Teaching For Exams? Have fun! Word Formation... Bingo!

⚠️UPDATE⚠️
This blog post has been shortlisted for this month’s TeachingEnglish blog award 💖🥇

Hi  again my fellow EFL teachers!
Are you in trouble with training your students for English language exams? Don't worry! Here I am with a new, fun game you can play with your students!

This time I'm focusing on:

Cambridge First Certificate
Reading and Use of English part 3
This task is called word formation and it focuses on candidates' knowledge of how prefixes, suffixes, internal changes and compounds are used in forming words.

So many affixes, which don't always follow a rule, drive my students nuts. Thus, I created this simple, but fun game!

What you need:
a 3x3 grid [students can make their own grids during the lesson]
pencils/pens
What you have to do:

If you make copies beforehand, write a suffix (e.g. -ist) or prefix (e.g. ir-) on the top of each box and write a grammar category (e.g. person noun), whether the word is negative/plural at the bottom of each box. Otherwise, you can write the affixes and the other information about the word formation on the board and ask students to copy them on their papers.

Rules of the game:
1) Once all the students have their grids,
E.g.

the teacher says a word
E.g. football
2) The teacher says a grammar category
E.g. noun person
3) The learner writes the noun person for football in the right box. --> Footballer 

4) When the learner has completed all the boxes, s/he shouts out BINGO!

The list of words for the grid above are:
- football (person noun)
- society (adjective)
- survey (person noun)
- polite (abstract noun)
- maintain (abstract noun)
- relevant (negative adjective)
- journal (person noun/plural)
- patience (negative adjective)
- happy (manner adverb)

5) To make it more challenging add a few more words to the list which don't fit in the grid. Students need to realise that they must not write anything when the teacher calls out that word + grammar category. Remember to tell them before you start playing!
E.g.
- kindness (negative adjective --> UNKIND)
- politics (person noun --> POLITICIAN)

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR MORE GAMES TO PRACTISE THIS PART OF THE EXAM, TAKE A LOOK HERE.

Teaching for Exams? Have fun! - Key-word transformations with a twist

One of the most tricky and challenging parts of the Cambridge First Exam is Use of English part 4. Students always complain about how difficult it is and prefer to skip it rather than taking the bull by the horns.
If you don't know about this part of the exam, here you are the description from the Cambridge English website.

KEY WORD TRANSFORMATION: Each question consists of a sentence followed by a ‘key’ word and a second sentence with a gap in the middle. You have to use this key word to complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence.

I do think that students need to learn to face their weaknesses and practice makes perfect. On the other hand, in their shoes, I understand that training for an exam must be boring so I decided to match a fun game with this exercise.

KEY-WORD TRANSFORMATIONS WITH A TWIST

What do you need? Worksheet(s) of Key word transformations 

A spinner board (optional)

A Finger Twister board

KEY OF THE COLOURS (for those who don't have a spinner board)

GREEN - LEFT HAND - THUMB

ORANGE - LEFT HAND - INDEX FINGER

PINK - RIGHT HAND - LITTLE FINGER

BLUE - RIGHT HAND - RING FINGER

RULES

1) Students work in pairs

2) Students in turns rotate the spinner board. The arrow indicates a finger and colored circle. OR Students in turns call out a colour and number.

3) The teacher boards the corresponding transformation.

4) The student needs to answer the question.

4a If the student answers correctly, they don't put any fingers on the board.

4b If the student makes a mistake, they have to put their finger on the corresponding circle according to the spinner/ the number and color they have previously called out.
4c The teacher gives the chance to another student to answer correctly. If they can answer correctly, they take off one of their fingers from the finger twister board.

5) The winner is the student with fewer fingers on the board, that is, the one who has made fewer mistakes.

My students have never had such fun doing this exercise. :)

Cambridge FCE/FCE for Schools: Speaking Paper Tips

Some of my students are going to take the Cambridge FCE exam at the end of the month so I created for them this handy visual graphic with some tips to follow during the exam. I hope you and your students will find it useful!

You can also find a PDF printable version here.

Household stuff: Great tools for teaching... exam classes! Part 2

Hi everyone!

I hope you enjoyed last week post http://larissaslanguages.blogspot.it/2016/03/household-stuff-great-tools-for.html!

Today's item is... 

ICE CREAM STICK

€1,50 (100 pcs)

PURPOSE: I used ice cream sticks to teach an exam-focused class. Students were trained to practise Cambridge FCE Reading and Use of English PART 4.   

[This part of the exam is called KEY WORD TRANSFORMATION. Each question consists of a sentence followed by a ‘key’ word and a second sentence with a gap in the middle. You have to use this key word to complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence.]

WHAT I DID BEFORE CLASS: I wrote some sentences on the ice cream sticks using present perfect simple/continuous and past simple. I wrote some sentences with the same meaning - using different tenses - and some "distractors'" which were wrong. 

E.g. Stick 1 --> My nephew began to play tennis in 2010.

Stick 2--> My nephew has been playing tennis since 2010.

Stick 3 --> My nephew has been played tennis since 2010.

The first two sentences have a similar meaning while the third one is wrong.

STUDENTS: (4-6) Teenagers

WHAT I DID IN CLASS: I told my students we were going to play a game to revise the use of PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE/CONTINUOUS and PAST SIMPLE and I showed them the ice cream sticks in a clear plastic bag.

Afterwards, much to their surprise, I dumped the sticks on the desk. I said they had to pick up two sticks with the same meaning without moving the others. (See the rules of the game MIKADO)

WHAT MY STUDENTS DID: 

When they picked up two right sentences without moving the other sticks, they got 2 points.

When they picked up two right sentences moving one or more sticks, they got 1 point.

When they picked up a wrong sentence, they got no points.

They had a lot of fun!

Until the next item ;-)

Teaching for exams? Have fun! Give a pep talk to yourself and your mates!

A new year has just started and most of my students have their resolutions made: take an English language exam.
Studying for an exam is always considered boring and tiring, but let's spice up this hard-working task with a pep talk!

What is a pep talk?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a pep talk is "a short speech that is given to encourage someone to work harder, to feel more confident and enthusiastic, etc."

Everyone needs a pep talk not only students who are taking an exam so this lesson plan can be useful for any type of class!

Students: TEENAGERS/ADULTS
Level: UPPER-INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED
Time: 1h30minutes
Linguistic skills: LISTENING & SPEAKING

1) I started my class by writing the phrase PEP TALK on the board and asked my learners if they knew what it meant.
They brainstormed some ideas I reported on the whiteboard without saying whether they were right or wrong.
2) After a few minutes I told them I was going to show them a video about a pep talk so they could check their predictions.

This is the link to the video: A Pep Talk from Kid President to You
3) After watching the video I collected some feedback and I gave my students some information about Kid President.

4) Listening activity: I cut out the following sentences and paired up students. They watched the video again and put in order the sections as they heard them. (To check if they were right we watched the video with subtitles).

5) It's time to take action! Students have to prepare their own pep talks. I gave my learners the following instructions and tips:

My students' talks lasted about 60-90 seconds. They filmed each other and it took them about 30 minutes to write their speech.

6) Finally, students listened to each other's pep talk.

I found this class both heart-warming and encouraging. I hope you get the chance to try something similar with your learners and if you do, please let me know!

Teaching for exams? Have fun - A card game to revise

Luckily (or unluckily) it is that time of the year again! Exams!

This year to help my students to revise for their exams I made up a game with a deck of poker cards.

Age: Pre-teens, Teens, Adults
Level: from A2 to B2
What you need: a deck of poker cards/a whiteboard (smart board)

First of all, pre-teach some vocabulary about cards. Show your students the deck of cards and teach them the words suits, hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, jack, queen, king.

Number of players:

2-20

In small classes (up to 8) players will play individually and you can write the questions on the board depending on their weaknesses and strengths.

I played this game with a class of 20 learners and I paired them up. In this case I used a smart board and the questions appeared on it (the cards where arranged in the same sequence as the questions)

Rules of the game:

Each suit corresponds to a language skill or sub-skill.

Revising for the Cambridge KET for Schools

Learners take turns to turn up a card. 

They will answer a question about a language skill or sub-skill according to the suit they get.

If they answer correctly they will get as many points as the number of suits on the card.

If their answer is wrong, other learners have the chance to get half points on the card if they answer correctly.

If learners pick up KING, they will lose 1 point.

If learners pick up QUEEN, they will double the points of the next question.

If learners pick up JACK, they will miss a turn.

Sample questions for the B1 level

My learners had a whale of a time because they had the chance to revise the topics of the exam without getting bored.

If you try this activity out, please let me know!

Larissa and Inspector Z - Phrasal verbs with fun (part 3) COME

Ready for a new episode?
You will find the previous ones here

1) LOOK http://larissaslanguages.blogspot.it/2015/02/larissa-and-inspector-z-phrasal-verbs.html
2) GET http://larissaslanguages.blogspot.it/2015/02/larissa-and-inspector-z-phrasal-verbs_26.html

BEFORE YOU START - RECYCLE VOCABULARY
Ask your students to sum up the story so far in pairs.
Give them a list of the phrasal verbs which appeared in the previous episodes. They check the phrasal verbs off when they use them so they can realize how many they remember.

READING TASK - READ FOR THE GIST
1) What did James find?
2) What did he do?
3) What were Larissa and Inspector Z going to do?

LEARN NEW VOCABULARY  -  MATCHING ACTIVITY

SPEAKING TASK - PROBLEM SOLVING
Ask your students to come up with ideas about rescuing someone in pairs or in small groups.

Next week a new episode

Larissa and Inspector Z - Phrasal verbs with fun (part 2)

Last week I created the first episode of the comics series "Larissa and Inspector Z" http://larissaslanguages.blogspot.it/2015/02/larissa-and-inspector-z-phrasal-verbs.html. My students and my followers enjoyed it so much that I decided to continue writing it.

This week the focus in on some phrasal verbs with GET.

How can you use it in class:

1) READING TASK - READ FOR THE GIST
 Give your students a copy of this comic strips and ask your students the following questions:
- Where was James?
- Who kidnapped him? Why?
- What did James feel like?

2) LEARN NEW VOCABULARY - MATCHING ACTIVITY

3) SPEAKING TASK - PREDICTING ACTIVITY
Ask your students what will happen next.
*They can also write their ideas on a board on www.padlet.com  so that next week will be able to check who was the nearest to the exact version.

4) HOMEWORK - FLASHCARDS CREATION
Students create flashcards with the meaning of the new phrasal verbs learnt using https://www.examtime.com/en/flash_card_decks/2139423/edit (free mobile app, too).

Next week a new episode!

The power of free mobile apps - No 2 ThingLink

Here I am with the second post of the series "The power of free mobile apps".

Today I'd like to share with you some activities your students can do by using ThingLink (available on Web, Apple Store and Google Play).

What is ThingLink?

 Choose or take a picture with your phone’s camera and add interactive tags on your image such as YouTube videos, videos from your phone’s camera, twitter handles and text.
You can share your pictures with friends on Facebook, Twitter and Email.
If you sign up on the website as a teacher you can create a class and get email and password for your students to use.

Register your students

You can manage your groups

ACTIVITY 1

Grammar - Free practice - beginners/elementary

If you are teaching present continuous students can practise the TL by describing the actions of the people in a picture. 

What I did: My adults students chose a painting they liked and they described it.

See an example here The Luncheon of the Boating Party

ACTIVITY 2 

Literature -  Biography of a writer (any level)

Charles Dickens

[Remember you can add videos and links ;-) ]

ACTIVITY 3

CAMBRIDGE PET/PET for SCHOOLS - Speaking part 3

During this part the examiner gives you a colour photograph and you have to talk about it for about a minute.

Learners are often reluctant to speak in class especially shy students in large classes. By using ThingLink the learners can record their voice while describing the picture at home. 

What I have been doing: At the end of each class I ask my students to take a picture about the topic we have learnt in that session (e.g. sport, entertainment, the natural world, etc.) and describe it. In this way not only will they pratise their speaking skills for the exam but they will also revise the TL. 

[Remember that your video recording can be up to 30 seconds long so you must split your description in two parts]

Cambridge PET for Schools - Speaking part 3

If you have more ideas and activities to share I would love to post them here!

My first workshop and webinar - Experiences I want to make again and again

In the last few weeks I was really busy with my lessons but I made time for my first workshop and webinar.

1) Workshop - Teaching Teenagers: 4 Skills + 1 at the TESOL Italy's 39th National Convention

In this workshop I talked about how we can engage teen learners and how to create fun lesson plans which integrate the four linguistic skills, and at the same time, allow the students to learn job skills. I shared with the audience my series of lessons called "If I were a... JOB". The example I used was If I were a... mayor. 

However, before handing out my own lesson plan I showed them this slide and I asked to create their own lesson plan. While they were working in small groups I supervised and I noticed that the most difficult part was to integrate the skills with the aims. So I told them, "Be creative, don't be afraid of trying something new and you'll see that you and your students will have a lot of fun"!

Over the last few lessons my teen students and I have also tried out to be TV reporters and real estate agents and I hope to share my lesson plans soon with you. 

2) Webinar - Games in the English classroom hosted by Jason R Lavine (Fluency MC) and WizIQ.

I'd never been fond of teaching online because I'd always thought it was not my cup of tea but yesterday I completely changed my mind. I'd always believed I couldn't have enough interaction with the audience in a webinar but I was terribly wrong! Yesterday I had the chance to meet teachers from any part of the world and I was able to share my ideas with them. Moreover, at the end of webinar some of them even contacted me on social networks and we continued our conversation about teaching issues. 

I loved having this webinar also because I could talk about something I usually do with my students in my language studio. Playing games is so important to me because they add variety to the lesson, they make students feel relaxed and less worried about mistakes and finally we have a lot of fun!

If you wish to see the slides and the webinar recording please enroll here ;-)

https://www.wiziq.com/…/88643-games-in-the-english-classroom 

I'd like to thank once again Jason for giving me this fantastic chance and introducing me to the world of online teaching!

Teaching for Exams? Have fun! - Gift bags

UPDATE: This blog post has been awarded for the 'Blog Award for Innovative Teaching Ideas' by Teaching English British Council.

A couple of days ago my mother and I were doing some spring cleaning in the basement when she told me to throw away a bunch of gift bags. I was walking to the bins when I stopped at once. "Why don't take these gift bags into the classroom?", I wondered. I had already heard about vocabulary bag activities in oder to revise words from the website  Teaching English British Council so I decided I could try to introduce these Realia objects in my classes. 

This is the activity I did with my students.

Aimed at learners who are training for the FCE/FCE for schools

Background: Use of English part 3/ Reading and Use of English part 3 (from 2015)

This task is called word formation and it focuses on candidates' knowledge of how prefixes, suffixes, internal changes and compounds are used in forming words. 

Number of students: 4

Number of gift bags: 4

(You can pair or group up students depending on your class)

1) Give each student (pair/group of students) a bag. Each bag corresponds to a grammar category:

a. nouns, 

b. verbs, 

c. adjectives, 

d. adverbs. 

2) Put in the centre of the desk  mixed-up sets of words which have the same root. 

A set of the cards I used in my lesson.

3) According to the number of words, tell students they have ___ minutes to pick up the words which belong to the grammar category they have been assigned and put them into their own bags.

4) When time is up call the students to come to the board with their bag. One category at time. 

5) Students call out the words while you copy them to the board so as everyone can take notes.  

IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG: If a student has put the word SURELY in the ADJECTIVE's bag, don't write it immediately in the right column but stick it on the board. 

6) At the end, when all the chart is filled up go back to the words which haven't been categorized yet and with the whole class classify them. The students will then take the words and put them into the right bag.

My students enjoyed a lot this activity above all when they had to choose which category the words belonged to. This activity also gave them the chance to do some peer-teaching. 

You can also use this activity if you want to teach vocabulary according to the grammar categories or with just two bags you can teach opposite words. 

Do you have more ideas to use gift bags in exam preparation classes? Please share them with me!

Teaching for Exams? Have Fun (Part 3)

UPDATE: This blog post has been shortlisted for the 'Blog Award for Innovative Teaching Ideas' by Teaching English British Council.

Here we are with another post about having fun while training your students for their English language exams.

Last month I attended an excellent webinar by the amazing Sylvia Guinan about interactive storytelling for English language exams. She fully explained how storytelling comics could be used to present/revise phrasal verbs as well as for showing English transformation structures before students ever even realise that these are official parts of the exam. You can find her presentation here.

I found her ideas so interesting and stimulating that I started using www.bitstrips.com to create personalized materials in order to train my students for the Cambridge KET, PET, FCE for Schools.

Below you will find some examples about how I used comics to prepare my students for their exams. 

1. KET for Schools
Reading&Writing part 4
Right/Wrong/Doesn't say OR 3-option multiple choice - In this part of the test students have to read for the detailed understanding and main ideas.

(I adapted the following exercise from the book KET for Schools Trainer) 

(If you are interested in the questions, please contact me.)


2 PET for Schools
Writing Part 1
Sentence transformation - In this part of the test students are given sentences and then asked to complete similar sentences using a different structural pattern so that the sentence still has the same meaning. Candidates should use no more than three words.

(In this example my students and I were revising the reported speech.)

3 FCE for Schools
Use of English Part 4
Key word transformations - In this part of the paper students are tested about lexical and grammatical structures. This exercise focuses on the students' ability to express a message in different ways.

(In this example my students and I were revising the use of comparatives and superlatives.)

If you have more ideas about how to use comics to teach for language exams, please share them with me!

Studying for exams? Have fun (Part 2)

Two weeks ago I started a new series of blog posts about teaching and studying for English language exams. I posted http://larissaslanguages.blogspot.it/2014/03/teaching-for-exams-have-fun-part-1.html which was about a technique I used in the classroom to help my students improve their results in FCE Reading part 2.

Today I'm posting two pictures which come in handy for FCE Writing part 2. In this part of the exam you are asked to write a piece of writing. The task types are articles, stories, reviews, letters, essays and reports. In the two pictures below you will find some useful tips about the structure of the text and suitable phrases&expressions for each piece of writing.

Teaching for exams? Have fun! (Part 1)

Last week I posted two graphics aimed at students of the English language who want to do well in the Speaking papers of Cambridge PET and First. My blog post was so successful I decided to have a series of posts about teaching (aimed at teachers) and studying (aimed at learners) for English language exams. I will share my teaching ideas which worked in the classroom and some useful tips for students to smash their exams.

CAMBRIDGE FCE  - READING PART 3

WHAT CANDIDATES NEED TO DO:
In this part of the test candidates need to read through one long text divided into sections or up to six shorter texts. The texts usually describe people's experiences and tastes.They have to find information in the texts that matches 15 short questions.

WHY THEY FIND IT DIFFICULT:
There is information in more than one section of the text which appears to match the questions.

WHAT DID WE DO IN CLASS?
I got this idea after reading this article
http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/career/5-famous-people-who-failed-their-way-to-success

Materials for 6 students:
6 stick-on labels with the name of a famous person on
6 short texts
12 post-it notes with information on

1. Play the game Who Am I? 
- Write the name of a famous person on each stick-on card.
- Stick it on your students' forehead. (Or let them stick it by themselves but they cannot see what is written on the card).
- Choose a person to start the game. This person asks the group "yes or no" questions to figure out who they are. (E.g. 
- Continue around until everyone either has had a turn.

2. Once the students know which famous person they are, give them a short text about their character. Students read the text.

3. Gallery Walk - Students now go around the classroom to find two pieces of information about their characters.
This step is crucial because being the information pretty similar some students will "struggle" for getting the post-it note.
This method turned out to be effective because students realized they had to find synonyms or similar phrases in order to match the information with the character.

Students had a chance to make it practical and reflect on the ways they could do the exercise straightforwardly.
After the lesson I gave my students an exercise from the past papers of the exam and the number of correct answers was much higher than in previous exercises. Plus, one of my students came up with a technique to do this part of test: First read one section of the text/short text and then read the possible information which matches with it.

Note: This activity can be also used for a reading comprehension exercise at any level. You just need to adapt it to your students.

Useful tips for the Cambridge PET and FIRST Speaking papers

It doesn't matter whether you are teenager or an adult, speaking exams scare you, don't they? I came up with these two graphics to help my students and you face this overwhelming fear.
Dos & Don'ts and useful tips about the functional language to use in the different parts of the paper will support you to get trough the speaking exam.

 You can download the pictures and print them out!

Metro UK: Get the best out of a free newspaper

Are you one of those teachers who:

1) is teaching in a non-English-speaking country?
2) is looking for new ideas to create or adapt authentic materials?
3)  is fed up with course books?
4) is training their students for a Cambridge exam?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, keep on reading this post!

When I lived in London I used to take the tube almost everyday. Before getting on the train I used to grab a copy of a free paper: METRO. I flicked through it during my journey, reading some headlines here and there. When I was about to come back to Italy I decided to pack some copies up. When I was here I realized I could use it to create or adapt materials even to train my students in several parts of some Cambridge Examinations. Plus, checking on the internet I found out its PDF edition so my materials are always brand new and up-to-date!

I collected here some ways to use METRO UK in your classes:

1. To teach vocabulary - There are lots of colorful picture. 

2. To warm up - If you want to introduce the topic of the lesson in a fun way you can use its comic strips. Find out more in this previous post:
http://larissaslanguages.blogspot.it/2013/06/comic-strips-to-warm-up.html


3. To have a debate or a conversation class - Intermediate and upper-intermediate students sometimes are stuck with the same vocabulary. Pre-teaching new vocabulary, reading a newspaper article, having a talk are three easy steps which will make your students more interested in your lesson. Don't forget: feel free to adapt the text in order to meet your students' needs and levels.


4. KET: speaking test - In the second part of the speaking test there are two candidates. The examiner gives them a sheet with a picture and some information. Candidates ask and answer questions in turns about the information on the sheet. Questions are usually introduced by questions words such as who, when, which, what, where, etc. For this part of the test you can use the ads.

Possible questions:

a. Where do you get 25% off?
b. What time do the stores close?
c. How much do you have to spend to get free delivery?




Possible questions:
a. What is Jamie magazine about?
b. What can I do to get a free copy?
c. Who writes in this magazine?

5. FCE: Writing test - One of the genres of the writing test is the report. It is the most formal piece of writing because it is full of data and impersonal expressions. How can your students get data to build up their report? Use the infographics from the section IN FOCUS. Here you an example about the graduate and non-graduate jobs in the UK currently.



I hope that these prompts will be useful for you and if you have any other ideas, please share them with me!
(All the pictures are screenshots of the PDF edition)