Homestay Games

in Adults, Children, General English, Spoken Fluency, Teaching, Teenagers, Vocabulary acquisition, Warmers

When you’re hosting homestay students, it can be difficult to engage the whole household in conversation, especially if your students are lower levels, particularly in the first few days. I tend to find there’s some dead time after dinner, rainy days and long journeys when everyone is gathered together and conversation can be difficult.

Here are some games we’ve used. The title of each game links to instructions. The language areas specified give an indication of lexical and grammatical areas practiced in the games, but these aren’t classes – the aim should be communication and fun, rather than accuracy. Read more

Teaching Idioms

in Cambridge Exams, Vocabulary acquisition

One of my favourite games to play with students of intermediate level and above is Idioms Pictionary. This is also a good game your family can play with homestay students. Read more

Root Words and Meaning A – Z

in EAP - English for Academic Purposes, ESP - English for Specific Purposes, Learner Autonomy, Vocabulary acquisition, Word creation

List of blog posts on root words from Latin and Greek and their meanings. Read more

Vocabulary Profiling 2

in Cambridge Exams, EAP - English for Academic Purposes, ESP - English for Specific Purposes, IELTS exam, Vocabulary acquisition, Writing

Have a look at ‘Vocabulary Profiling 1‘ for reasons to profile vocabulary.

LexTutor is a little less user-friendly than VocabKitchen (you may not want students to try it themselves) but offers some additional features. Read more

Vocabulary Profiling 1

in Cambridge Exams, EAP - English for Academic Purposes, ESP - English for Specific Purposes, IELTS exam, Reading, Vocabulary acquisition, Writing

How do you decide on the vocabulary to teach students?

Which vocabulary in a given text would you want students to learn and which items could you just gloss?

Songs for Learning Vocabulary: Topics A to Z

in Listening, Poetry, Teaching, Vocabulary acquisition

A to Z of Song Topics

As I’ve spent the last month or so listing songs for learning English grammar, it seems to make sense to finish with a list of songs for topics to introduce or revise vocabulary. This list will grow as I remember/discover more, or people get in touch with suggestions. Read more

The Word Box

in Vocabulary acquisition

What is a word box?

It is class specific. You will need a different box for each class. During, or at the end of each class, someone needs to transfer each new item of vocabulary (word, collocation, phrase) onto a slip of paper and put it in the word box. You can either transfer the words yourself or ask a student to take responsibility for it.

Each word or phrase should have number of syllables, stress, phonemic transcription, and word class marked on one side of the paper. On the other you will need to write a definition, an example sentence and, if you’re teaching a monolingual class, a translation.

Reading with Children

in Children, Reading, Vocabulary acquisition

Everyone knows the benefits of reading to babies and toddlers, right? Health visitors hand out Bookstart packs in the UK almost as soon as your child is born, libraries run all-singing, all-dancing, glue & glitter sessions for families; Dolly Parton posts books monthly to children in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. And the results from research is overwhelming: a child is never too young for a book. Read more

Language Play – Alliteration and Rhyme

in Language Play, Vocabulary acquisition

Persuasion, poems, puns. We use language to connect, to communicate, to conceal; for literature and laughs. From the time we begin to babble as babies language play is something we all do. Here are some of our favourite no materials, no preparation, rhyming and alliteration games. Read more

EFL Extensive Reading

in Reading, Vocabulary acquisition

In EFL we talk about two types of reading Extensive Reading and Intensive Reading. Intensive reading is what usually happens in the classroom: reading to answer comprehension questions or to teach ‘reading skills’ such as skimming and scanning. Extensive reading is reading for pleasure, often fiction at around or just below a learner’s language level. Ideally extensive reading texts should be 98% known vocabulary.
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