Speaking Activities

Use technology to encourage your students to talk about different topics!!

In this website your students will have to find the differences between 2 pictures and talk about them. It is a good way to introduce a new topic or simply as a warm up activity.

http://www.spotthedifference.com/

http://www.focusenglish.com/dialogues/money/breakbill.html is a website where your students can listen to different phrases and dialogues. Here they can put into practice their listening skills and also their critical thinking since they are asked to answer some questions based on what they heard.

Use https://todaysmeet.com/computerulatina to motivate your students to write down their opinions and thoughts about a topic. They can practice spelling and grammar skills. You only have to create your own conversation room by clicking on today’s meet title. It is a very useful and easy tool.

Another great tool to use because of its accuracy of information and to reinforce your students listening and speaking skills is BBC website. There you will find videos about different topics and worksheets to evaluate your students understanding about the video and for them to learn and review some other important topics like grammar and pronunciation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/talkingsport/2012/07/120710_ts_51_david_beckham.shtml

Catching your Student's Attention

Prezi is a tool that helps both teachers and students to present different topics in a creative way. This application lets you upload pictures and videos. The visual effects are quite innovative and proffesional. It helps you to keep your audience attention during the whole presentation. Besides, it is a free application you just have to register either using your facebook or email account.

Here is an example of a presentation I made myself to teach Culture in an English Class: http://prezi.com/jdmcaimlhmri/edit/#60

Using Technology to Teach Writing Skills

Besides traditional techniques to teach students how to write properly, teachers can use some other interesting ways to reach this goal. Technology offers a wide variety of options. For example,

• Using this website http://www.telescopictext.org/write/ you can ask your students to create their own story. The funny thing about this tool is that students can either fold or unfold pieces of their story. In this way they can learn writing skills and share their work with their peers while having fun.
• This is another tool by Google where you can create a short story with as many characters as you want. You can also add some music according to the story’s track. Your students are going to love it! This is an example of a dialogue among three characters I made myself. You can go ahead and create your own or better yet you can ask your students to do so.   http://goo.gl/TZOyhN
• This is a website on which you can create your own comic strip or a complete comic book if you prefer. Comics are quite in trend nowadays so you can take advantage of it and use this as a tool to enhance your student’s understanding, creativity and their writing skills at the same time.  Here is the website and an example of a strip I did about two powerful girls fighting against each other. http://marvel.com/games/play/34/create_your_own_comic

Conversation Questions

To encourage your students to speak up about different topics you can use this website: http://iteslj.org/questions/

There you will find questions about almost any subject; most of the questions are very interesting and attractive. The only thing you need to make sure is if the vocabulary fits your propose and your student’s English level.

Using Short Films to Teach English

Short films are such an amazing tool to be used in English lessons because of time and creativity. They talk about important and current topics. Here there are some links where you can find short films and activities to work with your students.

• http://eslimaginarium.wordpress.com/
• http://film-english.com/

Using Movie Segments to Teach English

Almost everyone loves to watch movies. Using movies segments to teach different English skills is always funny and will catch your student’s attention. You can choose any movie related to the topics under study and create your own worksheets.

If you don’t have enough time, you can also try this blog out which contains a lot of exercises and movie segments that can be used to stimulate grammar, reading, writing, pronunciation, listening and so on.

http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/search/label/can%20x%20may

Encouraging Writing Skills

Just like Andy from Toy Story everyone had a special toy. To encourage your student’s writing skills ask them to write a story about that special toy they had when they were kids.

First of all, ask your students to watch the following video.

As a teacher you can ask your students to write a descriptive paragraph.

The paragraph length is up to you but I will recommend a maximum of 10 lines.

This activity can be done with teens and adults.

Remind your students to include an introductory and concluding line.

Ask your students to follow these steps:

• Prewrite your ideas.
• Organize them.
• Write a draft.
• Ask someone else to read your paragraph.
• Check on grammar and spelling.
• Rewrite your paragraph
• Publish it.

They must include, for example, their toy’s name, special features, kind of toy. For how long was the toy with them? Who gave it to them? Do they still have it if not what happened to it? Why did they choose it as their favorite toy? They can add any other detail they consider important.