A great post about natural, polite requests.
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Say something nice
A great idea for a warmer.
Picture Description Lesson Plan
Before you use these materials, why not check out our new podcast for learners and teachers alike? It’s called 2Ts in a Pod, have a listen here:
This is a fun lesson plan in which students work in pairs describing and drawing pictures. It will be useful for students preparing for Cambridge exam speaking activities.
You will need this handout: Pics for describing
Put the following picture on the board and hand out other copies to the class:
Ask students what they can see in the picture.
What’s in the background?
What’s in the foreground?
Go through the following vocabulary on the board:
In the background/foreground we can see…………..
On the left/right
At the top/bottom
He’s wearing……………..
He’s facing left/right/the camera
He looks happy/sad/ etc.
Prepositions: Next to/beside, above, below, in front of, behind.
Now tell students that you are going to describe a picture and they have to draw it. Tell them to draw quickly, also remind them about perspective (things in the foreground appear bigger than in the background)
Describe the following picture to them:
Try to give as much detail as possible. Collect in the pictures and stick them to the board and then show the real photo. Invite students to comment on the differences and vote for the one they think is most accurate.
Now put students in pairs, tell them that one person is going to describe and the other is going to draw. Have them position themselves so that the describer is facing the board so that he/she can see the vocabulary and the other should be facing them. Be careful that the different pairs are spaced out so that they cannot see each other’s pictures. Give them 5 minutes to describe and draw. Once the 5 minutes are up collect in the pictures and invite comments and votes again. Have students swap roles and repeat as many times as you like. There are several pictures in the handout with different degrees of difficulty.
Follow up activity:
For FCE or CAE students use the pictures for a practice run of the speaking part 2, in which students must compare and contrast two pictures for 1 minute.
Useful FCE websites
Great resources for FCE. Thanks Sandy!
Quizicon’s 100 most common words quiz
A cool and surprisingly difficult quiz!
Error Correction Techniques
Some really nice error correction techniques.
Persepolis Journal: Chapter 2, The Bicycle
This is the second part in a series of posts based around the graphic novel “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi. I’m currently working through the book with three separate groups of adults with a level ranging from A2 – C1 and one teenage individual with a C1 level. Each week I set the next chapter of the book as homework and we dedicate the first 15-20 minutes of each class to vocabulary and grammar issues that arise and a discussion of the various issues that come up.
Chapter 2, The Bicycle
Here is some of vocabulary that came up in class:
to awake
a synonym of “to wake up” but used for more poetic writing, or in older texts. Note that there are irregular conjugations of the verb = awake, awoke, awoken but also regular ones: awake, awakened.
To blame something ON somebody.
The shah blames the fire on the fanatics.
pronunciation of Iran and use of different regional adjectives: Iranian, Middle-Eastern, Western etc.
unshakeable
The collocation unshakeable faith, an indestructible faith. Also verb “to shake” – shake shook shaken. (James Bond Reference)
forbid forbade forbidden
In reference to the police stopping people from rescuing the people trapped in the burning cinema.
fickle
a good adjective to teach students to describe Marji, in the last chapter she wanted to be a prophet and was obsessed with religion and now in this one she wants to be a revolutionary like Fidel Castro or Che Guevara. Fickle describes a person who changes their loyalties and tastes very easily and often.
Discussion questions
- What happens in this chapter?
- How does Marji’s attitude change?
- Who does she idolise? Is she fickle?
- How does the novel portray the Rex cinema fire? (one of the worst terrorist attacks of modern times, read the wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Rex_fire)
- What do you think of the way Marji’s parents are raising / educating her? (with Descartes, Marx etc.)
- Do you think that children today study reliable history of these events?
- If you are old enough to remember the Iranian revolution, what do you remember? How was it perceived in your country?
- Do you remember where you were and what you were doing at the time of a big atrocity? (in reference to the Rex fire, possiblities could be 9/11, the London bombing, the Madrid bombing etc.)
Homework
Set chapter 3 entitled “The Water Cell” for students to read for next class.
For each class I am making a set of vocabulary flashcards on the website http://www.quizlet.com so that at the start of each class we can briefly revise vocab from the week before.
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