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Activities for reviewing and recycling the language  from News Quiz 2022 Image credits:  Matt Hrkac  [CC BY 2.0]; Heo Manjin | Korea.net [CC BY-SA 2.0]; Number 10 [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]; Steve Jurvetson [CC BY 2.0]  I hope the latest edition of the News Quiz provided some learning opportunities for your students and you're ready to do some further language-focused work. Like in the past two (pandemic) years, the follow-up activities come in different formats. Below you will find drag'n'drop activities on LearningApps, one matching activity on WordWall (Intermediate level only) and 'traditional' worksheets in editable Google Docs. As a lead-in, you can show  this BBC News video  and ask students which stories mentioned in the video appeared in the News Quiz. If you haven't seen News Quiz 2022 - click HERE Accompanying Quizlet sets :  https://quizlet.com/leosel/folders/news-quiz-2022/   The activities are grouped by level according to the two versions...

Activities for reviewing and recycling the language  from News Quiz 2021 Image credits: NASA  [PD];  TapTheForwardAssist  [CC BY-SA 4.0]; Glenn Francis  [CC BY-SA 4.0] I hope you enjoyed the latest edition of the News Quiz and didn't find too difficult. Like last year, the follow-up activities come in different formats, most of which can be edited and adapted for your needs. These include drag'n'drop activities on LearningApps, one matching activity on WordWall (Intermediate level only) and 'traditional' worksheets in PDF/editable Google Docs. If you haven't seen News Quiz 2021 - click HERE Accompanying Quizlet sets :  https://quizlet.com/leosel/folders/news-quiz-2021/  (two for Advanced and one for Intermediate level) The activities are grouped by level according to the two versions of the News Quiz. Online activities Advanced (B2+/C1) Drag'n'drop 1a  https://learningapps.org/watch?v=pb8myy57522 (preview below) Drag'n'drop 1b  https://...

Activities for reviewing lexis from News Quiz 2018 Image credits: John Bauld   flic.kr/p/McsiQi [CC BY 2.0]; Alisdare Hickson flic.kr/p/24W89b5 [CC BY-SA 2.0]; NASA [PD image] I hope you and - your students - liked the end-of-year news quiz, which I posted last week. As always, it is followed up by lots of activities aimed at reviewing and consolidating the language from the quiz, which I share below. If you haven't seen the news quiz, it's not to late - click  HERE You can preview the activities below or download them in Word format and edit/adapt them as you wish. The key (answers) and teachers' notes are provided at the end of each level. UPDATE: a Quizlet set for advanced level: quizlet.com/_5wm0we   Downloads Intermediate (B1+/B2) with Answer Key click  HERE  to download Word doc or preview below: Advanced (C1+) with Answer Key click  HERE  to download Word doc or preview below:  

Activities for reviewing the language from News Quiz 2017 Collage made with photos by www.kremlin.ru [CC BY 4.0],  Beyoncé ( @beyonce )  on Instagram [fair use], Alex Fau on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/qKyoQ2 [CC BY 2.0] I hope you enjoyed the traditional end-of-year news quiz I posted  last week .  As promised, here's a follow up: lots of activities aimed at reviewing and practising vocabulary (and a bit of grammar) from the quiz. If you haven't seen the news quiz, click  HERE . You can preview the activities below or download them in Word format and edit/adapt them as you wish. This year, the key (answers) and teachers' notes are provided at the end of each level - not as a separate file. For a suggested sequence of activities, see last year's News Quiz Follow Up - click HERE Update : Vocabulary from the quiz on Quizlet:  https://quizlet.com/leosel/folders/news-quiz-2017/ Downloads Advanced level (with answer key) click  HERE  to download Word doc...

Activities for reviewing lexis from News Quiz 2015 Photo by  Dustpuppy72  via Flickr  [ CC BY-NC-ND  2.0] Here's the promised follow up to the end-of-year news quiz: five pages of lexis-focused activities aimed at reviewing and consolidating language from the quiz. If you haven't seen the news quiz, click HERE . You can preview the activities below or download them in Word format and edit/adapt them as you wish. The key (answers) follows below. Update : Vocabulary from the quiz on Quizlet:  https://quizlet.com/_1x0vbs DOWNLOAD (in Word) Answer key DOWNLOAD

This is a quick post that consolidates some activities for teaching collocations and chunks that I’ve posted on this blog and elsewhere, specifically the ones organized in series which I refer to as Cycles.  I’ve demonstrated most of these at various conferences, most prominently at the IATEFL conference in Glasgow in 2012, but video recordings of the sessions have been taken down while the IATEFL Online website is being revamped.  So I pulled all the activities together into one table for the convenience of the teachers and student teachers I work with as well as visitors to this blog. I hope it makes it easy to navigate and find the activity that you’re after: Click HERE  if you want to print the document 

Activities for reviewing language (vocabulary and some grammar) from News Quiz 2014 Image by DLR   via Wikimedia Commons [ CC BY 3.0 de ] As a follow-up to last week's news quiz, here are seven pages' worth of vocabulary practice and review activities (in 2 levels). Some follow "traditional" format from previous years , others are new, for example, the Intermediate level activities include Netspeak, a web tool I blogged about HERE . I hope you and students enjoy them as much as you enjoyed the quiz. If you still haven't seen this quiz, click HERE : Intermediate level: click  HERE  to download Word doc or preview below: Advanced level: click  HERE  to download Word doc or preview below: ANSWERS: click HERE to download or preview below:

I often make students (and teachers I work with) get out of their seats. I think movement in the classroom is important whether you believe in the now  hotly debated concept of learning styles  or because  cognition is embodied . Apart from onion ring debates and mingling activities, there are many movement activities you can do using classroom walls. A  recent article in English Teaching Professional suggested ideas for taking advantage of all four classroom walls using whiteboards. I would like to share some ideas on how I use walls in my classrooms without any additional whiteboards required. All you need is paper (usually cut-up) and some Blu-tack       Taking strips of paper OFF the walls This is a “kinaesthetic” alternative to a vocabulary matching activity. Stick the words on the walls around the classroom and hand out to students (in groups) lists of different definitions. Students have to walk around and take off the walls the words that ma...

As the year draws to a close it’s time for various top 10, 20 etc lists. I am going to limit myself to 3 and share the web tools that have undoubtedly been my favourite this year. Three different tools - three different uses. Lyricstraining – Listening Listen to various songs and complete gaps in the lyrics. I first learned about this tool at the IATEFL conference in Brighton in 2011 – interestingly, it was mentioned during one of the Pecha Kucha presentations in the evening. I found my notes from the conference about a year later and this year it has been one of my favourite tools. I hope my students enjoy it as much as I do! How it works       Choose a song. Then choose one of three available levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) and click on play. As the song plays you have to complete the gaps in the lyrics. The difference between the levels is the number of gaps. Regardless of students’ level I always recommend starting with the Beginner level where y...

This follows on my earlier post Teaching vocabulary out of context: is it worth the time? About a month ago I blogged about my mini action research on decontextualised vocabulary learning. The post  generated some discussion with some people arguing that there was nothing decontexualised about it - you can read the original post and the comments here . The main finding was that on the post-test there was no difference between the items which were learnt out of context and the items presented in class in context. So is decontextualised vocabulary teaching a justified strategy? Obvious benefits Even though the decontextualised “Go home and look up” activity produced mixed results and there was a lot of reteaching involved, I still consider it to be successful. Besides enriching their vocabulary it gives learners a sense of autonomy as well as responsibility for their learning, not to mention practice with using dictionaries, an often overlooked skill in ELT. I will definitely keep gi...

In this activity, students play an online digital game (in pairs or alone at home) and then focus on the lexis related to money. I've never liked online games, apart from  Airport Madness 3 and  Airline Manager on Facebook - my childhood fascination with airplanes is probably to blame. I would even make snide remarks about people who do like them, such as: "My life is interesting enough I don't need online games" or "I have imagination, thank you. I don't need to escape into the realm of fantasy". However - now this may sound platitudinous - it all changed when I took Graham Stanley 's online course "Language Learning Using Online Digital Games" on SEETA (South East Europe Teachers Association). By the way, if you don't know what SEETA is check out their website - they run great courses and you can take part in some of them even if you're not a member of a teachers' association in any of the 12 member countries. Graham's ...

Activities for recycling lexis from last week's end-of-year quiz  So here we are in 2012... Come to think of it, it's funny that we keep adding "two thousand and..." - it is obvious isn't it? In the previous millennium we said "seventy-nine" and "ninety-five" without (un)necessarily preceding it with "nineteen hundred". It would thus make sense if we said "in the year oh-three" or "in the third year", for example. Sorry about this digression. Language focus I was happy to hear that you liked the news quiz and some of you used it with their students - thank you for the feedback. Below you will find a follow-up activity which is basically language work focusing on the collocations from the quiz. For other ideas on how to revise the lexis your students have come across, read my Cycles of Recycling  post. VOCABULARY REVIEW VOCAB REVIEW - TEACHERS NOTES Easier version (lower-intermediate / young learners) If you used t...

Those of you who have been to my workshops or read my articles on TeachingEnglish  are perhaps surprised why someone who advocates teaching vocabulary in chunks would even pose a question like this. However, several research papers I read a few years ago while doing my Master's in TESOL made me rethink the issue of contextualisation and try out new things. Besides, as you will see in a moment, learning  words in chunks and learning vocabulary in context are not the same things. In and out of context   Traditionally, in the first lesson of the New Year I discuss with my students the main events and news stories of the past year - a news roundup of some sort. This normally involves a quiz which I prepare based on various news items: politics, entertainment, sports, disasters as well as some quirky news stories -  (see the 2011 one  here ).  The questions in the quiz are not aimed so much at testing students’ general knowledge, but rather stimulating...