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?

10

April 2015
Be brainy: Multiple intelligences theory
by Vincent Chieppa
...

07

April 2015
It's never too late to learn how to teach
by Elena Riches
As we grow older it’s all very easy to sit and wonder why we didn't do certain things before it became ‘too late’.  And whenever I hear people say, ‘I wish I’d done this’ my response is always, “What’s stopping you from doing it now?”, a question that usually stops a person in their tracks and makes them think. ...

03

April 2015
How to... set up audio-visual discussion topics
by Vincent Chieppa
...

30

March 2015
What is intonation and why teach it?
by Elena Riches
What is intonation? The term 'intonation' refers to the linguistic use of pitch to convey meaning of a sentence and/or word and during your life as a TEFL teacher you will come across students who will have difficulty using intonation and stress in the correct manner - this means they may not...

27

March 2015
Task-based language teaching: 6 tools for task force teachers
by Vincent Chieppa
...

24

March 2015
'Schwa' - unstressed syllables
by Elena Riches
Before I was taught how to teach English, by Oxbridge TEFL, I had no idea that the word "schwa" existed. Today, I'm writing about the 'schwa', which isn't (incidentally) about the pronunciation of words such as 'Schwartz' and 'Schwarzkopf'...it's about ...

20

March 2015
New teaching techniques: Sparking inspiration
by Vincent Chieppa
The era of “chalk and talk” is over.  We as teachers know that we need to incorporate new teaching techniques seeing that nowadays simply presenting information to our students is just not enough.  Students have to engross themselves in what they are being taught, they need to discover the worth of what we teach them and it is our job to igni...

17

March 2015
ESL - Common Mistakes Students Make
by Elena Riches
In my last blog post I listed a few 'false friends' - English words that students confuse with words from their own language - in this one, I'm going to talk about common mistakes. Every single day, at least one student ...

12

March 2015
Games people play: No-prep ESL games for all ages
by Vincent Chieppa
...

10

March 2015
False Friend
by Elena Riches
For anyone who's never taught English or taken an advanced English course, you could be forgiven for assuming that a 'false friend' is someone who pretends to like you when they don't. However, a false friend is in fact a word or phrase in two languages or dialects (or letters in two alphabets) that look...