Embedding target vocabulary and grammar points in vivid and emotionally-engaging stories is a great way to help your students remember more from their lessons, and remember them better. Here, I share twelve ways you can create stories with your learners. Continue reading
Tag Archives: drama
A very quick way to improve your students’ story-writing creativity
A very simple, effective way of unblocking struggling students’ creativity in class. Continue reading
Lesson for Holocaust Memorial Day (27 Jan)
Levels: strong intermediate to advanced.
Scope: older teens; young adults.
Type: using a photo and class tableau to create stories inspired by a real event.
Skills: listening; speaking; writing; pronunciation (conveying atmosphere and emotion through pauses and intonation patterns).
Language focus: vocab and grammar as it arises. Continue reading
Interpreting Dialogue
Levels: strong pre-intermediate to advanced.
Scope: teens; adults.
Type: creating, performing and reviewing dialogues based on short, authentic text.
Skills: listening; speaking; reading; writing; pronunciation (conveying feelings and status).
Language focus: grammar and vocab structures as they arise; formal and informal spoken registers. Continue reading
Shakespeare – Julius Caesar lesson
Level: advanced.
Scope: older teens; adults.
Type: encouraging imaginative responses to and engagement with two speeches from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Skills: listening; speaking; reading; writing; pronunciation (individual words, sentence stress & chunking, conveying emotion through pauses and intonation patterns).
Language focus: grammar and vocab as it arises. Continue reading
Sentence Stress through Obama’s inauguration speech
Levels: intermediate to advanced.
Scope: older teens; adults
Type: listening for key/ prominent words in a real speech
Skills: listening; pronunciation (intonation and stress patterns in spoken English, mimicking an accomplished orator).
Language focus: any vocab as it arises. Continue reading
Adjectives or Personality Types at a Party
Levels: pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate.
Scope: older kids; teens; young adults.
Type: role-play; revising personality adjectives; games.
Skills: listening; speaking; pronunciation (intonation patterns displaying personality types).
Language focus: vocab – personality adjectives. Continue reading
Grammar Party
Levels: pre-intermediate to intermediate.
Scope: older kids; teens; young adults.
Type: improvisation/drama game.
Skills: speaking; listening.
Language focus: revision of a particular grammar structure. Continue reading
Generating Quick Stories to Practise Narrative Forms
Levels: intermediate.
Scope: older kids; teens; young adults.
Type: story discovery; games/competitions.
Skills: discovering stories; free writing; revising narrative forms.
Language focus: grammar – narrative tenses; any vocab necessary for students’ stories. Continue reading
Sound Stories
Levels: elementary to advanced.
Scope: kids; young teens.
Type: using raw sounds to generate stories.
Skills: listening; speaking; writing; pronunciation (using intonation to convey atmosphere and drama).
Language focus: vocabulary – ways of speaking; any grammar and vocab that arises from the written/performed follow-up. Continue reading