Be unique! - Intermediate grammar revision game

This is a grammar revision game that alleviates some of the tedium of a gapfill exercise! It revises general verb tenses and forms.

You will need:
One copy of the worksheet per group of 2-3 students

Procedure (20-25 minutes total)

• Use your favourite student grouping method to make groups of 2-3 students.
• Give one copy of the worksheet to each group.
• In their group, students fill each gap with any appropriate word. Allow 10-15 minutes.
• As a class, check the answers. I like to do this with small whiteboards that students can reveal all at the same time. Groups score 1 point for a correctly used word, and 1 bonus point for a unique answer (that none of the other teams used).

Enjoy!

Song lesson - Magic - Rude

This is a song lesson I used with my intermediate Cambodian students. It worked well because they enjoy the song and it lends itself to a little follow-up discussion. Without further ado...

You will need
One copy of the worksheet per student 
Mp3 or Youtube clip of the song 'Rude'

Procedure

• Students listen to the song 1-2 times and circle the correct words 1-10.
• Follow up with True/False questions.
• Students in small groups discuss the question of what the singer should do about the situation (try to persuade the parents? Run away with his girlfriend? Take his parents' advice and find another girl? etc...)

Click HERE to download the worksheet for free!

Titanic reported speech activity - free printable worksheet

This is an activity I made to practice reported speech. First students listen to fill gaps in Titanic dialog, then they use prompts to create reported speech sentences.

This went down fantastically with my intermediate Cambodian students who love Titanic.

 
You will need:
An audio or movie clip of Titanic where Jack and Rose are clinging to the wreckage of the Titanic (the "I'll never let go" scene). 

One copy of the worksheet per student.

Click here to download the worksheet for FREE

Link opens with Google docs - no sign in required. You can then print and use as required

Perfect day song lesson (free printable worksheet)

This is one I often get out at the end of term. It's mellow, relaxing and lends itself nicely to a pleasant discussion. Plus, this song is so perfect that I never get sick of it, even if I use it for all of my lessons over a couple of days. You're going to reap just what you sow repeated at the end - at once reassuring and cautionary. Perfect, bittersweet, the languorous piano, the slightly uneasy strings, the strings, the strings.

I probably like it a lot more than the students do. Well, never mind.

Materials
Mp3 or Youtube clip of the song.
1 copy of the worksheet per student.

Time
Approx 45 minutes.

Procedure

1. Lead in. Write "a perfect day" on the board. Ask the students: what's your perfect day? If you had a day where you didn't have to work or go to school, what would you like to do the most?

2. First listen: gist task. The students listen to hear what activities the singer mentions doing on his perfect day. (Going to the zoo, watching a movie, drinking sangria in the park, going home with someone...)

3. Second listen: minimal response task. Hand out the worksheet. The students circle the word that they hear. Check unfamiliar vocabulary, and discuss the meaning of "reaping what you sow".

4. Productive follow-up: Ask the students to imagine that a foreign friend is visiting them this weekend, and plan a perfect day. Where will they go, what will they do? etc.

Click here to get the FREE worksheet.

(Link opens in Google docs, you can then download, save and print as required)

Don't forget the S!

Forgetting the final -s is a common problem for learners of English as a foreign language. As I have discussed before, the Cambodian language, like other Asian languages, does not modify nouns to make plurals or possessives, and neither does it conjugate verbs for gender or number. On top of that, final consonants are not strongly pronounced as it is. Therefore a lot of Ss mysteriously go missing, or students hypercorrect and try to put an S on everything. Oops!

A forlorn snake seemed appropriate.

So I made this handy handout to run through when we need a final -s. It was originally intended for pre-intermediate students but was a good refresher for intermediates too. It finishes up with a correction exercise. (Spoiler: there are 10 mistakes.) The free download includes an enlarged projector version of the exercise, one with answers and one without.

Don’t forget the final -s…

In present simple with third person singular (he/she/it). I/we/you/they     go, play, eat, drink, have he/she/it            goes, plays, eats, drinks, has

In plural nouns (more than one) A cat, a house, a tree Two cats, some houses, seven snakes, a hundred trees

To show possession The car of my brother = My brother’s car

At the end of some words always sometimes

Contracted ‘is’ She is a nice girl = she a nice girl  She’s a nice girl

Correction exercise

How many mistakes can you find? Correct them!

Yesterday I went to my friend house.  Sopheak live in a big house that have three bedroom and many tree in the garden.  Sopheak have two brother and sometime we play volleyball with them.  But yesterday it rain so we didn’t play.  We will play next week when the weather better.

Click HERE to download the handout FREE (includes projector version and answer key)
Link opens in Google docs. No sign in required. You can then edit, print and download as required.

British Royal Family Tree (free printable worksheet)

This is a printable standalone worksheet that contains all the information learners need to complete the British Royal Family tree.

For the "research project version" with no accompanying text, click here.

Lead in with pictures of members of the British Royal Family, eliciting their names and relationships to one another, and then hand out the worksheet. Students can complete it individually or in pairs.

Follow up with a quiz to revise family words, for example: Who is Prince Harry's aunt? Who is Prince Philip's mother-in-law?

Click here to get the FREE pdf

(Links open in Google docs, no sign-in required, you can then download, save, and print as required.)

No, not, neither, none: revision for intermediate ESL students (free printable worksheet)

By special request from my students I made a revision sheet for no, not, neither, and none.

No, not, neither, none

No means “not any” and is used before nouns.

There is no water on the Moon.

I can’t write.  I have no pencil.

Snakes have no legs.

None means “not one” of a group of things, or “not one part” of a whole thing.

It is a pronoun which can be the subject or object of a sentence.

None of the mangoes looked good enough to eat.

None of the bread was eaten / We ate none of the bread.

It can also be used as a short answer.

Q. How many bananas are left?  A. None.

Neither means “not one” of two things.

I had two projects, but I completed neither of them.

Neither of my parents wear glasses.

Not makes a verb negative.

I do not like dogs.

I have not been to China.

There aren’t any students in the classroom.

My breakfast disaster

Fill the gaps with no, not, none, or neither

One day I got out of bed and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.  I had (1) ____ slept very well, so I wanted to make coffee first.  But when I looked in the cupboard, there was (2) ____ coffee left!  Then I looked for tea, but there was (3) ____ of that either.  So I opened the fridge to look for something to drink, and guess what?  There was (4) _____ milk and (5) _____ juice.  There was (6) ____ even any water.  There were two bananas left, but (7) ______ of them looked good enough to eat.  Who had eaten everything in my fridge?  It was (8) _____ me!  Getting annoyed, I went to the shop near my house but (9) ____ of the staff were there.  Finally I went to a café and ordered banana pancakes and coffee, with (10) ____ milk and (11) ____ sugar, just the way I like it.  Later I told my friends about my terrible morning but (12) ____ of them were interested.

Click here to get the worksheet FREE

Link opens in Google documents and you can then download, print or save as required

Telling tales #1: Adverbs and adjectives

If verbs and nouns are meat and bread, adverbs and adjectives are sauce and pickles. To get my students to spice up their narrative sandwiches I decided to go way back to basics and practice placing adjectives and adverbs. This worksheet could really be adapted for any level by providing more complex sentences and encouraging more sophisticated vocabulary. Sky's the limit!

Start by brainstorming adverbs and adjectives. Students can show you what they already know, and you can take the chance to feed in new words.

Students progress to adding adverbs and adjectives to simple sentences.

Happy sandwich-making!

Click here to get the worksheet FREE
(Links open in Google Docs and you can then download, print, or save as required)

Passive vs active voice (free printable worksheet)

When I first introduced the passive to my pre-intermediate Cambodian students, their initial reaction was to look at me as if to say, "You're telling me English has another tense? Why, teacher? Why?"

They're definitely warming to it now... I think.

The Oxford textbook that we use tends to jump in at the deep end with grammar points. While the passive may be a breeze for speakers of languages that form it in the same way (eg. French or German), it will understandably take a bit more work for speakers of languages that have no such thing.

To bridge the gap, I made a handout that explains how the passive is formed and what it is used for.

It progresses to some guided practice in the present tense.

Click to get the worksheet FREE

Link opens with Google documents, you can then print or download as required

British Royal Family Tree - research project (free printable worksheet)

This is a research-project type worksheet where learners are provided with the family tree template and then use the Internet to fill in the information.

Click here for the standalone version with accompanying text.

Lead in with photos of Royal family members and elicit a small section of the family tree to the board. Then let the learners loose on the computer room, or their smartphones or iPads.

Early finishers can colour in the title or decorate the blank spaces, then display the completed trees on the wall.

Click here to download the FREE pdf.

(Links open in Google Drive and you can then download, save, print, and use as required)

Discovering sonnets (free printable worksheet) - intermediates and up

I decided to do something a bit different with my intermediates today and take a look at a Shakespearean sonnet. For most of them this was completely new ground and they had some wonderful thoughts about the nature of beauty. Some didn't like it, so it was good food for debate.

William Shakespeare - Sonnet CXXX

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red, than her lips red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

  And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare*,

  As any she* belied with false compare.

*rare = special, superb (old English usage)

*she = woman (old English usage) 

This is a great introduction to sonnets since most of the language is pretty accessible, and the concept is engaging. Maybe that's why it was on my GCSE English syllabus!

Since this was only an introduction and not an in-depth reading, I prepared a few simple questions to skim the surface of the form and meaning.

Click here to view or download the full worksheet.

Links open in Google Docs format and you can then download, edit, or print as required.

Have you ever tackled poetry with your class? If these worksheets are useful to you, please leave a comment.

Numbers quiz (free printable worksheet)

The first thing I want to share with you is a maths quiz I wrote for my class of pre-intermediate summer school teens last week. In a summer school environment, kids don't want anything too intimidating, so a little quiz is just the ticket. It starts with some general knowledge...*

...progresses to idiom-matching...

...and finishes with some maths practice. The students may want to use a calculator for the later questions. Don't let them!

If any students finish early, I like to give them some bonus questions to keep them busy, such as "How many seconds in a week", "How many days in six years"...

This is the full quiz... Pre-intermediate Number Quiz

...and here is the answer key Number quiz teacher key
documents open in Google docs format and you can then save a copy, download, edit or print as required

*Note - since I prepared this quiz, it transpires that there are now 7 billion people in the world. If any students spot this, reward them with a bonus point.