Activities for Teaching Vocabulary: How Can You Teach (or Learn) New Words?

First of all, when using activities for teaching vocabulary there are two key points we must remember:

1. The student has to actually USE the new words. He must understand the new word's meaning, and then he must practice using it.
   
2. Each word has several aspects to it. The first and most important is the word's meaning.
   After that you have: pictures, word's usage, pronunciation and spelling.

For each of those aspects you can use different activities.

Example:

Let's say you teach (or learn) the word "exhilaration".

First you clearly define its meaning: "excitement and happiness".

You can use a good and simple English dictionary for the meanings of words.

Then you can show one or more pictures that express "exhilaration". It can really help understanding. And it is definitely much more interesting that way! Funny pictures take it one step further, since they are usually more fun.

Next: how is this word used? Make some example sentences: 

• "After winning the lottery she felt an incredible exhilaration."
  
• "Climbing that mountain was really hard, but in the end we all felt exhilaration."
  
• "The bride and groom left the church in exhilaration."

Have the students make up sentences of their own.

Of course, merely reading the word is not enough. You need to know how to pronounce it properly too!

Teach the correct pronunciation of the word. How come it is pronounced that way? For example, the word "cake", is pronounced with a long A sound because of the silent E in the end. (English pronunciation may appear disorganized at times, but actually, there are some helpful rules on the subject. 

Finally, you can't really claim you know a word, if you cannot use it in writing. Therefore you must know its spelling.

Dictations can be used to make the students memorize the new words' spelling. The problem with a dictation is that after it is over, it is very easy to forget all about it…

So it is in no way a replacement for the actual and repeated usage of the word in reading and writing.

So here is an example lesson plan to teach some new words:

1. Make a list of the new words you want to teach. Make sure they are right for your students' level: not too difficult, not too easy.
   
2. Prepare for yourself the words' meanings as well as some pictures/illustrations.
   
3. Prepare some games with the new words (see below).
   
4. Go over the new words with your students, and see that they get them.
   
5. Play some games with the new words. For example: flashcards, playing cards, etc. You can use or invent whatever games you like.
   
6. Read a story/stories with the new words. The more those words repeat in the text, the better. Make sure the stories do not contain hard words that the students do not know yet.
   
7. After that, make some more activities.
   Do exercises, questions, and so forth, to further practice the new words.
   
8. On the next lesson, study some new words, but don't forget the "old" ones! They do require repeating.
   

Activities for Teaching
Vocabulary – Final Words

And no matter which activity you use, keep this key question in front of you: 
Does it make the students USE and REPEAT the new words?

The next main thing is to make it fun. Make a game out of it. Involve some points, some winners, etc. Learning new words doesn't have to be boring. When done nicely, it can be a lot of fun!

Teaching English Conversation

There is more to teaching English conversation than going into a class and "chatting" with students.

If students wanted to chat with English-speaking people they could do that in many other, cheaper situations. 

What is conversation?

English conversation classes need to have structure. 

Think about conversation for a moment. What does it mean? Try to remember a conversation you heard recently. 

Did the people involved talk an equal amount? Did they seem interested? How did they show this? Did they ask each other questions? What was their body language like? What was their intonation like when they spoke?

Whilst many students of English can speak well, they lack some of the essential conversation skills, including:

• Showing interest by verbal and non-verbal means
  
• Using tag questions
  
• Using echo questions and asking other appropriate questions
  
• Using appropriate intonation
  
• Using a wide range of vocabulary

How can you teach these skills?

Many teachers who are teaching English conversation classes merely give students subjects to talk about and then listen, occasionally correcting mistakes in grammar or pronunciation. 

But does this really help students? It can sometimes actually make them hesitate more when they speak because they become nervous about makingmistakes. 

An alternative approach is to focus on the skills mentioned above.

Showing interest

Walk into the class, sit down and tell the students some (untrue) bad news. 

For example, "My cat died yesterday." This works better if you can act sad. 

Elicit suitable responses from the students, for example, "I'm sorry", "oh no!", "That's a pity!", etc. 

Then tell them that it wasn't true, as you don't want them to worry! 

Then tell them some good news such as "I won the lottery!" 

Again, elicit suitable responses. 

Explain that these expressions can show someone you are interested in what they are saying. 

You could also prepare two sets of cards, one with situations on (good news, bad news and neutral news), and the other set with responses on and get the students to match them. 

Tag questions (Isn't it? Wasn't it? Didn't they?) are difficult for some students to get right but they help conversation sound much more natural.
 
For example: "It's cold today, isn't it?" sounds more natural and more friendly than "It's cold today."

Echo questions are also another conversation skill you can teach and practice with your students.

Some examples:

A: John has got married.
B: Has he?
A: Yes, it was last week.
B: Was it?
A: Yeah.
B: These are great news.


A: I'm quitting school.
B: You're quitting school?
A: That's right.
B: That's an interesting thing to do . . .


A: I met Brad Pitt.
B: You met who?
A: Brad Pitt.
B: You don't say!


A: Janet bought a yacht.
B: Janet did what?
A: She bought herself a yacht.
B: Well, good for her.


A: Why did you come so late?
B: Why did I come so late? I was stuck in a traffic jam.
A: I see.

Echo questions are very useful and can make students sound like native speakers.

Filming your students' conversations is also great as they can see their body language too, and discuss how that affects their communication.

Vocabulary

If you are focusing on a particular kind of conversation, let's say agreeing and disagreeing, then you may need to provide your students with useful vocabulary. 

If you don't give them the vocabulary to work with, their conversations will be repetitive and they will not push themselves to improve.

Intonation

Find recordings of conversations. 

Ask students to listen for stressed words, and for when the voices go up and down. 

It is also helpful to model sentences and questions for them to repeat. 

Putting it all together

After you have taught and practiced one of the above conversation skills with your students you can set them role plays. 

Some students are nervous about giving their own opinions and if this is the case it is a good idea to pre-prepare some role cards to use, so they are using the opinions you give them rather than their own.

Teaching English conversation can be great fun, but remember to keep it structured and actually teach some skills so your students get maximum benefit from the lessons.

How to Become an English Teacher

So, you want to know how to become an English teacher. Here you can read some great advice to help you.

Teaching English as a foreign language is a great career, whether you see it as a long-term prospect, or a way to travel the world. 

There are a lot of people who take courses to teach English every year, and even though it is an expanding market, they don't all find jobs. 

So what can you do to maximize your chances?

Top five pieces of advice if you want to become an English teacher

1. Choose the right qualification

The most commonly recognized qualifications worldwide are the Cambridge CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) and the Trinity TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) qualification. 

With either of these, your chances of finding work in this field are dramatically increased.

Courses can be done worldwide, full time or part time, and now there is also a distance learning CELTA qualification available.

If you decide to do a course that is not CELTA or TESOL, make sure it has an element of teaching practice as many employers will not consider newly qualified teachers unless they have had assessed teaching sessions as part of their course. 

(Assessed teaching sessions are lessons that the student teacher teaches, which a supervisor or trainer assesses.)

Many employers, particularly in the Far East, also require a college degree. It isn't always necessary, but it will help your chances of finding work. A major in English, education, or linguistics will improve your prospects even further.

2. Take a grammar course

Most teaching courses cover some grammar, but they don't teach grammar extensively. You will need a lot more grammar than you think when you teach, and it's unlikely you'll know it all. 

If you can't find a grammar course, there are many books you can buy that will help you study it yourself, and there are also online grammar courses you can take. 

3. Get some experience

It's not easy to get experience without the qualification but it is possible.

Try volunteering, or teach some private individual students for free if you can. 

This will be invaluable in the classroom once you qualify, and it will also make you more employable as a teacher.

4. Read

This may be an unusual piece of advice but it will really help. 

Read newspapers, magazines and books. Try to look at the different kinds of English used and think about them critically. 

When you come to teach classes, this will really help you, as you will have a bank of resources to draw on.

5. Learn another language

It is not necessary to know another language to teach English to speakers of other languages, but it can help. Even if it is only to help you integrate in the country you are working in, it can make a huge difference.

Learning a language also helps you realize what your students are experiencing, and some of the problems they face. 

It can also help in the classroom if your students are asking each other questions in their language. Sometimes you can understand them and reply in English. 

Even if you follow this advice on how to become an English teacher, it is not a guarantee of a job, but it will make you more employable, and it will help you once you do start working. 

Good luck!

Best English Lesson Plans

Every teacher wants to know how to write the best English lesson plans so here are some simple tips for you.

What do the best English lesson plans need?

An aim

When I started teaching, I found this tough. The aim is the ‘why’ of the lesson and without it you can plan nothing. Start at the aim and work back. For example if your aim is to provide speaking practice in a particular situation then make sure you give your students the grammar, vocabulary and background information they need before they can talk to each other. Tell your students what the aim is, and then they will stay focused too. It is also good to recap the aim at the end of the lesson so the students leave knowing what they have achieved.

Relevance

Keep the lessons relevant to the class. There is no point doing a lesson based on politics for a class of elementary school age kids, and a lesson about the current teen star won’t be of much interest to most adults! Find subjects the class will be interested in and base your lessons around these. If possible, get your students to choose the subjects themselves.

Variety

Make sure you vary your tasks so your students don’t get bored. Try and include different activities for students with different learning styles. For example, some visual tasks (try using picture activities), some physical tasks (try getting your students to act things or move round the class), some audio tasks (music is great if you use it in the right way), and some old-fashioned reading and writing tasks. Even adults start to lose interest after about 30 minutes so keep each stage short.

Plan B

I don’t mean you need to write two lesson plans, but it’s a good idea to have some extra activities you can use if something doesn’t work, or if students finish too soon. If you did a reading activity and they finished too early, get them write comprehension questions for a partner, or give them dictation on part of the text. Having extra activities prepared means you don’t panic if you finish early and gives students extra practice.

Interest and personality

Don’t become a teaching machine. Put something of your own personality into your lessons. Your students will appreciate this. If you like music, write a lesson plan around a particular song. If you are a keen sports person then use that to create fun games and activities. Your enthusiasm for the subject will be clear and your students will also be enthusiastic about learning. Humor is also important in lessons and can be used at any level.

Warm up

Warm up activities are essential. If you exercise then you need to warm up first so your body can get the full benefit of your training. It’s the same with mental training. If you give your students challenging work to do before they have tuned into English, it may be too difficult for them and they will lose motivation. A 5 minute word game or a quick conversation with a partner is all you need. Try and keep it relevant to your lesson to maximize learning. 

There are lots of things to think about but these tips will help you write the best English lesson plans possible.

Teaching English Idiomatic Expressions

Solutions for Understanding  Everyday Speech

I'm not "pulling your leg"; teaching English idiomatic expressions (also called idioms) isn't always a "piece of cake."

If these expressions confuse you, don't worry – read on for tips that will help with this important task.

The Importance of Teaching Idiomatic Expressions

Native English speakers grow up hearing and speaking idioms every day. 

Whether your students are young children or adults, it is important that they feel comfortable using these expressions in their everyday speech and writing. 

If your students are studying to learn English for a job, they especially need to learn how to understand and use idiomatic expressions so they can communicate with their co-workers, supervisors, or customers.

What Is an English Idiomatic Expression?

An idiomatic expression is a combination of words that means something different from each word by itself. 

For example, in the phrase "pulling someone's leg," pulling means moving something towards yourself, and the leg is the part of the body above the foot. 

But pulling someone's leg doesn't mean to drag that person's leg; it means to try to fool the person.

Idioms' Dictionary Definitions May Be Not Enough

If your student looks up a word in a dictionary but still does not understand what he heard or read, chances are that it is part of an idiomatic expression.

If that idiomatic expressions is a slang expression, you may not be able to find its meaning just by looking in a dictionary.

You might be able to find each separate word in the dictionary, but you may not always be able to find the entire phrase. 

There are several ways to find out the meaning of an idiomatic expression.

Looking Online

There are websites that contain lists of idiomatic expressions. 

But you need to be careful with the information on these websites for two reasons. 

First, the information you find online is not always accurate. 

Second, the meaning of an expression can be different depending on the country. What can be an innocent phrase to an American can make a British person laugh, and vice versa!

Dictionaries of Idiomatic Expressions

There are also whole books that explain the meanings of idiomatic expressions. Some of these dictionaries of idioms even give the origins of some of the phrases – which many native speakers will not even know.

You can check out these books at some libraries or buy them in bookstores.

Which Idiomatic Expressions Should You Teach?

The best way to decide which expressions to teach is to listen for them when you are having a conversation in English, watching American television programs, or listening to English-language radio stations.

You can also ask your students to bring in examples of expressions that they find while they are reading, watching television, listening to the radio, or speaking with co-workers or friends.

If you want your students to be comfortable and feel like native English speakers, make sure you make teaching English idiomatic expressions part of your lesson plans. 

And, by the way, a "piece of cake" is something that is easy, just like understanding English idiomatic expressions can be, if you learn what they mean!