Hagrid’s speech in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone may confuse students but can offer an engaging way for students to explore dialects, pronunciation variations, and the role of language in character identity. This post outlines key teaching points and interactive activities to help students analyze Hagrid’s unique way of speaking. Read more
Using Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as the basis for vocabulary instruction offers a rich, engaging context for your students—especially those at B1 level and upward. This post provides research-backed insights, practical strategies, checklists and templates to help you navigate the complexities of vocabulary teaching in a literary context. Read more
For B1-level students, the challenge lies in striking the right balance: ensuring the vocabulary is accessible but still engaging and new. Vocabulary activities should help students make connections between the text and their own language use, while also deepening their understanding of the story. Here are some ideas I’ve used to build vocabulary activities for B1 learners in my Harry Potter course. Read more
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
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
List of blog posts on root words from Latin and Greek and their meanings. Read more
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
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
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.
