words as necessary.
•Begin witrh easy words and progress to more difficult ones.

The activity
If the spelling bee is prepared as a noncompetitive activity, one can follow the following steps:
•Choose interesting words.
•Dictate the words to the participants.
•Give participants time to write the words.
•When done, ask participants to compare and havea a discussion on the correct spelling.
•Show the correct spelling on the board.
•Participants work in groups to use the dictated words to provide either sentences, a story or a short paragraph depending on their
level of proficiency.
•Representatives of groups read out their sentences, stories or paragraphs.
To assign the activity in a more competitive way, follow the following steps:
•Choose 4-10 students to stand in front of the class.
•Dictate a spelling word to one participant.
•If the participant spell the word correctly, s/he remain at the front of the line.
•If s/he doesn’t spell the word correctly, s/he sits down, leaving the competition.
•Write each well-spelt word on the board.
•The participant who remains standing is the winner (and gets a prize!)

How to teach future plans with going to?

Teaching future tense
Expressing the future tense in English may pose a problems for learners because it can be expressed differently for different
purposes. This is a short list of some future forms:
•Bread is not on my shopping list. Good idea! I’ll get a loaf. (Decision taken at the moment of speaking)
•These flowers won’t grow there. It’s too dark there. (Future prediction)
•Sugar is on my shopping list. I am going to buy some. (Decisions taken before speaking)
•We’re playing tennis this afternoon. (future arrangement)
•I might go to Paris. (Future possibility)
In this lesson plan, focus is on teaching the structure going to with a verb to express a future plan (a decision taken before the time of
speaking). The lesson includes a warm up to gain attention and stimulate prior knowledge, present structures with going to for future
plans, help learner notice the use of this structure and practice it. The lesson ends with a follow-up to elicit performance of the
structure.

How to teach going to for future plans?

Warm up
If you are dealing with beginners, it would be much better to teach the simple present before teaching the future plan. If you are
dealing with intermediate students, simply review the simple future.  To review the simple future, you may introduce an activity that
involves a fortune-teller. Elicit from students how a fortune-teller predicts something in the future:
Examples: Fortune teller says:
1. You will get rich.
2. You will set up your own business.
3. You will marry a beautiful girl.
4. You will have a lot of children…
This can be done in the form of a role play activity.
Of course the simple future is used in other situations (e.g. instant decisions)
Once students understand how and when to use the simple future, you may proceed to teach going to + verb
Presentation
Next, try to introduce the future plan with going to + verb. Give examples where it is used for decisions that were taken before the
time of speaking:
Examples:
 •We are going to get married after graduation.
• We are not going to live here.
• We are going to move to New York after graduation.
Help learners notice the following:
1.The use of the future tense with going to.
2.The structure going to + verb in these sentences is used to refer to events planned before the time of speaking. These are
decisions taken prior to the moment of speaking.

Activity
1. Introduce an activity which involves an interview with someone who has won a lot of money in the lottery:
A. What are you going to do with the money?
B: I am going to set up my own business.
A: Are you going to help people in your family?
B: Of course, and I’m going to buy a farm in the countryside.
….
2. Shopping list:
Students give examples of things they are going to buy.

Follow up
Writing
•Students write a short paragraph about what they have decided to do next weekend.
•Students take turn reading their paragraphs.
Pair work
Write these examples on the board:

Going to (decisions taken before the time of speaking) Simple future (future predictions)
You will feel tired You will have lunch
at work.
I am going to meet my friend tomorrow morning.
You will come back home late.
We are going to work all day long on our project
You won’t probably have time to relax.
…
•Tell students to work in pairs to provide a quick list of three plans using going to.
•They take turns: student A tell about one of his plans. Student B makes predictions. (as in the table above)
Role play
A friend is planning to go on holiday soon. Ask her about her/his plans. Use the words in brackets make questions:
1.(where / go ?) ___________________ .
2.(how long / go for?) _________________
3.(when / leave ?) _____________________ .
4. (travel/ alone ?) _______________________ .
5.(who/travel with?)
6.( travel / by plane ?) ___________________.
7. (where / stay ?) ______________________ .

Guessing meaning from context

Confronted with texts, language learners may be stuck by a shortage of vocabulary inventory and thus be unable to understand what
texts are about. The first thing that a learner does to understand a difficult word is to look it up using the nearest dictionary. There are
however techniques learners may use to get the meaning of such vocabulary items. One of these techniques is guessing meaning
from context.

No matter what level our students are in, they will often come across difficult words in texts they are exposed to. Inferring and
guessing meanings of unfamiliar words is a strategy which is worth developing.
Guessing meaning from context
Guessing from context refers to the ability to infer the meaning of an expression using contextual clues. These clues may be purely
linguistic or situational:
•Linguistic context: the linguistic environment in which a word is used within a text
•Situational context: extra-linguistic elements that contribute to the construction of meaning this may involve background
knowledge of the subject.
What this amounts to is that learners should be able to infer the meaning of an unknown word using:
1.the meaning of vocabulary items that surround it;
2.the way the word is formed;
3.background knowledge of the subject and the situation.

Techniques for guessing

Texts are often full of redundancy and consequently, students can use the relation between different items within a text to get the
meaning. Our prior knowledge of the world may also contribute to understanding what an expression means.
•Synonyms and definitions:
•Kingfishers are a group of small to medium-sized brightly colored birds
•When he made insolent remarks towards his teacher they sent him to the principal for being disrespectful
•Antonym and contrast
•He loved her so much for being so kind to him. By contrast, he abhorred her mother
•Cause and effect
•He was disrespectful towards other members. That’s why he was sent off and penalized.
•Parts of speech
•Whether the word is a noun, a verb, an adjective or an adverb, functioning as a subject, a predicate or an object.
•Examples
•Trojan is an example of a computer virus
•Word forms (the morphological properties of the word)
•Getting information from affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to understand a word. Examples: dis- (meaning not), –
less (meaning without)…
•General knowledge
•The French constitution establishes laïcité as a system of government where there is a strict separation of church and
state.
These techniques help students get the meaning of words or at least narrow the possibilities. If need be using the dictionary should be
the last resort to fine tune  the understanding of a vocabulary item

Writing a Paragraph about Generation Gap

Writing a Paragraph about Generation Gap
This is a lesson plan to help students write a paragraph about generation gap. The activity includes a pre-writing stage where students
will be introduced to the vocabulary related to the conflicts between adults and adolescents. Then, the  teacher monitors  a discussion
about the issue of generation gap. The final product is writing a paragraph about the topic. The writing may be guided or unguided
depending on the level of the students.

The lesson plan

Pre-writing activity
•Provide a picture of a teenager and an adult.
•Ask about the differences between adults and youths. Do adults and youths have the same tastes? The same attitudes?…
•Provide a list of adjectives like the following:
•rebellious
•mean
•untidy
•obstinate
•authoritative
•thoughtless
 •irresponsible
•disobedient
•old-fashioned
•Ask students to complete the following table with the adjectives that go with each group.

What youths think about adults… What adults think about youths …
mean
 disobedient
authoritative
thoughtless
thoughtless
…
…
•At this stage, introduce the topic ( generation gap.)
•Ask students to provide a definition of generation gap. They may use a dictionary.
•Have students discuss the topic.

Writing
If the students’ level is high enough, you may ask them to write an essay about generation gap. However,  if they need guidance, they
may use the following model to write a paragraph about the topic:
Generation gap refers to…. In fact, youths and adults differ in so many ways. For example, adults
think that adolescents are…., ….., ….. and …. On the other hand, youths believe adults are…, …..,
….. and …..

Man-Compounds Lesson Plan

Compound words ending in man
Compound words that end in man are common in English. The words that are used to form these man-compounds may have various
meaning relationships and thus confuse English learners. For example a postman delivers letters but a snowman is a figure of a man-
made of snow. As a classroom activity, these man-compounds may be used to enhance students vocabulary awareness.

Man-Compounds lesson plan

•Inform students that man-compounds are like any other compound nouns.
•Illustrate through model examples on the board that man-compounds are made up of two words:
Examples:
•postman
•best man
•fisherman
•freshman
•Prepare a matching exercise with a list of man-compounds like the following:

 Compounds Defintions
 1. best man  a man who is a member of a police force.
 2. cameraman  a person who carries and delivers mail as a profession.
 a character in fairy tales and folklore who makes children go to sleep by
3. chairman
sprinkling sand in their eyes.
 4. clergyman  a person with advertising boards hanging from the shoulders.
 a figure of a person made from packed snow, usually formed by piling
 5. fireman
large snowballs on top of each other.
 a man of gentle or noble birth or a man who is well-mannered and
 6. fisherman
considerate.
 7. freshman  a trademark used for a pocket-sized cassette player, compact disk player,
 radio, or combined unit with lightweight earphones.
 8. garbage man  a man who is a nonprofessional.
 9. gentleman  a man who sells or delivers milk to customers.
 10. hit man  one who fishes as an occupation or for sport.
 11. layman  a person employed to collect, haul away, and dispose of garbage.
12. milkman  a man hired by a crime syndicate as a professional killer.
13. policeman  a man who is a member of the church.
 14. postman  a man who fights fires
 15. sandman  the presiding officer of an assembly, meeting, committee, or board.
 16. sandwichman  a student in the first-year class of a high school, college, or university.
 17. snowman  the bridegroom’s chief attendant at a wedding.
 18. walkman  a man who operates a movie or television camera.
•Students work in small groups to match the compounds with the definitions.
•After correction of the above matching activity, students answer the following questions:
•Classify the compounds according to:
1. who delivers things:
2. who collects things:
3. who sells things:
4. who is something:
•Which compounds can be used for bath man and woman?
•Which compounds are occupations?
•Which compounds doesn’t refer to a human being?
This lesson plan is an adaptation of the following activity:
A Man for Every Purpose – Increasing Learners’ Vocabulary Awareness

How to teach conditional sentence type 1

Of the four types, conditional sentence type one is the easiest one to teach. Students should be able to understand the following:

•There is an if-clause and a then-clause in conditional sentence.

•The then-clause should be understood as the consequence of the if-clause.
•Conditional sentences are used to talk about possible situations. That’s why it is sometimes called the real conditional.
•The structure of conditional type one involves the use of the simple present in the if-clause and the simple future in the then-
clause.
•Conditional sentences may contain verbs in the affirmative as well as the negative form.
Here is a lesson plan that will help you teach conditional type 1

Activity
•Start by drawing a line to divide the board into two parts.
•Label the first part facts and the second part consequences.
•Give examples of facts:
If I eat too much,
If I have enough time this evening,
If I write a poem,
If I don’t understand something,
•Ask students to imagine the consequences. warn them that they will have to use the simple future:
I will get fat.
I will watch the match.
I will send it to my girlfriend.
I will ask the teacher.
 •Elicit the structure of conditional type one from the students:
IF + SIMPLE PRESENT + SIMPLE FUTURE
•Ask students to provide more examples.

A vocabulary activity: engaging students with words

Reading comprehension and vocabulary teaching
The following vocabulary lesson plan can be done in combination with a reading comprehension activity. The activity tries to engage
students cognitively with unfamiliar words they will encounter in a text.
The activity
1.Pick out some key unfamiliar words from the text
2.Ask students to identify the words in the text.
3.Ask students to match the words with an English definition from a dictionary using the context to guess the right answer.
4.Ask students to find antonyms and synonyms using a dictionary.
5.Ask the students to decide whether the words were nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.
6.Ask students to use the words in sentences.
Follow-up
Finally, students write a short paragraph using these words either as a summary of the text or as a creation of their own.

Vocabulary categories activity

Vocabulary categories
The Goal of the activity is to help students organize the vocabulary items they have learned and see the relationship between them. It
also tries to transfer newly acquired vocabulary from short-term to long-term memory by successfully remembering an item and
labeling the category it belongs to.

The activity
First work with the students orally to retrieve the items they have learned. Give them examples and they have to give the categories
they belong to or vice versa. For example, you say bananas and they have to say fruits… Then students work in groups of four or
five:
•Hand out a piece of paper where five columns are labeled with the names of lexical categories such as food, transport, clothes,
animals and sport.
•Call out a category.
•Learners  have three minutes to write down as many words they know belonging to that category.
•The group with the longest list of words win. You may tolerate misspelling.

Follow up
Give five words from two or more categories and ask students to write a paragraph.

Question tags lesson plan

Question tags
The aim of this lesson plan is to develop students’ understanding of the use of question tags. The activity includes:
1.eliciting students awareness of the use of question tags,
2.sentence matching and  gap-filling exercises
3.followed by an active practice of question tags forms.
The lesson plan
1. Auxiliary Verbs
Divide the class into small groups. Start by a yes/no questions exercise to activate students knowledge about the right use of the
auxiliary verbs.
Example:
Do you like soccer? – Yes, I do.
Have you got any brothers or sisters? – No, I haven’t.
Are you good at mathematics?
Did you watch TV yesterday?
Can you speak Chinese?
2. Introducing Question Tags
Introduce question tags by writing model examples on the board.
Examples:
You are French, aren’t you?
You like jogging in the morning, don’t you?
You don’t like jogging in the afternoon, do you?
You went to the gym yesterday, didn’t you?
He didn’t go to a restaurant, did he?
….

Students discuss the different examples of question tags and notice how they are formed. They also should be able to see that
question tags are mainly used to keep a conversation going, or confirm information and that using question tags necessitates a keen
understanding of the use of various auxiliary verbs.
3. Matching Exercise
Students match question tags:

You are mad about

…isn’t it?
playing chess,…
He isn’t working now,
…had he?
…
They won’t visit New
…does it?
York,….
He hasn’t done his …are
job,… they?
She found a …don’t
necklace,… they
She isn’t an honest …won’t
girl,… they?
They do an excellent
…is she?
job,…
…didn’t
It doesn’t matter,…
she?
They’ll fail,… …has he?
…will
They are coming,…
they?
He hadn’t read the
…is he?
book before,…
 …aren’t
This is amazing,…
you?
4. Gap Filling
Students then do the exercise below to enhance the use of the tag question. this time they have to complete the tag questions
1.You didn’t visit the museum, ________
2.He’s happy to make the trip, __________
3.They’ll meet at the airport on Sunday, _________
4.She’s single, __________
5.You wrote that poem, _________
6.You love singing, ___________
7.She doesn’t speak English well, ________
8.He hadn’t lived there before, ________
9.They have done a good job, __________
5. Active Practice of Question Tags
Ask each student to write information about themselves in the form of simple statements answering questions like:
•What’s your name?
•Where do you come from?
•What did you do yesterday evening?
•…
Collect the statements and re-distribute the sheets to different students. Each student then uses the statements to form question tags,
addressing the question to the student who has written the statements.
Example:
•Your name is Alan, isn’t it?
•You come from Spain, don’t you?
•You aren’t French, are you?
•…

How to teach the passive voice?

Passive voice lesson plan

In this lesson plan students will be able to use the passive voice appropriately and understand the changes that occur when
transforming sentences from active voice to passive voice.

The activity
1. Draw a table on the board with two columns, one for active sentences and the other for passive ones.
Ask students about the languages people speak in France, The USA, Germany…
Write students answers in the active sentence column.

Active Passive
Argentinians speak Spanish.
Americans speak English.
The French speak French.
Germans speak German.
2. Tell students that the same sentences can be written differently.
Example:
Argentinians speak Spanish — Spanish is spoken by Argentinians.
3. Students work in small groups to note the changes that occur in the transformation of the sentence above.
Make sure that they notice the auxiliary verb “be” followed by the past participle of the main verb “speak” and the use of Spanish as
a subject in the passive sentence while it was an object in the active structure.
4. Ask them to work in small groups to do the same transformations with the other sentences.
5. Class correction.
6. After understanding the formal changes that occur in the transformation of active sentences into passive ones, ask students if there
is any difference between the active and passive voice as far as meaning is concerned.
Show students the difference between “Argentinians speak Spanish” and “Spanish is spoken by Argentinians”. They should notice
that focus is shifted from Argentinians in the active sentence to Spanish in the passive sentence.
Students complete the above table with the following statements.
•It is used to put emphasis on the doer of the action.
•It is used to put emphasis on the action rather than the doer of the action.
The table should look like this:

Active Passive
Argentinians speak Spanish.
 Spanish is spoken by Argentinians
Americans speak English.
French is spoken by the French
The French speak French.
German is spoken by Germans
Germans speak German.
 It is used to put emphasis on the doer It is used to put emphasis on the action rather than
of the action. the doer of the action.
Conclusion
There are other formal transformations that are not covered by the present lesson plan such as the changes that may occur to the the
auxiliary verb “be” in the different tenses.
Examples:
•Dinner is being served.
•Emails will be sent to the members.
•The job has been done…
These can be introduced at a later stage.

How to teach prepositions of place?

Lesson plan on how to teach prepositions of place

Prepositions of place are function words that English language students cannot do without. These prepositions are not difficult to
teach. This lesson plan starts with reviewing key vocabulary that may be used to teach prepositions of place. Then the prepositions
are presented and practiced. Finally, students will be asked to come up with examples.

The activity
•Review vocabulary that may be used to teach prepositions of place. The vocabulary you introduce may depend on the units
covered in your textbook. This may include vocabulary items such as:
•book
•bag
•pen
•pencil
•desk
•window
•…
 
•Present and practice the pronunciation of important prepositions of place such as:
• in
•on
•under
•in front of
•behind
•between
•next to
 •…
 
•Introduce the meaning of the above prepositions by giving clear examples:
•I am in front of the board.
•The board is behind me.
•My pen is in the pencil-case.
•My book is on the desk
•…
 
•Check comprehension by asking questions such as:
•Where is my pen?
•Where is my book?
•Where am I?
•…
 
•Practice the prepositions by using command drills as follows:
•Put your hand on your head.
•Put your hand under the desk.
•Put your pen on the desk.
•Put your pen in the pencil-case.
•…
 
•Practice the prepositions by using a “picture dictation”. Tell students they will have to draw a picture according to your
instructions. They will have to listen carefully and draw what they hear. Ask a volunteer to draw the picture on the board while
his classmates draw it on a piece of paper (they mustn’t be able to see his drawing):
•Draw a table.
•Draw a ball on the table.
•Draw a cat under the table.
•…
Class correction.
 
•At this stage students should be able to practice the prepositions in closed pairs. Write on the board a model conversation:
•Where is …?
•It’s … the …
Example:
A: Where is the book?
B: It’s on the desk.
•Ask students to write sentences to describe a picture:
•The cat is under the bed.
•The phone is on the bed.
•…
 
•Ask students to write examples.

Grammar Review Lesson Plan for Beginners

Grammar Review Lesson Plan
This is a lesson plan designed to review the grammar points taught to beginners in previous lessons. It may be assigned to students at
the end or at the beginning of the year or term.
The lesson plan consists of a worksheet that highlights important elements of grammar. Each grammar item challenges the students
knowledge of a specific area. The aim is that students work in groups to discuss and answer a review exercise, helping each other
understand any difficulties. This is followed by a whole class discussion and correctio. The discussion will help you spot the
grammar points that may need remedial work.
Another grammar review activity can be found here:
Grammar review activity

The activity
•Divide the students into groups of four.
•Students do  the exercise below.
•They work together to discuss and answer the exercise.
•Class correction.

Follow up
• Tell students to identify the grammar points that need more remedial work.
•Write the grammar points on the board.
•Students go back to the grammar summaries.
•Ask them to work in groups to revise the grammar summaries.
•While they are working on the grammar summaries, prepare a short quiz for them.
•The quiz doesn’t have to be long and must include the main grammar points students still have problems with.
•Students work in groups to answer the quiz.
•Class correction.

Grammar Review Exercise

This grammar review exercise may be assigned to students at the end or at the beginning of the year/term either to prepare for an
exam or simply  to review previously taught grammar lessons.

Choose the correct answer:

1. My father is  _____engineer.
a. the  b. a   c. an
2. I went ______ school in the morning.
a. at   b.  in   c.  to
3. “What _____ ?”  ” He is tall and has beautiful blue eyes.”
a. does he like?   b.  he likes  c.  does he look like?
4. Are there ______ oranges in the fridge?
a.  much b.  any c.  some
5. I ________ my friend at the café yesterday.
a. meet  b.  meeted  c.  met
6. “_________________ the book I lent you last month?” “No, not yet”
a. Have you read  b. Did you read  c. do you read
7. They  __________________ sleeping when she came in.
a. slept  c. were sleeping  c. have slept
8. How ________ time  is left?
a. many   b.  few   c.  much
9. Nancy is a beautiful girl, and I like _____.
a. her  b. him  c. his
10.My sister _______ to work every day.
a. drive   b.  is driving   c.  drives
11.I go to school ______ eight o’clock every day.
b. in   b. on   c. at
12.She passed the exam ____________ she had worked hard.
a. because of  b. because
13.She passed the exam ___________ her illness.
a. although  b.  in spite of  c. because of
14.I am mad about  __________ soccer.
a. play   b.  playing  c. to play
15.What __________ on Sundays?
a. you do  b.  do you do c.  are you doing
Lesson Plan: Teaching Collocations with Do and Make

Collocations Lesson Plan

This  lesson plan introduces collocations with do and make. The aim of this lesson is to help students understand what collocations
are,  do some exercises to practice collocations with do and make, and use these collocations to talk about themselves.

Introduce collocations
Ask students to complete the following sentence:
1. I am …. a cake.
2. I am …. an exercise.
•Elicit possible answers: make, eat,  do…
•Focus on the fact that a cake collocates with verbs like make and eat but not with the verb do.
•Likewise, the noun exercise collocates with do and not with the verb make.
•Tell students that phrases that contain words that usually go together are called collocations.
•Tell them that they are going to do an exercise about collocations with do and make.

Collocations with do and make

Ask students to complete this table using the nouns in the box below:

the shopping, a dress, the dishes, an exercise, a cake, coffee, money, the ironing, the laundry, a
reservation, a mistake
Here is the table they have to complete:

 Collocations with do  Collocations with make

DO..  MAKE..
… …
The table should look like this:

 Collocations with do  Collocations with make

DO…  MAKE…
the shopping a dress
the dishes a cake
an exercise money
the ironing a reservation
the laundry a mistake
Do or make?

Do or make?
Help students to understand that generally speaking::
•we use do to describe indefinite activities and to talk about duties, jobs or (leisure) activities;
•we use make when we are talking about constructing, creating or performing something.
Write the following examples on the board to make the point clear:
•I always do my homework in the evenings.
•I like spaghetti. I make spaghetti everyday.
Practicing collocations with do and make
Match the numbers with the letters
1.  good
2. friends
3. a difference
4. a favor
5. a salad
a. make 6. your best
b. do 7. your hair
8. a phone call
9. money
10.a complaint
11.the right thing
12.the washing
Choose the right words: do or make
1.I ______ the shopping every Friday afternoon.
2.Please, can you ______ a reservation for me?
3.She doesn’t ______ much money.
4.Nobody helps my mother to ______ the housework.
5.Will you ______ me a favor? Help me carry this table.
6.Let’s ______ the appointment for 10:00 in the morning.
7.Try not to ______ any grammar mistakes in your writing.
8.Oh, dear! There is so much laundry to ______ !
9.She always ______ the the dishes late at night.
10.I’ll ______ spaghetti for dinner. Do you like it?

Personalizing
Ask students to talk about their daily activities  using the above collocations

More about collocations with do and make

For a longer list of collocations with do and make click here

Like in Questions – Lesson plan

Like in Questions (Lesson Plan)

Using like in questions in English may be confusing for beginners and pre-intermediate students. Firstly, like has two grammatical
functions; it may be used as a verb or as a preposition. Second, the meaning of questions with like varies which complicates the issue
even more. This lesson plan tries to deal with these issues. The aim is to improve the understanding of the various meanings
of like and to make students notice its use in questions.

Use of like in questions

The activity
1. Write on the board the following questions:
•What would you like to eat?
•What do you like doing?
•What is your best friend like?
•What does he look like?
2. Ask students about the grammatical function of like in the above questions (whether it is a verb or as a preposition.)  Ask them to
complete the following table:

“Like” as a verb “Like” as a preposition

… …
3. Ask them to discuss the different meanings of like in the different questions.

Question about physical Question about Question about Question about

appearance hobbies personality preferences
… … … …
4. Ask students to do the following matching exercise:
1. What do you like doing? • Handsome; he’s got short black hair, brown eyes and he
2. What is your best friend like? usually wears jeans and a t-shirt.
3. What does your best friend • Reading science fiction, watching classic films on late night
look like? tv.
4. What would you like to do • Kind and helpful.
next weekend? • Stay at home.
5. Ask students to give their own answers to the above questions:
•What do you like doing?
…
•What is your best friend like?
…
•What does he/she look like?
…
•What would you like to do next weekend?

Vocabulary Review as a Time Filler

Vocabulary Review as a Time Filler

When you have a list of vocabulary items you want to review, this activity is perfect as a time filler. All you need is to prepare cards
with the words you want to review. Here is how you can proceed.

The activity
•Have one student come up to the board and select one of the vocabulary words.
•Give the student 2 to 3 minutes to draw a picture representing the selected word. He or she is not allowed to give hints to help
the classmates guess what he or she is drawing (letters, numbers or symbols.)
•The classmates try to guess the word and can call out their guesses while he draws.
•When a student guesses the word, he or she takes a turn by selecting another card.
It would be a good idea to add  new vocabulary to your card collection as you proceed in teaching new vocabulary throughout the
year.
Letter of advice lesson plan
Letter of advice lesson plan
This is a letter of advice lesson plan. The aim of the activity is to learn and use expressions of advice in appropriate context, to work
cooperatively in groups to agree on a decision and to develop the writing skills of a personal letter in which advice is suggested.
Expressions of advice
•Tell the students that you have a bad toothache and that you need their advice.
•Write on the board the following question:
WHAT DO THINK I SHOULD DO?
•Write their suggestions:
I think you should brush your teeth regularly.
You ought to see a dentist.
You had better avoid eating candies.
•Then, ask them to provide expressions used to ask for and give advice.
•Students work to complete a chart like the following:

 Asking for advice Giving advice

What should I do? I think you should/ought to…
What ought I to do? If I were you, I would…
What do you suggest? Why don’t you…?
What do you advise me to do? You’d better…
What’s your advice? It might be a good idea if you…
If you were me what would you do? I advise you to…
A dilemma
Give the students the following problem and ask them to work in groups of four to decide on the right choice for Anna:
Anna is a very ambitious and intelligent university student who is 23 years old. She studies journalism. She has to
make a difficult choice. She was asked for marriage by 4 men. Here is her letter.
Dear friend,
You won’t believe it! I was asked for marriage not by one but by four men all at the same time. I am stuck and don’t
know what to do. You already know that I am broke and I can’t afford my university fees this year, so these
propositions came on time. On the one hand I want to finish my studies and get my PhD, but on the other hand I am
stuck and can’t support myself, especially that my father was fired from his job and can’t help me any more.
The four men who asked me for marriage are all respectful and have been very kind to me although I have never
imagined they would propose for marriage.
Alan is a very rich and famous businessman. He is generous and has a good sense of humor. But he is 10 years older
than me.
John is a shy good looking young artist who is still working to make a name for himself. He is romantic and talks
nicely to me.
George is a well-to-do young lawyer who makes a lot of money as a legal consultant for a big company. He is
generous, kind and caring, but he is always busy and travels a lot.
Tom is an engineer and has got a beautiful apartment and a nice car. He is a poet and can play many musical
instruments. He is handsome generous and smart. I’ve seen him so many times with his mother.  He is the only child
she has and I guess he is everything for her.
Please, help me make a decision. What do you think I should do? I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
Your friend
Anna
•Students read the letter and identify the different options Anna has.
•Ask them to complete a chart about the characteristic of each man.
Name Characteristics
Alan
John
George
Tom
•Students work in groups to decide on the best options for Anna. They are free to come up with any new ideas.
 •Whole class discussion.
•Students write a letter of advice helping Anna make a decision.
Dear Anna,
……………..
Your friend
…………………

How to teach the past perfect

How to teach the past perfect

It is easier to teach the past perfect than to teach the present perfect. The past perfect is clearly situated in the past. This can even be
represented without any ambiguity through a timeline or a diagram. what is more, an example with a past perfect tense may give a
clear picture of the tense. In this lesson plan we will give ideas and hints on how to teach the past perfect.

Start with contextualized examples

It is of paramount importance to introduce grammatical constructions in clear contexts, relating them to the real world. The past
perfect tense is undoubtedly well understood if it is used in contextualized examples because learners need to have a clear picture of
not only the “how” but also the “why.” The following is a situation (borrowed from this article) that may be a good start.

I couldn’t believe my eyes

Yesterday when I arrived home, I couldn’t believe my eyes:
• Someone had broken into my house.
• They had broken the door and the window.
• They had stolen all my money.
• They had broken my TV and my computer.
• They had emptied my drawers.
• They had even eaten the food in the fridge.
Ask them:
Which things happened first? Had those terrible things happened before or after arriving?
Draw a diagram to make the situation clearer:

Past Perfect Tense

The above situation provides two important prerequisites for the teaching of the past perfect tense:
1. Contextualizing the past perfect (they had broken into my house, they had emptied the drawer…)
2. Contrasting it with the simple past (when I arrived)
This will help learners notice not only the use but also the form of the tense.

The form
After the students understand the use of the past perfect, elicit the form.

Had + past participle

Ask them to underline the tense in the examples above.

Noticing, discussing and personalizing

To grasp the past perfect, students need to notice and discuss the different uses of the tense. The past perfect doesn’t only refer to an
action prior to a past event, but it is also used to express regret and third conditional sentences.
Here are some activities to teach the tense.
Matching exercise
Match the numbers with the letters
  1. I was very tired
a. because I had seen the film already.
2. I didn’t want to go to the movies with my
b. as I hadn’t slept well for several days.
friends
c. but I wasn’t hungry because I had just eaten
3. They offered me muffins,
lunch.
4. As soon as she had done her homework,
d. because I had read the novel before.
5. I was interested in the discussion about the
e. she went to bed.
story
 Sentence completion
Another way to help your students use the past perfect is by asking them to complete sentences like the following:
1.She was late for work because she………….. (miss the bus)
2.They talked about the film they………….. (see) .
3.She read the letter her husband ……….. (send) .
4.The teacher was satisfied with the essay he…………..  (write) .
5.They ate the chicken their mother……………… (cook)

Join sentences
Ask students to join two sentences like the following:
I went to bed. Before that I watched a documentary on TV.
They have to transform it into:
Before I went to bed I had watched a documentary on TV.
Or
After I had watched a documentary on TV I went to bed.
Or
When I had watched a documentary on TV I went to bed.
Here are more examples:
1. I left the house. Before that I had my breakfast.
2. She set up her own business. Before that she studied business management.
3. The association built a school in the poor village. Before that they collected donations.

Third conditional
Another use of the past perfect is the third conditional. Here is an activity you can try with your students:
What would have happened if things had been different?
Give a model sentence:
Today I was late because I had missed the bus. I wouldn’t have missed the bus if I had woken up early
Then ask them to complete theses sentences:
1.I would have been the happiest person on earth if I …..
2.He wouldn’t have died if they…
3.She wouldn’t have left him if he…
4.They would have finished the project if they…
You can also introduce constructions like the following:
•Had I known he was mean, I wouldn’t have married him.
•Had she been able to join them, she wouldn’t have stayed at home.

Regrets
Expressing regret is another use of the past perfect tense. Write this example on the borad:
I didn’t pass the exam. I wish I had worked harder.
Then ask them to give examples. You can help with prompts like the following:
1. Start smoking. → I wish….
2. Break with a friend. → I wish….
3. Move to another town. → I wish….
What’s the difference?
Contrasting tenses can be very effective to enhance the use of the past perfect. For example ask students to discuss the difference
between these two sentences:
A. When I arrived they had had dinner.
B. When I arrived they were having dinner.
C. When I arrived they had dinner.
Personalization
After formal practice of the past perfect, you can proceed by personalizing the use of the tense
What had happened?
What had happened when you arrived home yesterday?
What had you done before you came to school?
Where had you studied before you joined this school?

New year’s resolutions lesson plan

New year’s resolutions

New Year’s Day Fireworks

This is a new year’s resolutions lesson plan. January is an important month to focus  on new beginnings and goals not only for the
forthcoming twelve months but also for the life yet to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. In this lesson plan students will learn how to
make positive changes in their lives that will affect how people will remember them.
This lesson plan is inspired by the one sentence project which is an idea suggested by Daniel Pink and referred to in Larry Ferlazo’s
blog. The idea is that students should think twenty years ahead or further about what they want others to say about them, and then use
it as a helpful guide for how they live and how they may enhance positive change in their life.

Daniel Pink videos

Here are videos that explain Daniel Pink’s idea:

Object 1
 Object 2

Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

Benefits of the one sentence project

The road – New Year’s Resolutions

The idea has so many benefits:
•It is a reflexive activity which helps students think about their life and the goals they set for themselves.
•The activity helps students develop critical thinking.
•It is an activity which can be developed to include more communicative tasks.

The activity
•Students watch introductory videos featuring people talking about how they want to be remembered. Here is a link to an
interesting video:
One sentence project
•Ask them to do the same. They will have to write one sentence about what others will say about them. For example:
“S/he changed other people’s lives through technology.”
“S/he helped people stop smoking”
“S/he found a cure for a serious illness”
“S/he was a loving husband / wife …”
•Students then create a poster sharing their sentence and illustrating it with a drawing.
•Give students time to think about what they should do to reach their goal.
•Volunteers will have to stand up and read their sentence.
•The other students ask questions about what will the volunteer do to be remembered as s/he wishes.

Follow up
As a follow up, ask students to write about how they want to be remembered and the resolutions they have made to reach their goals.
They have to:
•explain why they want to be remembered as they wish
•and mention the things they will have to do to reach their goal.

Analyzing Poems Lesson Plan

In this lesson plan, focus is on teaching the techniques and strategies for analyzing poems. Attention is paid to formal as well as
thematic interpretation of poetry.

A good way to start working with poetry would be reading it both silently and aloud.
Reading the poem
Ask students to read the poem carefully many times both silently and aloud. This will help the students get an overall feel for the
formal aspects of the poem, namely, the language, rhyme, and rhythm.

Consider the context

Establishing the context of the poem will help in its understanding. Students must answer questions like:
•Who wrote the poem?
•When was the poem written and in which country?
•Was the poem translated or is it in its original language?
•Does the poem constitute a part of a whole? Is it for example a part of a special collection or series?
•Which literary movement does it belong to?

The poet’s message

Decide on the poet’s message and intention. There is usually a central idea in a poem. Ask students to make an inference, reading
between the lines and paying close attention to the details in the poem to make a logical assumption. Taking into consideration the
poem’s diction and register, allow students to make interpretation and identify the poem’s theme.

Images
Help students visualize the images  and identify all the figures of speech and symbols in the poem and discuss why they are used
effectively. Students must be able to answer these questions:
•Which image does the poet want to paint in the readers’ head?
•What words does s/he use to convey his image?
•Why does s/he choose these words?
•Which figures of speech does the poet use to convey images?

Transfer
Does the poem connect to anything in the students’ lives?

Follow up
Written reflection about the poem.

How to Teach the Future Perfect Tense

How to Teach the Future Perfect

This is a lesson plan about how to teach the present perfect. It is designed for advanced learners and is intended to make students
notice the form and use of the future perfect.

The activity
 Future

Introduce the present perfect tense

Before you’re 40!
Ask students what they will do in the next 20 years. Ask them to complete a table like the following:

Future events
I will finish my studies.
I will get a job.
I will get married.
I will buy a car….
Timeline
Draw a timeline:

The future Perfect Tense

Write an example of the future tense on the board:
•By the time I am 40, I will have finished my studies.
Noticing
Ask them to notice how the future perfect is formed:

WILL + HAVE + PAST PARTICIPLE

Ask students
•whether the action will be done at a specific time in the future,
•or whether it will be finished by a particular time in the future.
To see the difference, contrast the future simple with the future perfect:

Future simple Future perfect

I will finish my studies this year By the end of this year I will have finished my studies.
Ask students to give examples of the future perfect tense.

By the time I am 40…

I will have finished my studies.
I will have found a job.
I will have got married.
I will have bought a car.
….
Students should be able to notice that:
the future perfect is used to describe an event that will be finished by a particular time in the future.
Negative and interrogative
Introduce the negative and interrogative forms of the future perfect:

Negative Interrogative
I will not have finished my studies Will you have finished your studies?
Ask students to complete the following table:

Interrogative Affirmative Negative

Will you have finished your Yes, I will have finished my No, I will not have finished my
studies by the time you are 40? studies by the time I am 40. studies by the time I am 40.
 … … …
Practicing the future tense
Drilling
Drill the tense in pair work. Ask students to give the first part of the minimal pair. The second student follows with the second part.
Here is an example:
A: By the time I finish my Spanish course.
B: I will have become fluent in Spanish.
By the year 2100

Future Perfect Tense

Write on the board:
•What will mankind have achieved by the year 2100?
•What will have happened?
Students write their ideas:
•Man will have settled on the moon.
•Scientists will have discovered new planets.
•Doctors will have found cures for serious diseases such as AIDS, Cancer…
•Robots will have replaced humans in so many professions.
•Man will have found a way to eradicate poverty.
•…
Personalization
To-do-lists
The best way to transfer the knowledge students have just acquired about the future perfect is to use a to-do-list activity. Students
write down things they have to do tomorrow. Ask them to complete a table like the following:

When What to do?

8:30 do the washing
10:00 take out trash
10:15 buy birthday card
11:30 pay bills
12:00 have lunch with my sister.
14:00 sort mail
Then, ask students to write sentences about what they will have done by the end of the day:
•I will have done the washing by 10 o’clock tomorrow.
•I will have taken out trash by half pas ten tomorrow.
•…
Follow up
Things you should have done before you die
Ask students to write a paragraph about five important things they will have achieved by the time they reach 75.
They may start like this:
By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a happy life. I will have loved…
Vocabulary lesson plan about marriage for intermediate
students
This vocabulary lesson plan is for teenage and adult students at an intermediate level. It is based on the theme of marriage problems
that lead to a divorce. Students will develop their vocabulary and fluency through a range of reading, vocabulary and writing
activities.

Throughout the lesson, learners are guided to discover word forms and their meanings as well as their collocates.
The lesson is for:
•intermediate students
It is divided into:
1.a reading activity;
2.vocabulary work;
3.and a follow up that consists of a writing activity.

Vocabulary lesson plan (marriage problems)

Mary’s marriage story
Before reading ask the students to read the title of the passage and predict what the text will be about. Then ask them to skim the text
and check their predictions.
Asking for divorce
I met my ex-husband on January 1st, 1995 at a birthday party. We fell in love at first sight. We had a fantastic
relationship for three happy years. Then, on the third anniversary of our first meeting, he proposed and we got
married six months later in London. At first, everything was perfect; he was flawless. We did the housework together;
I did the washing-up and made the beds and he did the cooking and the shopping. He always made a mess when he
did the cooking, but I didn’t mind because the dishes were always delicious.
Everything changed after a few years when he got a new job in Manchester; we made the decision to move there, so
he wouldn’t have to take the train to work every day. He became workaholic and started working late at night and
paying less attention to me. He stopped helping me with the housework, so I had to do all the chore by myself. Then,
when he started getting drunk after work, he started beating me. I got depressed and ended up asking for divorce
which occurred six months later.
Comprehension (reading & comprehension activities)
Answer these questions
1.When did Mary and her ex-husband meet for the first time?
2.Who used to do the housework at the beginning of their marriage?
Are these statements true or false?
1.Mary’s ex-husband was not a good cook.
2.They got married in 1995.
3.She asked for a divorce because she got depressed.

Vocabulary work
Noticing
Read the text and try to understand the meaning of the underlined words from the context.
Checking
Match the words with their definitions:

Words Definitions
1. Sight a. An unpleasant or burdensome task.
2. Flawless b. Addicted to work
3. Mess c. Miserable
4. Workaholic d. The act or fact of seeing.
5. Chore e. Perfect
 6. Depressed f. A dirty or untidy state of things or of a place.
Vocabulary practice
What parts of speech are these words:

Words Parts of speech

1. Sight Noun
2. Flawless …….
3. Mess …….
4. Workaholic …….
5. Chore …….
6. Depressed …….
Match these words to form collocations:

Words definitions
1. catch a. a mess
2. make b. sight (of)
3. look c. house chores
4. do d. depressed
5. fall e. in love
Complete the following text with words from the above exercise:
Mary suddenly caught …… of her would-be husband at a birthday party. They fell .……. immediately. They got married, but they
didn’t have any children. He used to help her with the housework, but later when he started drinking, Mary had to do all the
…………by herself. Mary’s husband stopped being nice to her. That’s why she looked……

Expanding
Task A
Use 5 of the words from the text to write true sentences about you.
Work in groups and share your sentences.
Groups decide about the best examples
The representative of each group reports 2 examples.
Task B
Write a story of the marriage of one of your relatives to your pen friend.
How did they meet?
How did they fall in love?
Do they have children?
Does the husband help with the house chores?
Are they happy?
More lesson plans

Third conditional lesson plan

Third conditional lesson plan
This is a third conditional lesson plan. It aims at presenting and practicing the form and use of the third conditional. It adopts a
discovery procedure in teaching grammar and follows the following stages:
1.Warm-up
 2.Lead-in
3.Consciousness raising
4.Hypothesizing
5.Practicing
6.Production
7.Expansion (personalization)
Level
This lesson is for uper-intermediate students.
Timing
55 minutes

Conditional type III

Warm up
The teacher starts with a warm up. This can take the form of :
•Command drill
•Tongue twisters
•Chants
•Riddle
•Quotes
•Piece of news
•…
The teacher should opt for one of the above activities.
This shouldn’t take too much time (2 to 3 minutes).

Lead in
The learners should be prepared to learn the grammar lesson in a lead-in. The lead-in is a technique that relates learners’ prior
knowledge with the new target structure.
Review simple past and past participle
To teach the third conditional, a review of the past participle of regular and irregular verbs is necessary:

Simple present Simple past Past participle

Play    
Watch    
  began  
    Got/gotten
  had  
  met  
Do    
    Written
Consciousness-raising
At this stage, the target grammar point should be contextualized through a text. The learners should be guided to notice the form and
use of the third conditional. Here are the instructions:

Read the following text and complete the table below

John’s decision
I am John. I am the owner of a very famous language teaching school in London. I think my biggest decision was to
move back to the UK from Russia. I worked there for ten years as an English teacher and saved a lot of money. The
Russian school offered me work for two more years, but I decided to return to England. I think it was a really good
decision. I enjoyed working in Russia very much and had a really great time. I made loads of friends and loved the
culture. But I also missed home, and I think ten years was a long time to be away.
 If I hadn’t moved back to the UK, I would have stayed in Russia for a few more years, but then I wouldn’t have
started my own buisiness. I wouldn’t have begun a new successful career. I also wouldn’t have met my lovely wife, we
wouldn’t have got married and we wouldn’t have had our beautiful baby!
Complete the following table with information from the text (in groups)
Questions Answers
What decision did John make? …
Why was it a good decision? …
What would have happened if he hadn’t made that decision? …
Study this sentence and complete the diagram (in groups):
If I hadn’t moved back to the UK, I wouldn’t have begun a new successful career.
If + … + …
Use of the third conditional
Say whether these statements are true or false (in groups)
1.Third conditional is used to talk about the present.
2.Third conditional describes a past situation.
3.It’s used to describe a situation that didn’t happen, and to imagine the result of this situation.

Skill getting
The skill getting stage is meant to practice the target structure.

Practice
Match the two parts of the sentences (in groups)
1.If I had known you were in hospital,
2.If we had had a GPS in our car,
3.If you had attended every lesson,
•you’d have passed that exam easily.
•I would have visited you.
•we wouldn’t have got lost.
Put the words in the correct order to form sentences in conditional type three (in groups)
would have had worked hard, passed the exam. she if she
…
The train if we have had missed we wouldn’t arrived on time
…
your birthday a present I would have bought you if I had known it was
…
Put the verbs in the correct form Use conditional sentence type III (in groups)
If the weather (to be) … nice, they    (to play) … football.
If we (to go) … to a good restaurant, we (to have) … a better dinner.
If John (conduct) … more research, he (to write) … a good report.
Rewrite the sentences beginning with the words given (in groups)
1.    We didn’t buy the carpet because it was very expensive.
If …
2.    They made her angry, that’s why she left.
If …
3.    They lost your phone number; that’s why they didn’t call you.
If …
4.    Tom didn’t revise his lessons, so he didn’t pass his exam.
If …

Skill using
At the skill using stage, the learners are invited to use the third conditional. To this end, four situations are provided.
Production
Use the following situations to use conditional type 3 (in groups)
1.Garcia has become a famous tennis player thanks to a talent scout who spotted him when he was 12 years old. The talent scout
helped him immigrate to the USA where he developed his skills and won many tournaments. Now he is a very rich and happy
tennis man.
2.Sara had an amazing life. She spent her life traveling and meeting hundreds of interesting people: politicians, TV stars, and
famous actors. Now she is 85 years old and is in hospital. Doctors say she is very ill and has only few weeks to live. There is one
thing she regrets. She did not write her biography.
3.Karim used to be an excellent student. He had dreams and wanted to become a doctor. But once he started to hang out with bad
friends, he became a criminal and went to prison.
4.Leila never does any sport. She spends her days and nights chatting with friends on her phone or on her computer. Recently she
has been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Her health condition has deteriorated and has become so obese.

Expansion
After using the target structure in specific situations, now the learners are invited to relate the structure to their personal experience.
Personalization (individual)
The learners write sentences about things they have regretted and the way they could have avoided them.

Teaching conditional type 1 lesson plan

Conditional type 1 lesson plan based on discovery learning
This is a conditional type 1 lesson plan. The lesson is based on a discovery learning approach to language teaching. It involves
consciousness-raising activities to help the learners to notice the structure and use of the conditional sentence type one, followed by
appropriation tasks, the aim of which is to practice the control of the target structure. The lesson ends with a free production stage
where students are encouraged to automize the use of language.
•Level: intermediate
•Materials: none
•Objectives: to be able to use conditional type 1 correctly and appropriately.

The stages of the lesson

This conditional type 1 lesson plan includes the following activities:
•Review of the simple future and the simple present.
•Reading a text:
•for comprehension
•to notice the target structure and its use.
•Hypothesizing
•form and use of conditional type one.
•Practicing
•Matching the ‘if clause’ with the ‘then clause’
•Putting verbs in the correct form
•Sentence completion
•Personalizing
•What will you do in the following situations?
•Free output
•Political debate (if you vote for me, ….)

Conditional type 1 lesson plan

As mentioned before this conditional type 1 lesson plan starts with a review of the simple future and the simple present.
Review of simple future and the simple present (form):
Underline the verbs in the simple present and circle the verbs in the simple future:
1.I will not do all the housework by myself! I am not your puppet.
2.A: I am really hungry.
B: I will make some sandwiches!
3.I will send you the information when I get it.
4.I don’t like this town, but I will not leave until I finish the job I was assigned to do.
Complete the chart with the verbs you underlined
  Positive Negative
 …
 …
Simple present …
…
…
…
Simple future …
…
Noticing
Read the text and answer the comprehension questions:

The box
Jane has just received the visit of a total stranger who gives her a
mysterious box with a button and makes the following offer to
her:
If you push the button, two things happen. First, someone,
somewhere in the world, whom you don’t know, will die. Second,
you will receive a payment of one million dollars. Tax-free. The
payment will be delivered by me in cash to you.
There are, however, three restrictions:
1. You are not permitted to know any information about who’s
making the offer.
2. You are not permitted to discuss the details of this offer to
anyone except your husband or wife.
3. You have 24 hours to make your decision.
Otherwise, the box will be reprogrammed and the offer will be
made to someone else.
Questions
1.Who has visited Jane?
2.What offer does he make to Jane?
3.What are the conditions that Jane has to abide by?

Hypothesizing
Underline the verbs in the simple present and circle those in the simple future
Complete the chart
FORM OF CONDITIONAL TYPE ONE
IF + …… + ……
Checking + Whole Class Correction
Read the sentence below and answer the question: (timing 1 min):
If Jane refuses,  the offer will be made to someone else.
•Is it possible that she refuses the offer?
•If she refuses what will happen?

Read these statements and answer with true or false? (Timing 1 min)
1.Conditional type one is used to talk about impossible situations.
2.Conditional type one is used to talk about past situations.
3.Conditional type one is used to talk about real and possible situations.
Experimenting
Match the first part of the lesson with the second part
1. If you accept the offer, a. the offer will be canceled.
2. If you refuse, b. you will be rich.
3. You’ll get nothing c. if you decide to decline the offer.
4. The box will be reprogrammed d. if you tell somebody else about the offer.
Put the verbs between brackets in the correct tense
1.If I …. (study) hard, I … (pass) this year’s exam.
2.If I …. (go) to Paris, I …  (visit) the Eiffel Tower.
3.If he …. (get) my email, he … (send) the information we need.
4.If I … (get) the money, I …. (buy) a mobile phone.
5.If the weather … (be) fine tomorrow, we … (go) on a picnic.
10. Complete these sentences
1.John will be healthier if…
2.If I finish my homework early, I …
3.If the little boy feels hungry, he …
4.She’ll get the best mark if …
5.I will continue my studies in France if …
6.I will buy a new mobile if …

Personalization
Situations
11. What will you do in these situations? (timing: 3 min) (Give each group a situation)
1.What will you do if you pass the exam? If I pass the exam, …
2.What will you do if you meet your favorite Moroccan actor? If I meet my favorite Moroccan actor…
3.What will you do if you have a birthday party?
4.What will you do if the weather is fine tomorrow?
5.What will you do if you wake early next Sunday?
6.What will you do if you get a 1000-dirham present on your next birthday?

Free production
Elections Day
‘Live political debate’
A – You are members of political parties:
1.‘Tajine Party’,
2.‘Fish Party’,
3.‘Juice Party’
 4.‘Ice Cream Party’.
B – It’s the night before the general election, and it’s the last chance for the main parties to convince voters to vote for them.
C – You have a few minutes to decide on your policies and how you will convince ‘the public’ to vote for you.
Examples:
‘If you vote for us, we’ll give everyone a free tajine on their birthday.’
‘If you choose their party, they will steal all your money.’
Please, check these lessons
•How to teach conditional type one
•Third conditional

Culture shock lesson plan

Culture shock lesson plan
This is a culture shock lesson plan for intermediate students. It is a reading comprehension lesson where the learners practice the
following strategies:
•making predictions
•skimming and scanning the text
•reviewing
The learners will also have the opportunity to work with the vocabulary related to the topic.
•Level: upper intermediate
•Timing: 55 minutes
•Materials: text about culture shock
•Objectives:
•The learners will be able to skim the text to get a general idea
•They will be able to scan the text to find specific ideas
•They will be able to connect the text to themselves
The different stages of the culture shock lesson plan include:
•Warm-up
•Lead-in
•Reading and answers to tasks
•Text work
•Reviewing
•Making connections
Warm-up
Start with a tongue twister like the following
She sells seashells by the seashore
This not only creates a lot of fun but also puts the students in the mood of learning.
Lead-in
To prepare the learners to read the text, we need to activate their knowledge about the topic of the text.
Here are examples of activities to activate the learners’ prior knowledge.
A- What are some aspects of your local culture that are unique?
Work in groups and generate as many ideas as possible about your local culture (food, wedding customs, housing, greeting,
relationships…)
B- Look at the following pictures and comment on them.
 Thailand: long neck woman

Portrait of an Arab woman

A man from Nepal

The teacher explains that the students will read a text about culture shock. Then, s/he proceeds with the following activity:
C- Look at the following list of words: cross out those you think won’t appear in the text.
The learners have to work in small groups.
(At this stage, the learners do the task without reading the text.)
•unfamiliar
•homesickness
•purify
•experience
•adaptation
•guidance
•acceptance
•transition
•salary
•anxious
•payment
•conversion
•adjustment
•celebration
•negotiation
The above activity allows the learners not only to decide which words are relevant to the topic of the text but also to generate a
discussion about the difficult words.

Reading
Once they finish, they read the text quickly to see if their guesses were correct. Here is the passage:

The text
The passage that is the basis of the culture shock lesson plan is the following:
 a. ……..
Culture shock refers to the feeling of disorientation experienced by people when they move to
an unfamiliar cultural environment or when they are suddenly exposed to a different way of
life or set of attitudes. This can be the result of immigration or a visit to a new country, a
move between social environments, or simply a transition to another type of life.
b. ……….
Culture shock consists of four distinct stages: honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment, and adaptation. The honeymoon
stage occurs when the individual sees the differences between the old and new culture in a romantic light. In the
negotiation stage, the differences between the old and new culture become apparent and may create anxiety. The
adjustment stage refers to the period when the individual grows accustomed to the new culture and develops routines.
Finally, in the adaptation stage, individuals are able to participate fully and comfortably in the host culture.
Adaptation or acceptance does not mean total conversion; people often keep many traits from their earlier culture,
such as accents and languages. It is often referred to as the bicultural stage.
c …..
Culture shock may cause homesickness. This refers to the feeling of longing for one’s home. People suffering from
culture shock typically experience a combination of depressive and anxious symptoms related to homesickness. Ways
of coping with homesickness include developing a hobby, thinking positively and feeling grateful about what one has,
and building new relationships.
Cultural shock is a natural phenomenon that occurs when one has a cross-cultural experience. Going through the
different stages can take weeks, months or years. But ultimately, the experience can be enriching and may end up
with either adaptation with the new culture or a return home.
It is a good practice to start with activities that aim at an overall preview of the passage before dealing with more specific details. So
after activating the learners’ schematic knowledge about the topic of the passage, the teacher may now ask the learners to skim the
text and match the headings with the different sections of the text:
Match the heading with the different sections of the text:
1. Culture shock stages a. …….
2. Homesickness b. …….
3. What is culture shock? c. …….
The next activity consists of reading the text once again to answer the following question:
Does culture shock have only negative effects on people experiencing it?
After class correction, the learners are invited to do the following comprehension tasks:
Are these statements true or false (justify your answers):
1.Culture shock occurs only as a result of immigration.
2.The adaptation stage means that there is a complete change of personality.
3.Both homesickness and culture shock refer to the same thing.
Answer the following questions:
1.What is culture shock?
2.What are the different stages of culture shock?
3.How can one cope with culture shock?
Find in the text words having the same meaning as:
1.Change (paragraph 1)
2.Familiarized to (paragraph 2)
3.Thankful (paragraph 3)

Reviewing
At this stage, the learners review the passage by trying to remember the main ideas and important information the text talks about.
To review the text, ask the students to do the following tasks.
Complete the following chart:
Definition of culture shock …………………..
The culture shock stages …………………..
Definition of homesickness …………………..
 How to cope with homesickness …………………..
Use the information in the above chart to write a summary of the text
Connecting the text to self/the world
To enhance more understanding, the learners must be encouraged to make connections between:
•the text and themselves (text-to-self)
•the text and other related texts they have read (text-to-text)
•the text and the world (text-to-world)
In the following activity, the learners are invited to make (text-to-self connections.)
Imagine you have a pen pal who is coming to your country. He or she is going to stay with you for a few days. What
aspects of your local culture do you think will shock him/her the most? (e.g. greeting, eating habits,….). Make a list
of those cultural habits.
1. ….
2. ….
3. ….
4. ….
Expansion
If you move abroad and feel homesick, what will you miss most about your home country? (e.g. food? Weather? Family? Friends?…)
Write a paragraph! You can start your paragraph as follows:
If I ever move abroad I will certainly feel homesick. I will miss many things. …

Error correction lesson plan

Error correction
This is an error correction lesson plan. The aim is to teach students to correct their own mistakes. The activity is simple,  students will
have to identify mistakes and correct them while working in groups.

Students working
This activity is for:

•upper elementary/intermediate students

Timing:
•45 minutes
Materials needed:
•color cards.
•sheets of paper.
•pencils.
•flip charts.
Preparation
1.Prepare four sets of different color cards.
2.Distribute the cards to participants.
3.Ask them to form four groups. (Four sets of colors = four groups)
 4.Get them to think up team names, write them on their respective flip charts.
5.Prepare a list of students written or spoken mistakes.
6.Write each sentence on separate small sheets of paper.
7.Fold up each sheet and put them all in a large easily accessible container such as a box or a hat.

The activity
1.Each group elects a team member who comes to the front of the class where the box of sentences is.
2.The student takes a sentence from the container and writes it on their respective flip chart.
3.Groups will have to work together to:
•identify the mistake.
•decide what type of mistake it is:
– T for tense,
– P for punctuation,
– SP for spelling,
– WO for word order,
– WW for the wrong word,
– X for missing word,
– GR for grammar.
• correct the mistake.
•and rewrite the sentence correctly.
3.Teams walk around and read the other groups sentences.
4.Each team agrees or disagrees with the previous team’s error treatment.

Examples of erroneous sentences

1.How you come to school?
2.I go always to France for my holidays.
3.I don’t like traveling by sheep.
4.She suggested us to go home.
5.She went to the library to buy a book.
6. I hurted myself.
7.I am wanting to help you.

Lesson plan on articles for upper intermediate students

This is a lesson plan on articles for upper intermediate students. It is inspired by one of Scott Thornbury’s grammar activities in his
excellent book: How to teach grammar, 1999. Although using a deductive way to teach grammar rules, this activity lets the students
become more responsible for their own learning and provides them with more chances to communicate and negotiate information.

•Level: upper intermediate.

•Timing: 35 minutes.
•Materials: Worksheets (grammar summaries about using articles.)

Lesson plan on articles

The following procedure describes a lesson plan on articles based on a deductive approach to grammar teaching.

The procedure of the activity

The activity is about the definite, indefinite and the zero article – i.e. when no article is required. It consists of four stages.
1.Assigning an exercise in groups.
2.Providing groups with grammar summaries.
3.Regrouping.
4.Checking in open class.
1. Assigning the exercise in groups
Form three groups and assign them a gap filling exercise. It is advisable to number the students in each group (student 1, student 2,
student 3, student 4…)
The students have to provide the definite article ‘the’, the indefinite article ‘a’, or the zero article ‘0’.
1. Are you coming to….party next Saturday?
2. I bought…. new TV set yesterday.
3. I think… man over there is very ill. He can’t stand on his feet.
 4. I watched…. video you had sent me.
5. She was wearing…. ugly dress when she met him.
6. I am crazy about reading… history books.
7. She is…. nice girl.
8. Do you want to go to… restaurant where we first met?
9. He is… engineer.
10. He thinks that… love is what will save us all.
At this stage, the groups are tested to do the exercise using their own linguistic resources and without any help from the teacher. It
should be noted that when the students use only what is available within their current state of knowledge, they will be forced to make
hypotheses and this will, in turn, create a need to know more about using articles in English. This need will be satisfied in the next
step of the procedure (see below) by providing students with grammar summaries.
The students have 5 minutes to do the exercise
2. Grammar summaries
After the completion of the exercise, each group is assigned a grammar summary containing the rules for either the definite,
indefinite or the zero article:
•Group 1: rules about definite articles
•Group 2: rules about indefinite articles.
•Group 3: rules about the zero article.
Students study the grammar summaries and do the exercise once again working as a group.
Teachers may be inspired by the following grammar summary to provide the necessary worksheets.
•Use of articles in English
This might take 10 minutes
3. Regrouping the students
After using the grammar summaries to help them do the exercise, the teacher proceeds by regrouping the students so that the new
groups consist of members of each of the original groups:
•Group A: Student 1 + student 1 + student 1 + student 1…
•Group B: Student 2 + student 2 + student 2 + student 2…
•Group C: Student 3 + student 3 + student 3 + student 3…
•Group D: Student 4 + student 4 + student 4 + student 4…
Members of the new groups compare their answers and are encouraged to share the information they got from their respective
grammar summaries, explaining why they opted for any answers.
This might take around 10 minutes.
4. Checking answers
Once the students finish doing the exercise again in the light of the new information and explanations they got from the members of
each group, the teacher checks the exercise in open class. It is important that he/she asks the students to justify their answers,
referring to the rules in the grammar summaries.
One of the main objectives of checking answers is to settle any remaining problems in understanding the grammar summaries about
the use of articles.
This might take up to 10 minutes.

Used to lesson plan for intermediate learners (PPP)

Used to lesson plan for intermediate learners (the PPP
approach)
This is a lesson plan suitable for intermediate level learners. The aim is to develop students’ ability to talk about past habits using
‘used to’ in the context of childhood. The lesson plan follows a PPP (i.e. Presentation, Practice, and Production) model of grammar
teaching and starts with a situation that generates the target structure.
•Materials needed: pictures of an old man and a child
•Level: Intermediate
•Timing: 45 min
•Objective: The students will be able to use ‘used to’ to talk about past habits.
Preparation
Warm up:
The teacher starts with a warm up to put the students in the mood of learning.
Command drill:
• Sit down.
• Hold up your right hand.
• Show me your pen…
Lead-in:
To prepare the students to the target structure, the teacher reviews the simple past tense

Presentation
The teacher shows a picture of an old man:

old man
The teacher asks the following questions:
1.In your opinion, where is this man from?
2.Is he married?
3.Does he have children?
4.Does he work?
5.What did he do when he was younger?
After discussing the above questions, the teacher provides the following information:
•This man is retired now.
•He used to be a teacher of English.
•He used to teach both little children and adults.
•He used to make his students laugh with his funny way of teaching.
•His students used to love him.
•Now he is very old. He is retired.
Then the teacher writes the following sentence on the board:
He used to be a teacher
The teacher proceeds to check comprehension and asks the following concept checking questions:
1.Was he a teacher?
2.Is he still a teacher now?
Then the teacher elicits the rule of use and form
Use:
We use ‘used to’ to talk about habits or repeated actions in the past which are no longer true.
Form
Used to + bare infinitive
The teacher provides a diagram to clarify the use of the target structure:

Grammar : used to
 Practice
Matching
1. It’s strange that she works with dogs now
2. I was very healthy when I was
younger
4. He used to be a teacher of English.
5. They live in a huge house now.
a. But when they were poor, they used to live in a tiny flat.
b. But now he is retired.
c. I used to exercise regularly.
d. She didn’t use to like animals.
Put the verbs in brackets in the correct form:
He … (live) in a small house.
He … (take) the dog out in the evening.
He … (wake up) early in the morning.
He …. (not go) to bed late.
He … (read) one book every week.
What about your grandfather. … (be) a teacher too?

Production

child playing
What was your life like when you were young?
Use the phrases:
•‘used to’
•‘didn’t use to..’

Teaching vocabulary: Lexical exploitation of texts

Lexical exploitation of texts
Reading and listening texts are often used in the ELT classroom to practise receptive skills and / or as the introduction to
a topic or language point.

However, authentic and near-authentic texts are an excellent source of collocations and other lexical chunks, and it is worth spending a little extra time on a text to draw
learners' attention to these.

• Why draw attention to lexical chunks?

• Exploiting reading and listening texts for lexical chunks
• Listening
• Reading
• Recycling collocations
• Conclusion

Why draw attention to lexical chunks?

An adult native-speaker has hundreds of thousands of pre-constructed chunks at his disposal. Students need to be trained to record and learn chunks, rather than just
individual words, to enhance their fluency and produce more natural-sounding language.

If learners understand a chunk in context, they may not 'notice' it. For example, most intermediate students would understand the collocation 'move house' from its
constituent parts, but very few at this level would produce it. By drawing learners' attention to chunks, we can help them use the words they already know more accurately
and to express a wider range of ideas. This can be just as useful as learning 'new words', if not more so!

Exploiting reading and listening texts for lexical chunks

The following activities can be used after exploiting a text for meaning, for example, after learners answer comprehension questions or do a matching exercise based on the
text.

Listening

• Give learners the tapescript with some key collocations blanked out. They listen again and complete the spaces.
• Listening texts can also be used to provide a model for pronunciation, for example, the stress pattern of chunks. Ask learners to identify the stress and drill the whole
chunk.
• Songs are a useful lexical resource. Before listening, give learners the words of a song with some collocations blanked out. Ask them to work in pairs to predict how many
words have been blanked out from each space. They then listen for the exact words. If there are any patterns in the song (for example, a number of second conditional
sentences), learners can be asked to identify these sentences, and write more sentences using the same structure which fit the theme of the song.

 
Reading
(N.B. These activities could also be used with tapescripts of coursebook listenings)

• Prepare a table which includes half or part of some of the multi-word items in a text. Learners then scan the text to complete the table with the other half of the
collocations.
• Short texts can be used to prepare for and practise reading aloud. Pauses normally come at the end of a chunk, while content words are stressed. If learners mark pauses and
stressed words, this will improve their reading aloud, as well as helping them to 'notice' chunks.
• Reading activities can also be used for consciousness-raising. After answering comprehension questions, learners are asked to put the original text away, and are given a
new version with some of the key collocations blanked out. Working in pairs, they have to reconstruct the collocations, before checking with the original.

 
Recycling collocations
Learners are unlikely to remember chunks after seeing them just once, so it will be necessary to recycle them in subsequent classes. Most traditional vocabulary-recycling
activities can be adapted for use with multi-word items, but here are a few ideas:

• Give learners discussion questions including the chunks. Personalisation can make the language more memorable.
• Pelmanism, i.e. the memory game where learners have to find matching halves of collocations from cards placed face-down on the table. They turn over two cards, and
keep them if they go together.
• Prepare a list of collocations recently seen in class. Divide the class into teams of 3-4 students, and give each team a piece of paper. Write a collocation from the list on the
board. The first team to write a correct sentence including that collocation gets a point. Continue until you've exhausted the list, or until one team reaches a specified
number of points.
• A few minutes before the end of a class, ask learners working individually to write down all the new collocations / chunks they've seen in that class. They can then compare
together, or if there's enough time, give definitions for their partner to guess the chunks. This could also be done at the beginning of a class to recycle language from the
previous class.

 
Conclusion
It is important to be aware that this kind of development takes time and you and your students won't see instant results. However, in the longer term, working in this way
can not only increase your students' vocabulary, and the degree of accuracy with which they use it, but it can also develop their abilities to 'notice' patterns in language and
so become more autonomous learners.