Class Activities
RESSOURCES variées utilisables en classe:
Selingua est un logiciel d’apprentissage de vocabulaire avec dictionnaires fournis.
Speaking activities, on these pages you will find ideas for classroom activities which involve speaking
Activities 01-30
1) Staged role-play, 2) Story in a bag, 3) True / False stories, 4) Why didn't you come to the party?, 5) Dating game, 6) Getting teenagers talking, 7) The crime scene, 8) Chain story telling activity, 9) Task based speaking, 10) Family tree, 11) Getting the whole class talking, 12) Improving discussion lessons, 13) Getting teenagers to talk, 14) Improvisations, 15) Find the murderer, 16) Bingo mingle, 17) Short projects to get them talking - Lists, 18) Superlative questions, 19) Summer destinations, 20) Interview the Experts, 21) Erase the dialogue, 22) Fun discussion of controversial topics - the 'Tap-In Debate', 23) Motivating speaking activities, 24) Third conditional guessing game, 25) Preposition basketball, 26) Running Dictation, 27) Simple picture activity, 28) ARM exercises – speaking activity to wake up a sleepy class, 29) Doctors and patients – speaking activity, 30) Nursery rhyme role-play - advanced speaking activity
Source : BBC / British Council
Activities 31-39
31) The Secret Code game, 32) The cooking test, 33) Picture dictation, 34) The holiday maze, 35) Shop service role-play, 36) Story telling grid, 37) Discussion wheels, 38) Discussion Bingo, 39) Mini-talks.
Source : BBC / British Council
Staged role-play (5 activities).
Discussion wheel template – Try - Activities © BBC | British Council 2004
Holiday maze – Try - Activities © BBC | British Council 2004
Cut up the cards and only give the student the card number that they ask for.
Rhyming pairs – Try - Activities © BBC | British Council 2005
Cut up into individual cards and place face down.
Picture dictation – Try - Activities © BBC | British Council 2004
Pronunciation matching – Try - Activities © BBC | British Council 2004
Worksheet A
Pronunciation matching – Try - Activities © BBC | British Council 2004
Worksheet B - Pronunciation record
Word Vowel Sound
Shop service role cards – Try - Activities © BBC | British Council 2004
Shop service role-play : Materials
Story grid - Try - Activities - © BBC | British Council 2004
Pronunciation activities
Broken Telephone
"This is a little game I have used to help students with their listening practice and it develops pronunciation awareness. The name of this game is 'broken telephone."
Daphne Tan, Singapore
Word stress
A major benefit of focusing students on how words are stressed is the extra mental engagement with the word that it gives........Mistakes in word stress are a common cause of misunderstanding in English. Here are the reasons why........
Emma Pathare, Teacher, Trainer, Dubai
Connected speech
"Teaching pronunciation used to involve little more than identifying and practicing the sounds of which a language
is composed, that is to say, its phonemes. Recently however, there has been a shift of focus towards the other systems operating within phonology, which may be more important in terms of overall intelligibility."
Vanessa Steele
English sentence stress
"Sentence stress is a difficult area to work on for learners and teachers alike. For this reason it's also an area
which is often neglected, but this aspect of the language can cause problems for learners in both their speaking and perhaps more importantly listening."
Lynn Gallacher, British Council, Spain
Practical activities to help students with English pronunciation
Rhyming pair game, The tongue twister game, Homophones dictation, Homophone game, Remembering the phonemes, Shadow reading, Same sound, different sound, The Silent Sounds Game, Sound pictures.
Teaching tips
Global English and the teaching of pronunciation
"The emergence of so many different kinds (or 'varieties') of international English has caused a number of linguists to question the use of native speaker pronunciation models in the teaching of English. This article presents my research into the pronunciation of global English and gives some teaching implications."
Jennifer Jenkins, lecturer in sociolinguistics and phonology at King's College, London
Monitoring speaking
"As teachers I think we all accept that there is a role for correcting student speech in the language classroom. However, in my experience this tends to take place either when students are speaking in open class - when all other students can hear them and they are under enormous performance pressure, or on a personal, one-to-one level, which naturally excludes other students in the class."
Barney Griffiths, Teacher, Trainer, Spain
Young learners and the phonemic chart
"The main aim of this article is for teachers to help their students become more knowledgeable and interested in learning the sounds of English and to help them see how it can facilitate autonomous learning with self-study
English language learning material and dictionaries."
Nicola Meldrum, British Council, Spain
Structuring and planning and implementing lessons
In recent years a debate has developed over which approaches to structuring and planning and implementing lessons are more effective. This article presents and overview of a task-based learning approach (TBL) and highlights its advantages over the more traditional Present, Practice, Produce (PPP) approach.
Richard Frost, British Council, Turkey
Discipline problems
In this article, we'll be looking at the causes of discipline problems, and at various ways of solving the problems. We shall try to see how the traditional four skills can be varied according to the class level and aptitude, and to work out some strategies for maintaining law and order in the classroom!
Nina M. Koptyug, Novosibirsk, Russia
Use of metaphors
When our students listen to pop songs in English, browse web sites in English or watch movies in English they frequently meet language rich in its use of metaphors. Yet metaphors are often rather neglected in the classroom. So what kinds of metaphors should we teach, why should we teach them and how can we do so effectively?
Gillian Lazar, Senior Lecturer, Middlesex University, London
Intercultural learning
Intercultural learning 1 deals with the topic of intercultural awareness and learning. This article sets out the methodological background to this topic, and the second article - Intercultural learning 2 offers practical suggestions for the classroom.
Chris Rose, British Council, Italy
"Motivation is as much an effect as a cause of learning." Ausubel
In this article I will discuss how teachers can aim to improve the motivation levels of teenage students. I will link three practical classroom activities to the ideas of American Psychologist Carl Rogers
Joanna Budden, British Council, Spain
Multiple intelligences
Have you ever thought about why your students react in different ways to the activities you do in the class? Or even why different groups react differently to the same activity? Why do some students really enjoy working in groups whilst others are much more productive working alone? Why do some learners draw pictures in their vocabulary books while others seem to need to just hear a word to be able to use it themselves?
Jo Budden, British Council, Barcelona
Professional competence
Here is a selection of top tips to help teachers of English develop their professional competence. They cover issues of professional conduct, strategies for dealing with students and their language production, the importance of meaningful communication and the example the teacher sets.
Saleh M. Abdo, English Language Unit, National College of Science & Technology, Salalah, Sultanate of Oman
Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice
Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about if it works - a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. By collecting information about what goes on in our classroom, and by analysing and evaluating this information, we identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching.
Julie Tice, Teacher, Trainer, Writer, British Council Lisbon
Sense of humour
For me, one of the most under exploited and neglected areas within language learning is humour. How many course books have a section on humour? How many syllabi include the ability to tell or understand a joke? Yet understanding the sense of humour of a people is a key element of understanding the culture and language and perhaps even more importantly of developing relationships with people from that country.
Nik Peachey, teacher, trainer and materials writer, British Council
Syllabus writing
Regardless of who the syllabus is for, writing a syllabus will still follow certain guidelines and involve similar considerations. Syllabi can be divided into two different types: Product-oriented and process oriented. Product oriented syllabi focus on what learners will know as a result of instruction and they typically list a selection of graded items to be 'learnt' by the learners.
Lesley Dick, British Council, Sri Lanka
Establishing and maintaining discipline in the classroom.
Teaching teenagers can be a frustrating and stressful experience. They tend to be less motivated than other age groups, they can have a low 'world' awareness and can be unpredictable. Often they don't want to be in class. However, they can also be the most rewarding, fun and liveliest students you'll ever teach.
Richard Frost, British Council, Turkey
Using poems to develop productive skills
Poems are, after all, authentic texts. This is a great motivator. Poems are often rich in cultural references, and they present a wide range of learning opportunities. For me, the aim is to teach English through poetry, not to teach the poetry itself, so you don't need to be a literature expert
Christina Smart, British Council, Hungary