English for begiNNers

This short lesson plan is designed around a Christmas advert. It is mainly aimed at upper-intermediate and advanced students because these are the groups I usually teach, but can be used with any other level with little adaptation.

STEP 1 WARMER

We start by discussing in small groups and brainstorming some (as many as students can think of):

1.- reasons why people learn a second language (to find a job, for pleasure, to enhance brain activity, to travel/ live abroad…)

2.- reasons why people decide to go and live in another country (looking for better working conditions, for love, weather/climate/ health issues, political reasons…)

3.- strategies/ useful tips for learning a foreign language and improving: grammar, pronunciation, listening, speaking, vocabulary etc. at both a beginner and at a more advanced level 

4.- the main advantages and disadvantages of learning a language at a young/ old age

English for BegiNNers Scribd by Eva Gutiérrez on Scribd

STEP 2 POOLING THEIR IDEAS AND TIPS

Go through the students’ answers. After conducting feedback and sharing their ideas and recommendations with the whole group, tell them they are going to watch the start of a short film entitled “English for beginners” in which they will see the difficulties of learning a foreign language at advanced age.

STEP 3 WATCHING AND PAUSING

Pause the video after 1:46 and comment on those difficulties most of us have gone through.

Ask Ss what they think is the reason why this old man is trying to learn English. Let them take guesses while predicting what happens next. Give them some time to come up with an interesting and original ending for the video.

STEP 4 AFTER WATCHING

After watching, ask your students if they like the film and tell them this is a viral Christmas advert. Get them to guess what they are advertising, debate what makes a successful Christmas advert and how they feel about this type of Christmas ads.

Hope you enjoy the activity!

E.

Keep Calm and...

This lesson plan is designed around an interesting video that tells the amazing story of the Keep Calm poster and mainly promotes listening and speaking practice at Upper-intermediate and Advanced levels.


1.- Show students this slideshow of propaganda posters and ask them about the kind of poster, their message and purpose, i.e. what the poster encouraged, whether it was positive or negative persuasion and who they were addressed to. We have from office propaganda posters in a soviet union-fashion layout and other preventive health campaigns, Obama’s memorable electoral campaign posters, to II World War Propaganda Posters (including the original Uncle Sam poster used to recruit soldiers during both World War I and II, the We Can Do it and the Keep Calm wartime propaganda posters)


2.- Focus their attention on this last nowadays-ubiquitous poster that has become a notable meme –the same as the other two- and ask them to tell you where they have seen it, which versions of the posters they have enjoyed most and whether they know about the origin and the secret story behind the poster


3.- Tell them we are going to watch the video below about the story of these Keep Calm posters while they try to answer the following comprehension questions

Keep Calm and Carry On by Eva Gutiérrez

  

4.- As the popularity of the poster in various media has grown, innumerable parodies, imitations and co-optations have also appeared with messages that range from the cute to the overtly political, typically with references to other aspects of popular culture turning it into an iconic image of the 21st century. Here are some other versions that may work as inspirational examples

5.- Let them now use Poster generator apps both for IOS and Android or any of these merchandising websites offering poster generators and personalized products (Keepcalm-o-matic, Keepcalmstudio and Keepcalmandcarryon) for personalizing their own Keep Calm posters to remind class rules or just for fun.

Hope you enjoy the lesson!

E.

Science: A Girl Thing!

TASK 5.1 MobileLessonPlan- ... by Eva Gutiérrez

Bang Bang

This activity combines picture and video telling to revise simple past tenses in an attempt to give a practical edge to the wide array of tools we are presented with as part of the INTEF course for storytelling as I cannot see the point in making videos without any purpose for actual use in the classroom.

STEP 1

Tell students that you want them to draw two sketches to activate vocabulary. Tell them to listen to your complete instructions before they start. Give the following instructions:

I’d like you to draw a scene from a western film: the main characters are, as usual, Indians and cowboys. There is a young Indian all tied up with a rope around his body standing immobile at gun point, while an equally young cowboy, holding him close by the rope, threatens to shoot him down. There are speech bubbles coming from their mouths.

I also want you to draw a second picture. In this one a bride dressed in a beautiful white wedding dress holding a bouquet is standing alone in the middle of the church aisle in front of the altar. Church bells are ringing, benches are decorated with flowers but there’s no one sitting there. There’s a thought bubble coming from her head.

Ask students to repeat the instructions back to you before drawing. Ask students to consider what the characters in their sketches might be saying/ thinking about and what might have happened (i.e. she must have been left at the altar, they might be children playing Indians and cowboys…etc.) Elicit as many possible answers as you can.

STEP 2

Show them the following bunch of pics and add they tell the whole story. Ask them to order them chronologically and get them to try and tell the story behind the pictures using simple past tenses.

Bunch of Pics by Eva Gutiérrez

STEP 3

Play the video without sound to show how the images link togetger. Luckily by now, some of them may have recognized the images illustrate a popular song. Teach students the full song lyrics and play the video with sound.

STEP 4

Tell them to choose a song (Tom’s Diner to work with present continuous, California Dreaming for conditional sentences… etc.) and encourage them to illustrate the songs with pictures or their own drawings, by scanning them and using editing software to create a collage to accompany the song just like Jamie Keddie did and inspired me to create these activities with his lesson plan here.  

E.      

Take a Seat & Make a Friend

This listening and speaking activity is based on the video below -and great powers of imagination as it's very unlikely that you can have a ball pit in your classroom if you teach adults-. ;-) It may be well used at the beginning of the course as part of the presentation activities or at any time during the year with large groups of students which tend to flock together and never really get to know everyone in class.

Tell them that when you're a kid, you can connect with almost anyone. But as you get older, friendships can be harder to find. Get them to imagine they’re walking down the street when they find a ball pit with a banner inviting them to get inside and meet a complete stranger. Would they do it?

Tell them this is exactly what people here in this video do. Let them watch it while they take a note of all talking prompts written on the bigger balls for them to speak about life’s big questions.

Play it again and conduct feedback while asking comprehension questions and going through some of the answers. Once done, encourage them to find at least two classmates in their group to go into “the ball pit” and try to make friends with by working through the issues together. Conversation practice guaranteed and a good laugh while handshaking, believe me!

Talking Prompts by Eva Gutiérrez

Instrumental Soundtracks

There's always a good opportunity to play this little game bound to make for a great time. With my Advanced groups it was given last Christmas when we were talking about muzak or piped music that is played in public places such as restaurants, shopping malls or the lift, whereas with my Intermediate groups, the chance came along while learning vocab related to films... plot, cast, soundtracks, and so on.

In any case I play those less popular soundtracks such as "Into the west" (The Return of the King), Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis... etc. and make them think about the way they feel about them. This brings about a good bunch of words to describe feelings. Get them to think next of the story behind, the scene that soundtrack may accompany or the few images the music conjures up in their visual mind with very simple questions: Where is the scene? Who is in it? How do they feel? What's happening? You'll be amazed at what they can come up with.

Play some more popular ones after (Ennio Morricone- The Mission, Life is Beautiful, La Valse d'Amelie, "The entertainer" from The Sting...) to see whether they can guess the movie or remember the real scene and encourage them to tell you about their favourite soundtrack, why they like it and let them know they can bring their own soundtracks to the classroom for the rest to take the guess challenge.

Well, just some ideas that usually work pretty well and that students often find motivating =) 

What do they have in common?

This is a lesson plan which has usually worked pretty well with my groups and that I first heard of from one of my teachers, Bruce McGowen, a long time ago during a course abroad. It has, however, been adapted, changing celebrities and extending it over the years to meet the reality within my classroom. I had originally planned to 'launch' this Internet lesson coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's journey into outer space and the proximity of World Book Day on the 23rd April, but several setbacks made it impossible. Anyway, you may either choose to leave it for next year's World Book Day celebration or implement it whenever you feel it's the right time for it.

This lesson consists of several phases: a pre- browsing task where the language is presented and SS are encouraged to predict the contents, a while- browsing stage going from controlled to less controlled tasks and finally a response which involves a change of skill and further language work.

STAGE 1: LANGUAGE IMPUT

STAGE 2: DIRECTED BROWSING TASKS

-          task one: getting into the internet

-          task two: the game

STAGE 3: SKILL- FOCUSSED TASKS

-          task one: completing the chart

-          task two: speaking

-          task three: writing

______________________________________________________

STAGE 1: LEAD- IN

1.      The teacher writes the following two names on the board:

       SYLVESTER STALLONE                    MUHAMMED ALI

And elicit that these two people have one thing in common: boxing- but that their interest in boxing is different: Sylvester Stallone acted as a boxer in the Rocky movies whereas Muhammed Ali was a real boxer.

2.      With the help of a projector the teacher builds up this model to introduce LINKERS.

STAGE 2: DIRECTED BROWSING TASKS

1.      The teacher divides the class into teams of four making sure each team has access to at least two computers and get the SS to name their teams if appropriate.

2.      The teacher writes the following three names on the board:

  YURI GAGARIN           BUDDY HOLLY        CARLOS GARDEL

And finds out what the students know about them or tells that Yuri Gagarin was a famous astronaut, Russian...etc and that Buddy Holly was a famous American singer in the 1950s whereas Carlos Gardel was an actor and tango singer. Then the teacher tells the SS that these three have something in common. They are going to find this out on the web.

TASK ONE

Yuri Gagarin, Buddy Holly and Carlos Gardel. What do they have in common? Follow the instructions below and find the answer as quickly as possible:

1.      Get into the Internet

2.      Type: http: //www.biography.com in the address box

3.      Press enter (return)

4.      Type the name you need in Find

5.      Click on Find

6.      Click on the name you need

After a while, students may have found the answer and the teacher should conduct feedback (see teacher's notes) and make students reflect on the skills they have used to find the information:

-   They do not need to read every word

-   They only have to focus on content words

-   The words at the beginning of the sentence give a clue about the  whole sentence so they can accept or reject sentences quickly and move on to the next one.

-   They should not use their fingers to point to the text word by word.

-  They do not need to read the text aloud.

TASK TWO: THE GAME

The class will now play a game in their teams. The teacher puts on the board the first pair of names. Each team must find their biographies and what they have in common. The first team to produce the correct answer will get two points. Then, with a second pair of names ...etc. Check out the teacher's notes for the answers.

The pair		Answers
Marlon Brando	Carlos Marcello
George Harrison	Ravi Shankar
Mahatma Gandhi	John Lennon
Janis Joplin	Marilyn Monroe

STAGE 3: SKILLS- FOCUSED TASK (more detailed reading in pairs)

The teacher tells the class to go to Wikipedia. They will now in pairs research two other people, find out what they have in common and fill in the biography grid below. Person A of the pair is given the name William Shakespeare. Person B, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

TASK ONE: Fill in the biography grid below

	Person 1	Person 2
Name
When born?
Where born?
Occupation
Achievement/s?
Date of death?
Other interesting information?
Common fact

POST- BROWSING (change of skill)

TASK TWO

After completing their own chart individually, SS should talk to their partner and describe the life of their famous person and see if they find out what both have in common.

TASK THREE: PARAGRAPH COMPOSITION

SS are asked to write a comparison account of their two characters following the model provided in the lead-in by means of past tenses and contrasting linkers.

NB: I suggest using biography.com but you may as well decide to use Wikipedia. Yuri Gagarin's picture was taken from Wikipedia Commons.

Students' Worksheet

Teacher's Notes

She's not just a pretty face

This lesson contains a warm-up activity to build vocabulary around the world of work, jobs and professions and a listening activity which would lead to extensive reading about the role of women in history. As a follow-up activity, it suggests working with a song and asking your students to discuss further questions.

Step One: Warm-up

• Show your SS the following pictures to see if they can name the job. Ask them what they think the job involves. Do a bit of open-class chatting about the positive and negative aspects of the jobs.

(This collection of pictures belongs to #eltpics gallery. If you want to know more about it, check out this blog entry)

Step Two: Nobel Prize Winners Quiz

• Tell them they should watch carefully the set of photographs of famous Nobel Prize Winners for 5 seconds. (Credit for this idea goes to Mark Hancock who mentioned this activity during his workshop on "Motivation: the inside story" at VII Congreso EOI in Madrid)
• Explain that they are going to listen to a lovely Voki talking about one of the people they've seen. Tell them to raise their hand as soon as they know who she is talking about.
  
  Nobel Prizes by Eva Gutiérrez
  
  
  • Ask them if they know other women who won the Nobel Prize and if they know their specialty. Make sure this leads to a discussion about women's roles in history.
  • Put your SS in groups and ask them to find out more about at least two women in each category here. Get them to report back to the class.
  
  Step Three: Song "She's not just a pretty face"
  
  • Before listening ask your SS to predict the content of the song from the title
  • While listening to the song, SS fill in the blanks in the lyrics with names of jobs
  • After listening, SS must supply a job name for some lines from the song
  • Either in pairs or as a whole group, open the debate on gender discrimination in the world of work

Song by Eva Gutiérrez

Hope you enjoy the activity.

ELT Pictures

Eltpics is a wonderful ever-expanding and continually updated collection of photographs, based on a weekly theme, collected by teachers, trainers and writers from around the world. These are, in turn, available free to others in the field of ELT under a CC license. Created in October 2010, it includes so far more than 2,000 pictures classified in a couple of dozen categories ranging from 'shopping/ shops' to 'beverages', 'means of transport', 'art and craft' or 'close ups', to mention only a few of the most recent additions. Anyone interested in joining in can tweet an image with the hashtag #eltpics.

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