16 May 2014 / by Radmila Gurkova

ESL activity lab. Creating functional beginners material - I play!

The purpose of this piece of ESL activity belonging to our activities section for beginners is to introduce the verb 'play'. The previous ESL activity included the verb 'like' as well as 'play' so we removed the verb to like in order to simplify the activity. We introduced 4 Sports which all add something different to the ESL activity - Tennis, the same word used in Spanish, so the Student is comfortable, Football - the most popular Sport in Spain, but introduced to also practice pronunciation as the pronounciation of this word is different. Basketball - because a common error is just saying 'Basket' like the Sport in Spain. Finally Rugby, an increasingly popular Sport in Spain. We are introducing the Sports through positive and negative sentences, the use of questions, and also third person, so we have more layers to the activity rather than just introducing Sports and the verb 'play', but at the same time we are not overloading the student with new structures and vocabulary so we are not confusing the student. We believe with this ESL activity we have found the right balance of content for the student.

Here's our ESL activity for beginner students.

Title:	I PLAY!
Objective: (short)	Introduce the verb to play, using third person, positive, negative sentences and questions, and introduce various sports to students
Intro:	Teacher starts by saying: "I play football", and introduces the first attachment (a picture of football player)
Activity:	1. Introduce attachments with words:I PLAY FOOTBALL I PLAY BASKETBALL I PLAY TENNIS I PLAY RUGBY 2. Introduce Positive and Negative sentences with words: I PLAY FOOTBALL, I DO NOT PLAY TENNIS I PLAY BASKETBALL, I DO NOT PLAY RUGBY 3. Introduce questions: WHAT DO YOU PLAY? I PLAY FOOTBALL I PLAY BASKETBALL I PLAY TENNIS I PLAY RUGBY 4. Introduce third person WHAT DOES HE PLAY? HE PLAYS FOOTBALL HE PLAYS BASKETBALL WHAT DOES SHE PLAY? SHE PLAYS BASKETBALL SHE PLAYS FOOTBALL
Wrap up:	Teacher asks what do you play?

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16 May 2014 / by Radmila Gurkova

ESL activity lab. Creating functional beginners material - I play!

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