tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34508110475167845302024-02-20T03:44:28.581-07:00Live & OnlineThis blog is about my adventure into live online language teaching! The pitfalls and the triumphs, the successes and the failures...the creations and the not so creative...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-39172196874232988982014-10-03T02:54:00.000-07:002014-10-03T02:54:14.397-07:00ESL/EFL Discussion Activity: Famous People
This is a discussion activity about famous people and words that describe people. The main goal of this lesson is to increase the students' vocabulary and fluency. The lesson starts with pictures of famous people and the teacher asks the class to describe the people and explain why they are famous or to ask a question if they do not know who the person is. The next page is for Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-10227247739338779332014-09-29T18:24:00.000-07:002014-09-29T18:25:11.105-07:00ESL/EFL Conversation Activity: Do you wish you...?
The goal of this conversation activity is to allow the students to practice speaking about fairly familiar topics in a comfortable environment. The students would finish the question Do you wish you...? and then answer the question. The teacher will then provide error correction and teach new vocabulary that would be appropriate for every topic. This type of lesson is really Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-74472502813540013172014-09-21T05:50:00.000-07:002014-09-21T05:50:05.056-07:00ESL/EFL Discussion: Would you rather...?
This discussion activity is targeted to students who are aiming to increase their fluency through general conversation. The lesson has pictures where the students would choose between two choices. The lesson starts with 'Would you rather...? and continues with the choices the students would make. When I set this lesson up for the students, I explained that the pictures are merely aAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-40218605091369130402014-09-19T09:53:00.000-07:002014-09-19T09:53:25.616-07:00Fluency lesson: When did you first...?
This fluency lesson allows for the teacher to tailor the conversation to the level of the student. Each page on the PowerPoint has an image and the rest of the question of 'When did you first...'. If a student or class are beginners, the lesson can be done fairly quickly and be used as a supplement to a grammar lesson. If the students are at a higher level, the teacher can Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-70460558716516790062014-09-18T01:53:00.001-07:002014-09-18T01:53:29.836-07:00ESL/EFL Lesson: Basketball
This ESL/EFL lesson on basketball allows the student to practice speaking and listening, learn new vocabulary and go though a reading exercise. First, the teacher will have a warm up discussion to ascertain how much students like basketball and how interested they are in the sport. Then the students will do a matching exercise with vocabulary words they will find in the reading. &Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-21319436683339788542014-09-16T15:15:00.002-07:002014-09-16T15:15:34.930-07:00Discussion Activity: Baseball
This discussion activity allows the students to activate their passive vocabulary about a popular sport in some parts of the world. The students will match pictures with vocabulary words. Then they will learn idioms associated with baseball. Then there will be some fluency activities. The first one will be with questions starting with 'do you like' and the final fluencyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-58263505031717954072014-09-09T01:04:00.002-07:002014-09-14T02:52:17.335-07:00Discussion Activity: Adoption
This discussion activity helps the students develop their fluency, learn new vocabulary and practice reading. The activity starts with a warm-up discussion to see what the student knows about adoption. Then there is a matching activity where the students match the verbs from the reading to synonyms. Third, there is a reading about a family who experienced an international Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-61689201324368325662014-09-07T13:51:00.000-07:002014-09-14T02:49:47.612-07:00Discussion Activity; Accidents at Home
This Discussion activity aims to increase the students' fluency by talking about a fairly familiar subject and at the same time activating their passive vocabulary. There are four slides to this activity. The first slide is general and the slides start to narrow down until the students get to discussion questions. The first slide allows the students to describe pictures of Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-33967481484671731362014-09-05T01:41:00.002-07:002014-09-16T14:58:58.061-07:00Vocabulary & Fluency Activity: Sickness & Health
This PPT is a vocabulary and fluency activity that would work well to supplement material dealing with sickness and health. The first page is a matching activity where the students draw a line from one word to another to make a word partnership such as 'broken ankle' or 'stuffy nose'. After the word partnerships are matched, the teacher can then ask the students to use Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-63455989945102542312014-09-03T12:33:00.000-07:002014-09-03T12:34:22.787-07:00Discussion Activity: Things that Annoy You!
The discussion activity Things that annoy you! aims to help the students increase their fluency as well as possibly activating passive vocabulary. The first page is a page for brainstorming. The teacher can ask the students to write out on the whiteboard the many things that annoy them. Then the teacher can ask the students to give examples and explain to the group why Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-34570429693459562752014-09-02T02:16:00.001-07:002014-09-02T02:16:08.502-07:00Vocabulary Activity: Finance
This activity concentrates on developing financial vocabulary as well as discussing the terms involved in finances. There are two slides for this activity. The first slide is a list of blank spaces for the student to write the word based on the definition read by the trainer. This allows the student to also practice listening. The second slide is a basic guessing game where Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-13822233833700996512014-09-01T12:46:00.001-07:002014-09-01T12:46:09.173-07:00Fluency Activity: Wishes & Dreams
This is a fluency activity that allows the students to talk about topics that are near and dear to their hearts. On the first page, the students brainstorm wishes that people in general have. For example, people wish to get married, to have a home, to have a family, to have a good job and so the students brainstorm all the wishes that people have in general. The next page is Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-47560998547605213322014-08-31T14:25:00.004-07:002014-08-31T14:26:48.628-07:00Fluency Exercise: Working Life: Talking About You!
This is a great fluency exercise for people in the workplace. This can be used successfully in a virtual classroom or in a traditional classroom. The first slide consists of several pictures and the trainer asks the students to describe the picture. Then the trainer asks the students to relate one of the pictures to how they feel about their job. The students start Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-28870040335908057362014-08-30T13:31:00.001-07:002014-08-30T13:36:30.079-07:00Discussion Activity: Youth & Old Age
I wrote this activity about seven years ago to be used in a virtual classroom although anyone can use this in a traditional classroom as well. Anyway, the basic premise for this lesson is to allow the students to activate passive vocabulary, learn new vocabulary and to practice speaking about a relatively familiar topic in order to increase and/or improve the students' fluency. TheAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-85782708294383109332014-08-29T09:54:00.001-07:002014-08-29T09:56:17.355-07:00Business Writing Presentation for ESL/EFL Teachers
This PPT is a quick presentation on the difference between American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) in regards to phrases and the small differences between AmE and BrE when writing for business purposes. Many times, non-native speakers will combine rules from both AmE and BrE because they are not aware of the minute differences. So, they run the risk of losing credibility Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-48208855710069145222014-08-28T20:59:00.003-07:002014-08-29T09:57:14.937-07:00EFL/ESL Discussion Activities: Your Products & Services
How many times have you talked to a non-native speakers of English and asked them about their job? Where they able to talk much about what they do and about their products and services? If not, this discussion activity will give them the chance to practice in an environment where they can receive feedback=their English class. The PPT starts with some pictures and depending onAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-61808027217580209042014-08-27T11:49:00.001-07:002014-09-14T02:51:07.562-07:00Learn Business Idioms
I wrote this worksheet on Business Idioms about ten years ago. This is a worksheet for advanced level Business English students. I took the words/idioms from the Economist Magazine. Although I'm not a huge believer in teaching idioms to students for them to actually use (until it comes out naturally), I do believe that students should have idioms in their passive vocabulary so Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-49362151551621278022014-08-26T08:42:00.000-07:002014-08-26T08:44:22.029-07:00What would you say?
I wrote this activity about seven or eight years ago as a discussion activity. This activity has been used successfully in a virtual classroom and a traditional classroom. This activity encourages the students who are intermediate and above to explain what they would say about a certain situation and in addition to give the students a chance to provide their opinion about certain issues.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-40836011844119570562014-08-23T11:35:00.001-07:002014-08-26T08:45:35.532-07:00ESL/EFL Activities: Giving Advice
I wrote this activity when I was in the LANCELOT course, which was a course funded by the EU that taught language teachers how to effectively use virtual classrooms plus best practices in the virtual classroom for language training. This PPT came out of one of the modules from that class. I have used this activity successfully in the virtual classroom as well as the traditional Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-1814705895614601522014-08-21T07:11:00.000-07:002014-08-29T09:57:58.218-07:00EFL Spoken Grammar Activity: Practice Asking Questions
I wrote this Spoken Grammar Activity while I was in graduate school which seems like only yesterday and yet it was fifteen years ago. Anyway, this is a very simple activity where the students practice using the WH questions and at the same time work on tense and also on their conversation skills. The activity consists of a chart of all kinds of nouns with the question at the Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-46630238511753647952014-08-20T12:48:00.002-07:002014-08-29T09:58:24.328-07:00Discussion Activity: I took a trip and...
This is a discussion activity that I wrote about seven or eight years ago. The basic premise of this activity is to get the students to talk about the pictures and possibly to start talking about the issues or personal experiences that the students may think of as a result of these pictures. Except for the cover page, this activity does not have any English so it could be used for Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-83167120133287479602014-08-19T07:53:00.001-07:002014-08-19T07:54:21.217-07:00Dependent Prepositions
This is a grammar activity I came up with in the late nineties where students can systematically practice using prepositions. First, the students do a matching activity where they link the sentences together based on the prepositions. Then the next page is a chart with a bunch of words that require prepositions such as 'similar TO' or 'Angry WITH/AT'. The students must first Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-2109303995634028862014-08-18T11:02:00.000-07:002014-08-29T09:58:49.990-07:00Business Writing Activities
Have you ever received emails from students and realized that although they speak well in class, their writing is well below their ability to communicate? How about students who just refuse to write because they have a lack of confidence? Or the students who know they need help with their writing, especially in the area of business communication. This Writing Activities Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-53645427923415411612014-08-15T07:15:00.000-07:002014-08-15T07:16:02.232-07:00Live Online Discussion Activity to Develop Fluency
One of my favorite discussion activities is an activity called 'What would happen if...' which I wrote about seven or eight years ago. This activity can be done successfully with upper intermediate to advanced students who want to practice and increase their fluency. This is also good for students who want to improve their ability to give opinions about all different types of Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3450811047516784530.post-84602344933400888902014-08-14T08:49:00.001-07:002014-08-14T08:49:46.940-07:00Live Online ESL/EFL materials
One of the needs expressed by many freelance teachers is the need for good, quality material for the virtual classroom. It is really easy to find great material out there on the internet, but very few have been converted to PPT and gives the trainer the ability to use it in the virtual classroom without doing a great deal of adapting. Or the trainers just use the material that is notAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05718178041710037851noreply@blogger.com0