Teenagers

A balancing act. Non-competitive EFL games for kids

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It happened way too many times…

Here is a situation that I witnessed many times during an observed lesson with young learners: a teacher and a group of kids start playing a game, for example riddles. The teacher models, then the kids take over. One student sits in front of everyone, chooses a card for the other students to guess or to identify. Kids start shouting out words, one of them gets it and the teacher takes the flashcard and hands it over to the student who shouted the correct word. The game goes on and it takes about three rounds more for one of the students to get offended / upset / angry / sad about not winning. More often or not, someone starts crying. Oups.

It is not only about losing, although, to be honest, this is a serious problem, too. Here, however, the ‘failure‘ of some kids is clearly visualised with a flashcard. Frequently, it is also very unfair because it is the faster and louder kids that get the point and these are not necessarily the kids who really know the answer. Also, there is another dilemma in a situation when two students shout out the correct answer at exactly the same point. Will the teacher tear the card into halves? No, of course not. Sigh.

That issue, frequent as it was, was always addressed during the feedback session and I am pretty sure every session on games for VYL and YL included the commandment compressed down to ‘Don’t use flashcards as reward points’. This was the bread and butter of a trainer / VYL ados.

My real shock to the system was an invitation to volunteer at Sheredar, our rehabilitation camp for children who went through serious diseases a few years back. I had a chance to go there a few times and teaching kids was an amazing experience. However, before I went, our contact and coordinator, Ksenia, said: ‘They will be one big mixed ability group but you can choose any topic you want. Actually, do whatever, just don’t play any competitive games. These kids have fought enough’. It took me about a minute to understand that I have no games to play. All my favourite activities, those that I frequently used in my lessons, with kids, juniors and teens, all of those favourite ones were competitive. ALL OF THEM.

Should kids even be playing competitive games?

I have been looking for sources on competition in the EFL classroom and I have found…nothing. I started to look around for any texts on kids and competition and it turns out that getting engaged in competitive activities such as sports, for example, can be very beneficial for children.

  • competitive activities can be motivating and encourage kids to improve their skills
  • playing and losing and winning helps children to learn how to deal with competition and with the fear of losing
  • they are also an opportunity to learn how to deal with pressure and how to win and how to lose
  • they are good for building self-confidence
  • they teach kids about the existence of the rules that need to be obeyed
  • they can help form friendships and relationships, with peers and adults
  • and, also, even if they are sports, they can lead to improving academic performance in children

Although, of course, they can also have some drawbacks, such as too much pressure, negative feelings in children and for their self-esteem.

On the whole, competition is a good thing, although it is not a given that all the children take to it naturally. Some of them might struggle, which is natural, bearing in mind that not all the adults have learnt to deal with it successfully, and they should be given help and support.

EFL and competition

As regards our EFL classes, especially those with the younger learners, primary and pre-primary, it would be just reasonable not to abandon all the competitive games althogether but to keep an eye on the balance and on avoiding a situation when all the games and activities that comprise a lesson have promote competition. Apart from competition, there are the other beautiful C-words such as: cooperation, colaboration, cognitive skills development that can and should be the foundations for our classroom life.

Not to mention that everything that we do in our lessons, namely learning a language, is against the very idea of competition. All the kids learn for themselves and although they have the same linguistic aims, their overall results or results in certain areas of language learning do not depend on the results of the other participants. What is more, their progress is measured against their previous results and achievement, although, admittedly, the situation is slightly different when it comes to learning a langauge in the context of a state school where kids’ progress is graded at every step of the way.

Things to consider

The most important thing to remember seems to be the fact that we, as teachers, should not take things for granted and assume that all the kids in our group like competition and competitive activities and that all of them are equally prepared to win and lose with grace.

The other factor to take into consideration is the age of the students. The younger the students, the less likely it is that they have already had a chance to participate in those kind of activities and acquire these skills and that they have enough life experience to be mature about it. It is a combination of their age, cognitive and social development as well as life circumstances such as having a chance to attend kindergarten, playing at home with parents and relatives, having older siblings and so on.

Equally important is the bond between the students. A group of children starting to learn together in September is a completely from the same group in January or even in October, especially in the context of after school groups or afternoon language schools where children might land in a group of complete strangers with whom the only thing they have in common is the age and the level of English, not the family ties, the address or the school. The more they get to know each other, the more they bond, the easier it will be for the teacher to set up activities, including competitive games, and for the kids to handle ‘failure‘. After all, it is easier to lose and get over it when you play with friends.

What it comes down to in real life, with real children, is keeping an eye on the kids, checking how they react to different stimuli and then introducing some competitive games, carefully, step by step. However, with my youngest students, this non-competitive period may span over the entire length of the pre-school EFL. With the most recent group, we started to play only half-way through our third year together and even then it was the whole group vs the teacher (who always lost).

Every little helps

Here are some of the tricks and techniques that a teacher can use in the classroom while introducing competitive games or taming of the competitive games we often include in our lessons (tired and tested):

  • Playing the familiar games such as riddles or pelmanism in a less competitive way. First of all, we do not award points for the boardrush OR we award points to both teams for competing the task, not only to the team who is faster (especially that with boardrush at least it is sometimes very tricky to establish who really was the first one to touch the board). Points here can be pluses or hearts on the board or flashcards given out to the winner in a particular round. Instead, we finish the round, the praise everyone and we simply move on. The game itself (the fun of participating, the language produced or used) is the reward itself.
  • We do not determine the order of participation based on the successful participation, for example in riddles, when the student who guesses the word is the next one to play. Instead, all students take turns, one by one to make a riddle for the whole class, regardless of how good they are at guessing.
  • Playing ‘Simon Says’ without excluding the losers by asking them to sit down after they make a mistake, especially that a growing number of non-participating students is very bad for the overall classroom and behaviour management. Or, in the same way, playing the Treasure Hunt without establishing who the winner is. We all look for clues around the classroom or the school, we all participate for ten minutes and in the end all check our answers, without counting the points or the number of the elements or stages completed.
  • With pelmanism, instead of playing 1-1, with kids uncovering two cards at a time, the whole group can do it in pairs, with two kids always participating, ideally in different combinations. As soon as a pair is found, the teacher and the kids cheer for everyone, and the cards are put aside or given back to the teacher.
  • Play the game in the format of the teacher vs the whole group, to create the support for the individual child. If they win or if they lose, they will do it together, with all their friends, nobody will be singled out. Ideally, in such a situation, the teacher loses and has a chance to model the mature behaviour and how ‘a failure’ can be handled, but, of course, bending the rules in order to ensure that might not always be easy to do. If you are looking for ideas, I would recommend pelmanism. It is very easy to get distracted and to forget (or ‘to forget’) where the other card from the pair is located.
  • Any game can be played in teams, a team vs a team, instead of individuals competing with each other. This way, again, the support, the safety net or the safety blanket is created. Enjoying the victory or handing the loss is easier with your team. Even if there is one child who does not handle ‘the failure’ very well, there will be other children in this situation, too. They will serve as role models.
  • Having the teacher participate, as one of the teams, can also help soften the blow of the defeat. Again, the teacher will be the one to model the langauge use, the game rules application and the player’s behaviour, too.
  • If possible, talk to the parents whose children struggle with controlling their emotions while losing the game. If nothing else, it would be great to find out whether there have been any factors that could have played a part, whether the child reacts this way in other situations and to simply inform them what happened in class. Perhaps parents will be willing to discuss this topic at home, to reinforce what the teacher does at school and, perhaps, to also play games at home, to help the child tame that beast.
  • In one of the posts (see bibliography), I found another great tip. What is necessary is a quick game that can be played a few times, in a quick succession, in the same lesson. Some of these will be won, some will be lost, but the quick pace and the repetition will make either of the results, the victory or the defeat, not so relevant anymore and easier to deal with and to even forget.
  • Another approach that I have been using in some of my summer camp groups was the Points Poster that we used throughout the entire camp. It was very simple, only an A3 piece of paper, with the team’s name, displayed on the wall. Every time we played a competitive game, there were points, for example two or three stickers for the winners, a star for everyone else. All the kids took very well to it because winning the stickers was great but the joy lasted a brief moment only and very quickly the stickers won today would quickly get lost among all the other stickers won on all the other days. The defeat, on the other hand, was perhaps not the most pleasant thing in the world but it didn’t matter much because the students knew that they would be another game on the same or on the following day. What is more, because I was using some leftover stickers, of all kinds, sometimes it was more fun to choose one huge sticker for your team rather then three little ones…
  • Finishing each game with the teacher and the kids thanking each other for the game, with a simple handshake and ‘Good game‘, just like all the football or volleyball players do at the end of the match.
  • Any activity that can work towards bonding and building a community is also welcome
  • If there is the students who struggle with dealing with their own emotions while playing games, I have so far tried two things. One of them was pairing this student up with myself, in 1-1 games, in order to be better able to model, to monitor and to help the child control their emotions during the game. I have also experimented with pairing up with this child in the games that we played in teams because, again, losing (or winning) in one team with the teacher was easier to deal with.

Non-competitive EFL games

First, an anecdote. The heading of this paragraph is what I put into my google. Would you like to guess what the amazing Uncle Google came up with? Nothing.

‘Fun games’ – yes, ‘no prep games’ – yes, ‘exciting games’ – yes, sure. There was one post from the British Council (see bibliography) but not many of them are appropriate for kids and not many are actual games. And one article about an activity that still has winners and losers…Nada, nada, nada.

Here are some suggestions from the non-competitive games that I have played

  • Musical flashcards: a simple movement game, an adaptation of the musical chairs game, only without any kids dropping out. The teacher puts out all the relevant flashcards on the floor, kids move around with some music playing. When it stops, every child picks up a card and makes a sentence for example: I like bananas (topic: food), I haven’t got a cat (topic: food), I am wearing a blue t-shirt (topic: clothes) etc. Afterwards, the flashcards go back onto the floor, the teacher puts the music on for another round of the game.
  • All the logical games such as Find the difference (for example those that we have in the YLE Movers and Flyers) or Odd one out (for example YLE Movers) that can be easily adapted to any topic. A similar activity will be also based on the silly picture scenes that I described in an earlier post here.
  • I Spy: a variation of the game with a set of visuals such as a poster or an illustration from the coursebook. Kids work together as a group (in the early stages) or in pairs, they describe something in the picture, with the relevant sentences, depending on the age and level (I spy with my little eye something. It is big, it is green. It is next to the cat. etc). The student or the students who listen find the relevant object. This game is not competitive because there are no winners / losers and the game goes on until the child / children guess. As the game proceeds, the kids can offer more information and support to help their partner, for example the first letter / sound, the gestures etc.
  • Riddles: the same principle and procedure as above but it can be played with flashcards or a set of word cards or a set of words prepared by the kids.
  • Back to the board: it is a very popular game that can easily be played in a non-competitive way and this way it can go help build and develop a sense of community and give the whole group a chance to work together. One of the students sits on a chair in the centre, facing the group. The teacher writes a word or a simple sentence on the board and signals how many words it includes. The group work together to help the one student guess and recreate the word on the board. With the lower level kids, flashcards can be used instead of words although using simple sentences works wonders for the students to learn and to work better with the grammar, the sentence structure and, progressively, with the meta language.
  • Monster game aka Hangman aka Let’s save the little human: I love playing Monster Game with the lower levels because it helps the students work with literacy, spelling and blending and we always play it as a whole group with all the students contributing and working together to guess the letters and the words and to help the little human who is slowly losing parts of the ladder, the boat or the hotair balloon. To make the game less cruel, the element of getting points can be added (i.e. when the kids guess a part of the word or when they guess the most common letter or when they get all the vowels etc) and with my summer camp group the game finished with the kids drawing some food for the hungry monster because they developed empathy for someone hungry, even though it was a monster.
  • Telephone: this game is a variation of something known as ‘Whispers’, with the whole group sitting together and passing a word or a simple phrase, from the end to the beginning of the chain. This is not a very generative game or a very communicative one but it helps the kids work together towards one goal and it is easy enough even for the youngest kids.
  • Stations in the classroom: this is not really an activity but a format of completing tasks with kids. The teacher sets up a few stations in the classrom, for example in the four corners of the room. Kids move from one station to the other and complete the task such as unscrambling words, completing a simple handout, matching words and pictures, playing a round of pelmanims and many more. Kids complete a few tasks during the lesson and their job is done when they complete a full circle but they do not compete with everyone else in the group. It is up to the teacher to decide when then task is done and they can move on and in this way, even the ‘weaker’ students can play and participate without any pressure from the group.
  • Community building games: on of the 30 Creative Team Building Activities. I haven’t tried these yet but these definitely caught my eye: Cross the Line (22), Paper Chain Race (30), Shrinking Classroom (18), Building a tower (6 and 10). Or 22 Fun Team Building Games and Activities for Kids. Here I really liked: Forehead Dots (4), Some of them have the ‘choose the best / fastest team’ element which works to some extent as it helps the kids to bond within their team but I would still skip this element altogether.
  • Last but not least, among the things that has been on my wishlist of the things to try out in the classroom is the parachute and all the parachute games. Some ideas can be found here.

Coda

But, perhaps, the situation is a little bit better than it seems. While working on this post, I asked my audience on the social media about their opinion and I was very happy to find that those who responded use a mix of competitive and non-competitive games. At the same time, the teachers admitted that they have to deal with the competition-related stress in the EFL classroom, although not all the time and ‘some games, some days, some kids’ was the most popular answer.

What about you, dear reader? Do you play any non-competitive games with your YL students?

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Teaching children to lose gracefully so they can lose with dignity as adults (oregonstate.edu)

Pros and Cons of Competition Among Kids and Teens (verywellfamily.com)

The pros and cons of competition | BabyCenter

How To Teach Children To Cope With Losing | Casa de Corazón (casaearlylearning.com)

6 Tips for Teaching Children How to Lose — Better Kids

australiansportscamps.com.au/blog/benefits-children-playing-competitive-sports/#:~:text=Competition Can Improve your Child%27s,high school and tertiary studies.

Six collaborative games for competitive English language classrooms | British Council

ETF 57/3 pg14-23 (ed.gov)

Problems with Games in ESL/EFL Classrooms (and Solutions) – BINGOBONGO (bingobongokids.com)

How to survive a coursebook. Part #2 Grammar

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This is the second post in the series that is a diary of a teacher trying to teach not the most exciting unit from the coursebook and sighing all the way. The first post can be found here. Today another one, this time devoted to two lessons on the passive voice. The post includes references to Gateway to English, B2 by David Spencer published by Macmillan. This is the coursebook that I am using with my group and the page numbers refer to the second edition of the coursebook.

Vocabulary practice and revision

This unit has a rather challenging content as regards vocabulary. There are the names of the natural disasters as well as a big set of nouns, adjectives and verbs used to talk about disasters, not a small thing. Hence more practice.

  • A quick test – Here I had a good time pretend play a school teacher and calling out my teens to answer a series of random questions. The teens took turns to give us a definition and an example for all of the key words from the previous lesson.
  • Visuals: I shared with my students a set of six visuals related to disasters (here) that I found on google, illustrating different aspects of a variety of natural disasters, including the damage and the beauty, too. Students were asked to work in pairs and to choose a pair of pictures for their partner to talk about and to compare them (‘Are they similar or different?’), partially inspired by the visuals tasks from the higher levels of the Cambridge exams. There was also a round-up question, ‘Which photograph was the most interesting for you?’ which is also the question that we used for the whole class feedback.

Grammar presentation and practice

From the very first moment I knew that I would try to minimise the presence of the main topic of the unit, in order to give us all a break and to be able to include some more exciting and some less dramatic topics. Because, really, how much can you take. Overall, I decided to keep all the practise exercises from the book (all of them but one using the context of the natural disasters) and to supplement them with something more fun.

  • The context I chose was My International Life. The first part was the presentation about the products that I use, the clothes I wear, the books I read and the devices I use and where they were made. I presented a series of visuals and the group were trying to guess where they were made, my computer, my socks, my coffee and my trinkets. The model sentence we were using at this point was: It was made in…They were made in…
  • Later on we dealt with the form, pronunciation and use, including the difference between the active and the passive voice.
  • The first practice activity was the students talking about themselves. The students were sent out into the breakout rooms to talk about their international life. They were instructed to talk about ten things (minimum).
  • The other practice activities in that lesson focused on the exercises in the coursebook (page 98 in the coursebook).
  • We finished the lesson with an online game, found on bamboozle.com.

Grammar presentation and practice. Part 2

I decided to divide the grammar input into two lessons because I teach a mixed ability group and, although, theoretically, the passive voice structures, in all the tenses, should be only a revision for them, it is not quite true in case of some of my students. For that reason, in lesson 1 we worked on the form in all the tenses and in lesson 2 we focused on the passive voice with two objects.

  • Practice and production: Photographs in our book: I decided to start with a freer practice activity based on the materials from the coursebook. I found different illustrations in the coursebook, namely: set 1: pages 98 and 99 depicting the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina and the typhoon damage in the Phillipines and set 2: pages 87 (a Foo Fighters concert) and page 70 (health). The students were asked to choose one of the sets and to describe the photographs using only the passive voice. We did this activity in the breakout rooms.
  • Grammar presentation #2: we used the coursebook materials to present the passive voice sentences with two objects (page 98).
  • Controlled practice was built around the exercises in the coursebook (page 98 and 99).
  • Freer practice #1 was the activity from the coursebook, too, Find someone who. I had to change the format of the activity as moving students in-between the breakout rooms would be too much hassle and I wanted them to produce a lot of language, rather than talk to different partners which they do anyway. For that reason there were asked to use the prompts from the coursebook and to find out as much as possible from the same partner.
  • Freer practice #2 and the final activity of this lesson was inspired by something that I read on Sandy Millin’s blog once. I decided to call it ‘A story of an object’. In the orignal version of the activity it was the object itself that would be retelling the story of its life and, I suppose, other structures would be the format. We changed it to the 3rd singular as it was the format more consistent with the passive voice that I was hoping that my students would be using. We started with a model and I used my (amazing) Malevich tote bag, probably The Present of the Year 2022. I presented the structure (A story of an object, 3 questions from the audience) and a set of verbs to use (created, bought, brought, seen, loved, kept, washed, worn etc). Afterwards, the students went into the breakout rooms and worked in pairs. Back in the common room, each student gave us a summary of what they found out about from their friends.
  • We finished with another bamboozle game.

Reflection

  • Well, in one line: I was a happy teacher last week.
  • The context of the international life worked very well. We managed to get away for a moment from the gloom of the natural disasters and immediately after the presentation the students got to use the structure to talk about themselves. It was very beneficial even though in the beginning the students were mostly using ‘was / were made’. This gave us a very good basis for the more extensive use and it was a great opportunity to personalise it straight away.
  • The lessons included a good ratio of the individual practice, disaster-focused and the pair-work, disaster-less and more productive. The bamboozle games were another way of balancing the weight of the lesson.
  • I love working with visuals and I was really very happy with how they worked in this lesson. The students were discussing the disasters and using the vocabulary but they were also able to interact with the beautiful photographs and notice the discrepancy between the beauty of the natural disasters in the photographs and the danger and suffering that this beauty is synonymous with in some cases.
  • In the same vein, I was very happy with the way we recycled the photograhps in the coursebooks. It was also interesting for the students to notice when it is and it is not natural to use the passive voice in different situations.
  • A story of an object was probably my favourite activity of these two lessons. I could share with the students the story of my Malevich tote bag but I also loved listening to the stories that my students chose to tell. Some of them decided to share their treasures with the class, such as the favourite book, the phone or the parrot (a bit of far-fetched but she managed!). Some went for the sarcastic approach as they talked about their favourite cookies, the hoover or a bottle of water, sparkling. It’s been a while since the last time I laughed so much in class.

Happy teaching!

How to survive a coursebook. B2 Case study

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Part 1 (skippable) A teacher complaining

This story started last Wednesday evening. I was getting ready for my Thursday classes, including my teens’ group. I knew that we were about to start a new unit but I hadn’t bothered to look at it, I had no idea what it was supposed to be. It was only on Wednesday that I opened the coursebook and I sighed but this feeling quickly turned to anger. Because what we have in store for the next three weeks, the next twelve academic hours and the next fourteen pages are natural disasters, casualties, destruction and damage. Even if we had lived in some more peaceful and optimistic times, that would be a lot to take. For my students and for me, the teacher, too. Especially that the whole unit is some weird collection of depressive topics and debates. Literally, asteroids, tsunamis and epidemics are destroying the planet’s population on every single page of the unit, in the vocabulary lesson, in the grammar lesson and in the every skills lesson. In one word: I hate it and I personally think that this is a rubbish unit. I don’t like it. It needs to be highlighted here that despite the fact that I do believe that the perfect coursebooks don’t exist, I like our coursebook, Gateway B2 from Macmillan and we have had a good year so far. But this unit is simply a disaster.

There are two things that I could do. Naturally, I could just skip the entire unit because I do not really feel like using my and my students’ time doing something we are all going to hate and suffer through. 12 academic hours is 540 minutes or one full working day. I was really considering that and I am sure that if I explained it all to my parents, I could just get away with it.

However, that would mean that I would have to find, create and put together enough material to fill in those 6 lessons and at this point in my life I simply do not have time for that. Then, there is of course the fact that the environment and the natural disasters are a part of the B2 curriculum (why they are there is another question) and I wouldn’t want to deprive my kids of the material that they should be covering. With a heavy heart I decided to go for the option two: try to surive the Survive unit by heavy adaptation.

Welcome to a new short series of posts. My main aim is to record the adaptation process in detail and on the go as well as to motivate myself to reflect on each of the lessons taught, hoping that someone might find it useful.

Lesson 1: Main aim: Vocabulary

  • We started the lesson with the weather vocabulary revision and upgrade. The students were divided into pairs, each student in a pair was given a link to the weather wordwall cards (set 1 and set 2), with the visuals and the key words and definitions. The students were working in pairs in the breakout rooms, calling out one of the words and discussing if they are similar or different, for example: ‘Scorching and boiling? Are they similar or different?’ or ‘Fog and rainbow? Are they similar or different?’ They were both sharing their ideas and discussing.
  • A small set of questions for the students to talk about their favourite and least favourite weather and the extreme weather conditions that they have experienced or read about.
  • The key vocabulary from the coursebook on page 96. We used exercise 1 and exercise 4 but I have also prepared an additional quiz for the kids to practise the words related to natural disasters. It can be found here.
  • As a follow-up I decided to include a debate, modelled on the B2 speaking exam task. For that used the list of the key words (ex 1a page 96) and a question that was added, namely: How damaging are these disasters? Talk about the impact on the people, the environment and the economy. Choose the most damagine one.
  • I decided to skip the text on page 97. I didn’t like it and I decided to replace it with the text on page 108 and change the direction of the lesson towards people for whom natural disasters can be an adventure.
  • We started with a discussion on whether students would like to go to a location of a natural disaster (inspired by ex 1 on page 108). Before we started the discussion, the students were shown two videos of people who research volcanic eruptions and people who like to visit the sites. I used the short clips from the following ones: Cooking pizza on a volcano, Cooking sausages on a volcano, Drone above the volcano. We talked about the reasons that make the people go there and our views.
  • As the final task we read the text to find out more about the expedition to a volcano, as featured in the coursebook, together with the comprehension task (page 108). The final summarising question was: Has this text helped you make your mind about such adventures? Has it made you change your mind?

Reflection

  • Overall, I am quite happy with how the lesson went.
  • I like to start a new unit / topic with a visual-based task but this time I decided to leave it for later. I already have an idea for a task for lesson 2 or 3 of the unit. This time round we started with the weather vocabulary speaking task and it was a good decision. First of all, the topic is related and most of the natural disasters are somehow connected to the weather conditions. Second of all, we could revise and extend our weather vocabulary – some of the words were familiar, some were new but the cards include enough information for the kids to be able to handle it and to participate. Last but definitely not least, the game we played was a great balance to the rest of the lesson, a lighter beginning, not so dramatic and / or desctructive as the rest of the input. And even though it started slowly (‘Anka, but these words are completely different’ aka ‘We can produce one sentence’), it quickly took off and the students were getting more and more creative as regards the potential similarities between pairs of words chosen randomly.
  • We will definitely need to revision and opportunities for practice not for the key vocabulary (the natural disasters) but for all the accompanying words. There were just too many verbs and nouns.
  • Quite unexpectedly, the debate on the impact of different natural disasters was a success. The students are familiar with the format (FCE speaking part 3) and I knew that this would not be a problem. I was worried, however, that they might have enough ideas or inspiration to compare the impact of a pandemic with that of an avalanche. I was wrong. All of the natural disaters are destructive but because of the angle (impact on the people, the environment and the economy), the students got involved and they were almost amused arriving at a conclusion that avalanches, in fact, are not so damaging for the economy and they are not often dangerous for people or the nature because they just happen whereas, in many ways, an epidemic such as coronovirus was even beneficial for the environment as people stayed at home and were not using their cars or flying as much…
  • Using the videos was also a good idea because it help the students understand the eruptions a bit better and it gave them some food for thought and it activated the schemata for the reading task. I have already started looking for a follow-up video, an interview with the volcano tourists that I could use in a listening task.

See you soon in part two of this series!

Happy teaching!

All you need is… a picture. Vol. 3

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This episode is going to be devoted to the older students, juniors, teenagers and adults and those of the higher levels, from B1 upwards.

All of these activities were inspired by the approach in the visual based speaking tasks of the Cambridge exams. I use these activities frequently at the beginning of the ‘unit’, to introduce a new theme, to ease us into it and to start with some freer speaking activity, that, really, does not have any specific linguistic requirements or a very formal framework. Not to mention that by the way, my students get an opportunity to practise and develop their exam skills, in a slightly more relaxed way.

All of these activites are deeply rooted in my professional laziness because even though I have to devote some time to the picture selection, that is, really, the only time investment beacause the task is usually a one sentence instruction and, to be perfectly honest, most of the ideas listed below were created during the lesson, as a follow-up and an extension of the regular Cambridge ‘similar or different’ task.

Usually, my greatest helper while preparing these activities is google search engine. I type in the key words and I look through the images until I find these four, six or eight that match the idea that I have in mind. They can be saved in a document or displayed on the screen (powerpoint or Miro). I save them and keep them for later because they are always recycled.

Frequently, I start the cycle with the simplest of the activities (‘Choose two to compare’) and I follow-up with a wider discussion (‘Have you ever…?’) or any other combination but, naturally, these can be used on their own. All of the activities can be done with the whole class or in pairs.

  • Talk about your favourite photograph: students choose the photograph that they really like, they describe it and justify their choice
  • Talk about your least favourite photograph: students choose the photograhp that they like the least, they describe it and explain why they don’t like it
  • Choose two pictures for your friend to compare: students choose two of the pictures to compare them, to look for similarities and differences, very much like in the B2 speaking part of the Cambridge exams. The fact that there are more than two pictures allows for the activity to be repeated a few times, over and over, in pairs or with different partners. The longer the activity takes, the more interesting arguments appear and the more creative the answers.
  • Choose two pictures for your friend: students work in pairs but in this case they choose two pictures for their partner to compare. It makes the activity more interesting as it is easier to avoid all the obvious choices and this way more interesting contributions are generated.
  • Have you ever done that? This is the activity in which we use all the pictures at the same time. Students ask each other the question about all pictures, one by one.
  • Would you like to? This is another activity that can be used with all the pictures. Students ask each other questions related to the situations in the pictures, but more focused on the future.
  • The comparatives: Another activity in which students discuss all the pictures, going over the list of questions and choosing the pictures that somehow stand out. The set is closely related to the theme of the photographs. For example, in a lesson devoted to health and health problems we looked at these four pictures and we answered the questions: Choose the most serious problem, the least serious problem, the most common problem, the easiest to deal with, the least unpleasant for the doctor, the least unpleasant for the patient, the most expensive to treat, the least expensive to treat, etc.
  • What happened before? What will happen afterwards? This is a cool actvity that I adapted from the latest editions of New Cutting Edge Advanced. Students choose their favourite pictures and discuss the before and after, almost telling a story.
  • Ask a question: students work in pairs, they ask their friends questions related to the pictures, they have to use different pictures and different question words and they need to a different word each time: What? Why? Who? Where? How many? How much? What kind of? When? How often?
  • It reminds me of: students work in pairs, they talk about all the pictures. The talk about their associations, memories or references. It can be a free activity or it can have a theme of: books, films, songs and personal memories.

Make sure you also have a look at the first two parts of this series. You can find them here and here.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #52 Discourse development: All your thinking hats

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Ingredients

  • A set of cards with opinions, for example those that have been used with adults or those that have been used with teenagers.
  • A list of the discourse tricks displayed on the board or on the screen (see below) if the activity is done in pairs OR a set of six thinking hats if you want the students to debate in groups of 3 – 6 people. I have created two versions of these here and here. If you are interested in the orignal thinking hats that this activity was inspired by, you can start here.

Procedures

  • Pairs: student A expresses an opinion which, in the earlier stages, can be limited to only reading the opinion off the list or cards) whereas student B reacts to it using one of the approaches. Afterwards, they swap roles. It is good to highlight that student B has to use a different approach in every round.
  • Small groups: student A expresses an opinion (see above) and the other students in the group react in accordance with the hat that they are wearing in this round. Afterwards, they swap roles and the new hats are assigned. In the original activity, in the real classroom, we have been using dice. In the online world these have to be replaced with the wordwall spinner.
  • Regardless of the format, it is better to play the first few rounds with the whole class and with the active participation of the teacher to show the students that it is in fact easy to switch from one hat to the other and that the hats really help to generate ideas.

Why we like it

  • The main aim of this kind of an activity is for the students to develop the habit of reacting to what their interlocutors say and to give them a range to tools (or tricks) to contribute and to develop the contributions of other students. Hopefully, with time, my students will be able to participate in a debate and opinion exchange without any support of the spinner or the display.
  • This activity also encourages the students to listen to what their peers are saying. This has been more useful with the teenagers and juniors who are more likely to space out and start daydreaming in class.
  • The list of all the tricks can be limited to only the two basic ones (I agree / I disagree) and, later on, when the students are ready, further extended.
  • The wordwall spinner in the online classroom was a bit time-consuming for my liking but it turned out to be very beneficial for my shy / withdrawn / panicky adult students because it gave them the additional time to think and to assume the new role. Later on, we were able to switch to a simple list which served only as a reminder of all the options out there.
  • The same goes for the whole class and teacher participation. With some of my adult groups, I had to be involved more in the beginning, to model both the activity itself (to help with the speaker’s block (does it even exist) and, at the same time, to model the ways of getting involved in a debate. Otherwise, they would be just ‘politely’ waiting to be nominated to speak, even at the C1 level.
  • I have been using these with my adult groups and with my young learners, too, with teens and with juniors, when appropriate.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #45 Five ways of personalising content

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In this post I would like to share a few activities that I came up with for my students that turned to be very effective as regards students’ involvement, the amount of language generated and the opportunities for the target language practice.

All of these are only samples, activities and materials to serve a very specific purpose with a very specific group of students. However, I do believe that they can serve as five case studies that help to create the framework for creation and adaptation of such materials.

#1 You today and you in 2017

This is the activity that we used with my teens, in a freer practice activity focused on comparatives on the B2 level, including simple comparatives, less, as…as and the comparatives quantifiers. The kids were working in pairs, they were answering the question: ‘You today and you in 2017. How different is your life?‘ and they used the wordwall cards to guide them in their discussions.

When I was planning this activity, I prepared 15 cue cards but we barely got through half of them in each pair because the students really wanted to share their experiences and, surprisingly, they did not need any follow-up questions, they were simply talking and talking and talking.

#2 The future us

This activity and the materials were intially created for a group of teens but later I adapted it to the needs of my junior group and to a group of ‘advanced’ primary kids, too in the lessons whose aim was to introduce and to practise ‘will’ and ‘might’ to talk about the future.

Intially, many years ago, when we were still in the classroom I created a handout with all the situations, one per each student in the group because I wanted to do it in the format of a gallery walk. The kids had to move around the room, read the situations and decide who will achieve what. In the end, the students picked up the cards with their names and told of us which of the predictions are most likely to happen in the real life.

Later on this activity had to be adapted to the format of the online classes and I decided to turn it into a simpler speaking activity, again with a set of wordwall cards. The students worked in groups three and they took turns to uncover the cards and to discuss who in the group is most likely to get a new haircut, start wearing glasses, write a book or win an Oscar. They had to justify their answers. During the feedback, we brought back some of their ideas and the students whose names were called out were to comment on these predictions.

Although this is one of the flexible activities (no specific ending, can be stopped at any given point), I abandoned the initially planned timing because the students got really involved into it and I allowed them to go through all the cards. We had a laugh and we produced a lot of language. It is worth mentioning, though, that this activity was done in group that had studied together for a few years and that knew each other very well. This meant that they had enough data in order to be able to make their prediction and, also, there was very little risk that someone will be offended with anyone else’s ideas. Perhaps this kind of an activity would not be a good choice for newly formed groups.

#3 Quiz: How well do we know each other?

I prepared this kind of an activity to practise the target langauge in a personalised way with my primary A1 students and the structure used in this particular game was the combination of ‘How often do you / does X do it?’ and the basic adverbs of frequency (always, often, sometimes, never).

The students were given a set of questions for homework about all the random habits of everyone in the group, such as ‘How often does Sasha play computer games?’. They were supposed to think about them and make their decisions. In class, I was asking the questions and everyone, apart from the student in question was sharing their answers. Afterwards, the student would tell us how often they do it (Sasha: I never play computer games) and sometimes provided some additional information.

#4 Personalised reading

This is a trick (or an activity:-) that I learnt in one of the training sessions about a million years ago (and I do not remember whose it was!) that a text (or a listening task) should be treated in a way that more resembles the real life reading (or listening). That means that we approach the text not to be able to answer all the comprehension questions in the coursebook but to take it very personally. The task is to go through the text, labeling the text with the marks: (+) for all the things that we agree with, (-) for all the things that we do not agree with, (!) for all the things that we find surprising or (?) for all the things that we would like to find out more about and so on and so forth. In the feedback session, students simply compare where they put all the specific marks and discuss why such were their choices. Simple and effective.

There are a few variations of this approach. Students can write their own questions to the text / the listening text and then deal with the text with the focus on these questions. In the feedback session, they share their answers and why they have chosen these particular questions or what their answers would be if the text does not include them, which, actually, is something that happens frequently.

Another way was letting the students decide for themselves which items / parts they want to read and talk about. While we were reading a text on ten different factors to take into consideration while choosing a job (based on Gateway B2, Macmillan). First, the students got only a list and they were asked to choose the five that are most important for them and compare their lists with their friends. Afterwards, they were asked to approach the text, comprising of ten short paragraphs, one per factor, and discuss these. They were instructed to go through all of the items, one by one but they could make decisions as regards the order so that the most important ones were dealt with in the beginning when everyone was at the peak of their focus and involvement. Interestingly enough, some students were choosing to read about the factors that were their priority whereas the others wanted to read more about the factors that they would never take into consideration because they were curious about the other people’s rationale.

#5 The Messy Choir for controlled grammar practice

This is a lovely activity that we are using, with my younger and older kids and sometimes with adults, too. I have already written about it and you can find the original post here.

Today, I would like to share the version of the activity with my B2 teens while we were learning / revising the narrative tenses and the Past Perfect among them. I wanted the students to start using the structure straightaway and in a familiar context. Since the class starts at 18:45, there are plenty of things that everyone would have already done and could talk about.

The boxes with the past participle were appearing one by one and everyone was invited to contribute their sentences, the teacher and the students. Some of the verbs generated more answers, some fewer but, overall, all the students participated and practised the new structured.

We used the same activity in the beginning of a few lessons later on, as a warmer / hello / revision activity.

I hope that you have found something useful here to use with your students or to inspire you to create. I also hope that this post will have its part two. And sooner rather than later!

Happy teaching!

I am easy to prepare and very necessary in the classroom. What am I? A riddle!

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Dedicated to Monsieur Alexander (6 y.o.) and Mademoiselle Victoria (3 y.o.) with big thanks for reminding me how important riddles are even if you speak the language very well.

Why? Because you simply must!

  • Riddles are an opportunity to develop focus and listening skills: you are required to listen until the very end as all the elements of the riddle are important and they can help you figure out what the answer is.
  • Riddles help to develop cognitive skills while you are guessing as you are required to put together different pieces of information, to understand, to synthesise and to analyse.
  • Riddles help to develop cognitive skills even more when you are creating your own riddle as you are required to apply and to evaluate the information you providing to make the riddle challenging and achievable at the same time.
  • Riddles are something that we use and enjoy in our L1, from the early childhood and it is only natural that we will try to bring them into our EFL lessons, with kids and with adults.
  • Riddles help develop creativity.
  • Riddles are fun and they create plenty of opportunities for bonding, in a pair or a group.
  • Riddles, in L1, help the kids develop the awareness about how the language works, how the hidden meanings, the homophones, the collocations and this can also be transferred, at least partially, into the EFL or the ESL
  • It is obvious that the context of the EFL and the ESL does not always allow for the riddles and their benefits to be used fully and completely even if only due to the limitations of the language level which, in case of some of the young learners, might be as low as A1. This does not mean that they cannot be used. On the contrary, they can be introduced from early on.
  • Riddles, regardless of the context, are an opportunity for the students to speak and to produce a mini-discourse.
  • In the EFL/ESL classes, it is relatively easy to choose the vocabulary range and the structures for the students, depending on the level and the topic. This range can be easily extended.

How to? Riddles in the EFL classroom

  • The simplest version of the game can be played with preschoolers and we usually start simply with guessing ‘the secret word’ which is the card that the teacher and then the students choose and hold close to their chest and the class are guessing. This version is used to introduce the very idea of the riddles. When the kids have become more familiar with the format, the level of challange can be raised and the production maximised by asking the kids to describe the card they are holding in the simplest of way i.e. with the colour, operating within the colours of the objects on the flashcards used (‘It is green‘ or ‘It is green and red‘). With time, more adjectives can be added (‘It is big’, ‘It is small’), the categories (‘It is a toy’, ‘It is a pet’) or even opinions (‘I like it’, ‘I don’t like it’). There is a post devoted to one of the ways of dealing with riddles with the youngest learners. You can find it here.
  • The primary (or the more advanced pre-primary) students can start adding simple categories in their discourse (‘It’s a toy’, ‘It’s an animal’, ‘It’s in the schoolbag’) and start describing the word using the relevant structures. For example, with food, we use the following four: ‘It is cold’, ‘It is hot’, ‘You eat it’, ‘You drink it’) and these are the structures that the students know and will need anyway and these particular four can be supported by a relevant gesture. The same goes for the animal riddles set: ‘It is big’, ‘It is small’, ‘It can run’, ‘It can fly’, ‘It can swim’. I also like to add ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’ even though it does not quite provide enough information for the children to guess the object as the class may simply not know what one of us thinks about it, it gives the student making a riddle an opportunity to express opinion and to make it all more personalised. With the youngest students the teacher can assist production in the beginning by asking questions such as ‘Is it hot or cold?’ or ‘Can it swim, fly or run?’. This set of structures can be developed and extended depending on the students’ age and level.
  • As regards the more advanced and older students, the riddles can be made more extensive and more resembling the riddles that the adults and kids play in English as their L1 or the riddles they play with their L1 with the use of simple homonimes or homophones, a wider range of vocabulary or structures or complexity for example by making a list of words not to use when to describe a certain word, describing it with associations (i.e. kids, fun, outside to describe the word ‘playground’), with metaphors (i.e. ‘It is the brain of the computer’ for ‘hard drive’ or ‘It is the opposite of a mountain’ for ‘a cave’) or, even, by a mixture of these (‘Tell me what it is and tell me what it’s not’)
  • As regards the material and the support for the teacher one of the following can be used: flashcards, mini-flashcards, a page from the book with words and words and images, a poster, a set of wordwall cards, a list of words.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #39 A lazy role-play

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Ingredients

  • Any role-play or a dialogue i.e. a transcript of any listening task which is a dialogue (i.e. Movers listening part 2, part 3), any written dialogue (i.e. Movers reading and writing part 3), any functional langauge introduced in a dialogue or a role-play
  • A pencil or a highlighter for each child

Procedures

  • Start with the main aim of the task is, ie listening in case of task 3 of Movers or reading in case of Movers, introduction of the functional language, etc. Go through all of the stages outlined in the teacher’s book or whichever ones you see fit in your teaching context.
  • Give out highlighters or pencils, ask the kids to open the books and look at the text again.
  • Introduce the concept of a banana (or whichever random word you want to use). Explain (and demonstrate!!!) that you will read the text slowly with some bananas in it and that if the students hear the word ‘banana’ they have to highlight or underline one word that comes immediately afterwards. Model with a few words.
  • Read the text with the bananas as the kids listen, follow and underline or highlight. The words chosen to be highlighted are the key words for each specific dialogue and their number depends on the dialogue and on the age and level of the students. With the older students and the more complex texts and language, the students can highlight two or more words that constitute a phrase or a collocation. This can be signalled with a repeated number of bananas ie banana banana for a two-piece phrase or banana banana banana for a three-piece phrase.
  • Ask the students to work in pairs and read the dialogue again and to use their own words and phrases instead of every banana.
  • Afterwards the kids can change roles and read it again or change the partners.
  • If the kids are ready, in the final (and optional) stage of the activity, they can close the book and role play and recreate the dialogue and the converation based on what they remember.

Why we like it

  • It requires no preparation, unless by preparation you mean opening the coursebook and finding the role-play or finding the teacher’s book and making copies of the transcript of any listening activity
  • It offers a great opportunity for the students to practise their speaking skills in an activity that is both controlled (as we have a framework) and free (as there are quite a few options to choose from)
  • It also offers a chance to work on the grammar accuracy and the transformation skills
  • It can be done online or offline
  • It can be done with a variety of levels. The highest level I have used it with was B1 (teens), the lowest level, so far, was A2 (primary).
  • So far, I have only tried it with dialogues but now, writing that post, I started to wonder about the potential of that activity for discourse building and creation. The original text could serve as a potential framework and support for the students to use. I am yet to experiment with that option.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #38 A – Z Game

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Ingredients

  • A piece of paper and something to write with
  • All the letters of the alphabet written in one or two columns, with some space to write, next to each letter

Procedures

  • The teacher divides the students into pairs or teams and gives out the paper with the letters of the alphabet or asks the kids to write these down.
  • Step 1: The teacher announces the topic i.e. Clothes and asks the kids write one word (or phrase) for each letter of the alphabet or, more realistically, for as many letters as they can. The teacher gives an example. Ideally, the teacher creates her/his own list in order to have a set of words to model the other stages of the activity.
  • The teacher sets the time limit (i.e. 5 minutes for the younger kids and 3 minutes for the older kids). It might be a good idea to use a song instead and after the song finishes, the activity does, too.
  • The kids work in teams and make a list of the words within the vocabulary set. After the time is up, the teacher stops the game.
  • Step 2: The kids exchange the lists and count the words or phrases which their friends have managed to write within the set time limit. The teacher writes the results for each team on the board.
  • Step 3: The teams read the words on the lists and choose: the most interesting word, the most unusual word, the funniest word, three words you also have, three words you don’t have, any word you don’t understand or remember etc. The teams work in pairs and find out why their partners put these words on the list. If possible, the kids exchange the lists with another team and repeat the procedure once or twice.

Why we like it

  • For the students it is a great opportunity to revise and recycle vocabulary. All the beginner levels aside, even when the main lesson aim is to introduce and to practise new vocabulary, chances are the kids have already learnt, heard, used or seen some of the words. After all, the vocabulary sets are repeated and extended from level to level, not to mention that most kids have more than one source of English in their lives: the state school, the language school, a private teacher, brothers, sisters, parents, videos on youtube, cartoons, stories, computer games online…This game is one of the easy ways of revising all this vocabulary to prepare for ‘something new’
  • For all the reasons mentioned above, it is an absolute necessity for the teacher to find out how much the kids already know as regards a certain area in order to do a very focused (if a very contained) needs’ analysis and to adjust the volume, the level and the intensity of the new material presentation later in the lesson
  • It is very easy and requires no preparation whatsoever.
  • It helps to improve the students’ self-confidence because it gives them an opportunity to see how much they know already.
  • It can be used with any set of vocabulary, either thematic (i.e. clothes, food, animals) or content-related (i.e. the words necessary to describe a picture, the words used in a certain text or a listening task, a video)
  • The final task can be easily adapted i.e. choose 5 words to describe yourself, choose 5 words to use in a story or in a dialogue, choose 5 and describe them for your partners to guess, use a dictionary to find the words or structures for the missing letters, compare the lists with your friends to find the words or the structures for the missing letters, use the words to describe a photograph, use the words to talk about your day today etc.

Happy teaching!

The one phrase to teach your students. From the series: We Want More!

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Since we are going through the quieter period of the year, there is more time for looking back and for reflection and this is how the idea for this mini-series of post came from. Just because we started to use those and each of these phrases or words was like a key that opened many, many doors in our communication and not only.

The one thing to teach your kids is ‘because‘…

…and the whole thing can* start in primary, and maybe even in pre-school. It is a powerful world that invites the kids to build a simple discourse and to go beyond one sentence or simple sentence production, even in the most everyday situations.

We start with extentending the answer to ‘How do you feel today?‘ which is a part of our class routine and the question which I ask and which the kids ask in every single lesson. As soon as they have a good number of adjectives to use in response (you can read about it here), I try to encourage them to elaborate on their answers, both modeling (I’m happy because it is sunny) and by inviting them to continue. ‘I’m happy.‘ ‘Because...’

Of course, the sentences the kids produce are quite simple, very simple, in fact, and sometimes partially in their L1 but with time, they are becoming more familiar with it and they are improving and, as a result, are able to say more and more and more. In English. Not to mention that as we go through the course, there are more and more situations in which we need because, for example to explain why we like Friday and not Monday, why we didn’t do the homework, why the kids in the pictures look happy or sad or why they did something in the story.

The same can be done with pre-schoolers, with certain adjustments to their age and the number of years that they have been studying. Thinking about my groups in the previous academic year, with the level 1 and the level 2 groups I was more focused on the full sentence production and it was too early to introduce any linkers. The level 3 children, however, were ready the unit ‘I’m scared’ (Playway to English, CUP) was a perfect opportunity to talk about the things we are scared of and to explain why. Or, more frequently, the things we are not scared of. ‘I am not scared of spiders. I like spiders because they are beautiful.’ and so on.

I often tell my students (especially those new ones, and yes, also the adult ones recently) that I will always want to know ‘Why?’ and that even if I forget to ask, they should always imagine this word written all across my forehead and answer it anyway. To help the kids in the everyday lesson and to make it easier on myself, I used the idea I got from Herbert Puchta, only mine was not any error correction technique and it stayed displayed proudly on the wall for a good few years. In the beginning, I really had to do a lot of pointing and waving at the word, later, the habit was developed and the kids (yes, as early as in year 1 of primary!) started to use the word without any reminders whatsoever. They were producing the language and lots of it!

My two favourite because-related moments from the classroom have been those:

  • when we talk about things, someone is telling us how they are and I, somehow, forget to ask ‘Why?‘ or I am just too slow with it, there is always a voice (or two or three) taking over and kindly suggesting ‘Because…‘, with this perfect rise in the intonation, the voice trailing off in an invitation to continue. I wonder where they got that from!
  • when we talk about pictures or we retell the story or we describe something that happened at school on the day and, by accident, I want to take over and move on and, in response, I get my own because back, in an interjection, and again, with the intonation perfectly matching the purpose (‘I have NOT finished yet‘) and I am thinking to myself: ‘Oh dear, I cannot shut them up!’ which is, by far, my favourite teacher’s complaint.

*) ‘Can’ or ‘must’?:-))

The one thing to teach your kids is…’I think’.

Initially, I wanted to have a pretty post, ‘one phrase per age group’ but I realised that I simply cannot NOT mention ‘I think’ and the impact it had on my primary school students.

Unlike the previous item, here I cannot even remember how it came about and how I first introduced it. It has always been in the air. I know that I use it a lot to slow the kids down and to signal to them not to rush through tasks (i.e. ‘Think and write’) or to encourage them when they are struggling (i.e. ‘Think about it’ when I know that they do know it and it is only necessary to rack through their brains). We had used it a lot in different stories (‘Elmer was thinking and thinking and then he had an idea!’) and a while ago we also introduced ‘Thinking time’ as an official preparation stage for projects and role-plays. Thinking has been with us, only it is not quite clear for how long.

For the reason, when we got to practise expressing the opinion in winter last year (around the middle of A1 / Movers), I did not even bother to check the meaning of it and the question ‘What do you think about it?’ and the answer ‘I think it is interesting / boring / exciting etc’, the adjectives were the main aim and the focus. For me, at least.

What my students took out of this lesson for the rest of the course (and life!) was the little ‘I think’, which is essentially only an introduction and which is slightly unnecessary even. An opinion can surely be expressed without it. ‘Maths is easy‘ expresses the same view as ‘I think Maths is easy.’ Or so one would think.

I noticed, in the lesson in which we used it consciously for the first time and in the lessons afterwards, last year and this year, that my students began to start adding ‘I think‘ everywhere. ‘I think it is beautiful’, ‘I think it is easy‘, ‘I think he is sad‘, ‘I think it is a cat’ ‘And I think it is a dog‘ and so on. ‘I think’ gave them an opportunity to personalise the message, to signal the autonomy of that message (since by making it subjective you kind of accept that other people will have or may have a different view) and, I suppose, by doing so, it made the message more adult and more serious. And they simply and visibly adored it. Maybe because they were only 7 or 8 or 9 at the time.

As I said, I don’t quite remember the start of that adventure and I am not quite sure when the good time to introduce really is. What I know, though, is that the next time I am starting the group, ‘I think’ will be on the list of things to think about.

The one thing to teach your teens is…’What do you think about it?’

There are many phrases that were shortlisted for this paragraph because of the difference they made to the way my teens interacted with the world in the English lesson, ‘I agree‘ and ‘I don’t agree‘ or ‘On the one hand…on the other hand‘ among them but the real deal-breaker was ‘What do you think about?‘

This phrase, especially with a special stress on ‘you’ (‘What do you think about it?’) has become the wonderful phrase that helped my teens really get engaged and communicate in a really interactive way, not only expressing their opinion, agreeing and disagreeing but also to boomerang the conversation properly by involving the other participant or participants. I mean, truth be told, I know that they did it mostly to avoid making too much effort and producing extensively and this line has become a fantastic and polite tool which they used to dodge the ball. Of course, they produced, too but I just had a lot of fun observing how by trying to be super clever they were involved in a conversation that would give them some high marks during the speaking part of the FCE exam.

The one thing to teach your adults is…’it depends‘.

Especially if your adults are shy, not naturally very talkative and a messy A2 level. Especially if they have already experienced some failures and disappoinment while learning Engllish and when they current progress is closely related to the promotion at work. Or the lack of. Especially if, due to all the factors mentioned above, they reply with single words (the teacher sighs) or when they just say, in their L1: ‘I don’t know what to say’ (the teacher sighs again).

‘It depends’ came to us by accident. It was not a part of any text, a listening task or a functional language phrases lesson. It was a part of the emergent lesson but because I take notes of that and send these back to the students, it stayed with us. And what joy!

I can say with all the confidence that my students, in this one (1) group have wholeheartedly adopted the phrase and made it theirs. First of all, it is this gold key that opens the discourse. You cannot just answer with ‘It depends’ and stop there. You have to continue and explain at least the two different ways at looking at the issue. Especially if your teacher is raising her eyebrows and nodding encouragingly. What’s more, I have noticed that they like using it consciously as a natural time-bying tool that gives them the benefit of a few precious seconds to come up with an idea and a way of formulating it in English. Oh, what a find, this phrase!

The one thing to teach your teachers to use and to remember about is…’but’

This one is here as a joke only. I don’t need to teach my teachers any English, of course, but, as a trainer, this is the one word that I would like them to remember to use whenever they consider the theory of child development and the methodology of working with young learners. Or even while going through the teacher’s book and adapting the activities. This little but powerful word is everything you need to be equipped with to ensure that they always keep thinking of all the exceptions to all the rules and that the most important point of reference are the people in the classroom, not some non-existent ideal students or typical five-year-olds and all the other YL cliches.

Happy teaching!