The activities go with a particular coursebooks. However, as they are in many ways universal, you may be able to adapt them to your respective coursebooks.
The Alternative Way: Green Line 2 Klett Ernst Klett Verlah GmbH
Mario Rinvolucri, UK
Mario Rinvolucri teacher, teacher trainer and author. He has worked for Pilgrims for over 30 years and used to edit Humanising Language Teaching. Regularly contributes to The Teacher Trainer. His books include: Creative Writing, with Christine Frank, Helbling, Multiple Intelligences in EFL, with Herbert Puchta, Helbling, Unlocking Self-Expression through NLP, with Judy Baker, Delta Books, New edition of Vocabulary, with John Morgan, OUP, Humanising your Coursebook, Delta Books, Using the Mother Tongue, with Sheelagh Deller, Delta Books, Ways of Doing, with Paul Davis and Barbara Garside, CUP, Imagine That with Herbert Puchta and Jane Arnold. Mario's first CD-Rom for students, Mindgame, was written with Isobel Fletcher de Tellez, and engineered and published by Clarity, Hong Kong in 2000 . E-mail: mario@pilgrims.co.uk
Menu
Background
Mystery Stories
Punctuation and reading aloud
Personalising Comparatives
Correct the text
Writing dialogues before listening to them
Summarising a text
A present perfect drill with a difference
What can go with a text?
Vocabulary enrichment technique
Homophone association exercise
Three different readings
Word memorisation techniques
1. Technique 1 Free Categorisation
2. Technique 2 Two word bi-lingual Dialogues
3. Technique 3 Students draw abstract words
Re-classifying the irregular verbs
Dear Colleague,
The authors and editors of Green Line 2 have asked me to offer a few alternative ways of dealing with the texts in this book, just as I did last year for Green Line 1. It is an honour for me to be the "guest methodologist" in this book too.
The listenings, the readings, and the grammar practise exercises in the Green Line 2 student book and workbooks are the main dishes in the meal of learning English. All I am offering you are alternative sauces to put over these substantial language dishes, a little saffron here, a touch of cumin there to bring out and heighten the intrinsic flavours of each dish.
Please pick and choose those technical suggestions that you feel suit you and your way of teaching and that may also suit your students, or at least a good number of them. You may also want to look back over the technical suggestions ( "Tips" ) in Green Line 1 as many of them will fit well with any text, not just the text I have attached them to.
It would be excellent if you were to share with other colleagues how these techniques actually worked in your class. If you felt like doing this, you might also want to share your way of working with a wider public. If this is** the case why not send what you write to HUMANISING LANGUAGE TEACHING which you will find at: old.hltmag.co.uk. The person to contact is the editor:
hania.kryszewska@pilgrims.co.uk
Mario
** Grammar note:
in the first sentence of the last paragraph the second conditional is used to avoid sounding pushy and to make my suggestion tentative in a proper British English way! The second sentence continues in the same tentative vein. The third sentence, however, drops the mask of politeness and embedded in the 1st conditional you find a semi-command.
Of course, sadly, I lose the hypnotic effect of the above adroit conditional shifting by drawing this "sleight of language" into your conscious awareness.
Emma's Holiday, page 11
- before starting the unit, and certainly before working with the students on Page 11, write these phrases on the board.
He shouted "Shark!" a trick
People laughed we hid his clothes
We ran out of the water
- Tell the class that these phrases come from a story. The students have to question their way to the complete, original story. They ask you questions that you can answer YES / NO.
e.g.: "Did they run out of the water because of the shark?"
Do not answer any wh- questions like:
" Why did the people laugh?"
- Use this exercise for grammatical accuracy practice: When a student's question is grammatically inaccurate, write the question up on the board and
wait, without saying anything. Normally the student herself will correct the utterance. If she does not silently appeal to the class. Some one will almost always come up with the correct form. If no one does, silently write in the correction. Say nothing.
- If the questioning dies down give the class a clue and then say "I want everybody to write two questions." Go round helping the students.
Now only take oral questions from people who have not yet asked anything.
(this makes the activity less leader-dominated).
- Round the exercise off by asking the students to read the Emma's holiday text on Page 11.
If, later on in the term, you want to give the class more past interrogative practice , give them one of the stories below to get to the bottom of by questioning you:
- The man went into a field with a pack on his back. He died
Solution: He" went" into the field vertically as his parachute had not opened.
- The man looked up round two corners and knew he had to go down as fast as
he could.
Solution: The commander of a submerged submarine looked through his periscope (round two 90 degree angles) and saw an enemy destroyer approaching at high speed.
- His Mum told Johnny to go to the baker's and buy three loaves.
Johnny bought two and ran back home with them.
He went straight back to the shop and bought the third one.
Solution: Johnny had a speech defect that he was very ashamed of:
He could not pronounce the initial consonant in the word
"three".
| Pluses: |
the students are really thinking as well as having to fit their ideas into the interrogative structure. They are not just doing grammar practice- they are trying to solve a problem. |
| Minuses: |
The activity tends to motivate the problem-solvers in the class, the more logically-mathematically intelligent people. A few students tend to dominate; hence the rectification suggested in step d) above. |
Harry Potter's first flying lesson P.18 line 6 to 19
- In preparation copy lines 6-19 on Page 18, one copy per student.
- in the lesson group the students in fives or sixes and give out the Harry Potter excerpt for them to read.
- Explain that you are now going to give the groups fifteen minutes to practise "orchestrating" the passage, with one student reading aloud with the rest, in chorus, making appropriate noises for the punctuation. Give them this example:
READER: Their teacher
CHORUS: one handclap
READER: Madam Hooch
CHORUS: one handclap
READER: arrived
CHORUS: Two foot stamps
Tell the students that each group is free to create whatever vocal or other sounds they like to represent commas, full stops, quotation marks, question marks etc….
However, they are to always produce the same sound for a given punctuation mark.
- Once all the groups have had time to properly rehearse their renderings, call the class back into plenary and get each group to perform for the others.
| Pluses: |
The kind of exercise strongly appeals to the more auditory and kinaesthetically-minded students. For everybody, it is a brilliant way of getting them to experience the purpose and function of punctuation in organising text. |
| Minuses: |
If the learners are not used to creativity exercises in their other subjects, some may at first be non-plussed and tend to see this task as "childish". |
Exercise 10 page 27
- Once the students have completed Exercise 10 ask each student to take a piece of paper and write the name of the person on their right at the top of the paper. Tell each student to write one true sentence comparing this person to her or himself, using the as.....as structure, the not as.....as one or the more.....than.....structure.
- Each student, having written their sentence comparing the person to themselves, passes the paper to their left or a person in front of or behind them. This person looks at the name at the top of the paper and writes a sentence comparing this person to themselves.
Pass the paper.
- when some 10 comparative sentences have been written the page goes back to the person whose name is written at the top. People really read these pages
with wrapt attention! Their egoism and narcissism is involved.
| Pluses: |
In using this activity you have scooped the comparative structures out of the coursebook and helped the students to use them in a peer-group context.
The focus changes from comparing things in a distanced way, out there, on the coursebook page, to comparing self to others in the group. |
| Minuses: |
If the students perceive the classroom as a place for being impersonal they may at first be shocked by a personalising activity. The odd unhappy student may write nasty comparisons, putting the classmate in question down. This risk is always present in personalising exercises. |
The speckled band page 33, lines 68-81
- copy this mangled version of lines 68-81, so each pair gets a copy.
I didn't fall asleep that night. It was windy inside and the rain made a loud
pitter-patter on the windows. Suddenly I saw a terrible sound., A man was
screaming. It was my sister. I jumped into bed and ran into the corridor.
There was the sound of a quiet whistle and heavy metal that was falling.
As I sang down the corridor, my sister's door shut. Her face was white and
her hands were out in front of them. I ran to try and catch her but she fell to the
sky. I cannot remember how she said: " Oh, Oh, Helen! It's the band. The
speckled orchestra!"
- pair the students, tell them to close their books and give each pair the text above.
Tell the students the text is flawed because some of the words are wrong. Their task is to take ten minutes and clean the text up, replacing the words which are wrong by sensible ones.
- Ask several pairs to read their cleaned up texts to the class.
- Ask them to compare their corrected text to the original on Page 33.
| Pluses: |
Humour: often the students see the joke in replacing a word by its inappropriate opposite or semi homophone.
Power: all tasks editing other people's texts give a sense of power. If the students laugh and feel a sense of power, then something good is going on in your classroom
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| Minuses: |
The exercise may turn out to be over-daunting for some of your weaker students. One answer to this problem is mixed level pairing. |
| Variation: |
Some students really like weeding and correcting a text. Others, the naughty ones and often the boys, get a much greater kick from taking a "clean" text and filling it with vocabulary glitches, as I have done with the text above.
Why not have some of these folk tamper with a text, re-writing it neatly for their classmates to set right? The tampering will involved them in intensive language work .as well as plenty destructive pleasure. |
Street style page 38
- Tell the students to close their books.
- Put these phrases up on the board in disorder , as below:
Wear what I like. They're horrible.
Want to see the skirts now.
Not my style!
You always wear trainers
Not so loud!
You spent all your money!
Those're nice.
Ugh! No thanks.
- pair the students and tell them to write a dialogue between two girls
in a clothes shop using the phrases above and nothing else. Tell them
they can combine the phrases in anyway they wish. They must use at least 6 of the 9 phrases. Ask them to rehearse the dialogue they have created.
- Get several pairs to stand up and act their dialogue out.
- Now play the recording of Street Style, P 38
| Pluses: |
Having already thought through the structure of the dialogue makes it much easier for student to listen to it efficiently.
The brief snippets of language given above are normal in spoken speech, more normal than the perhaps over-loquacious forms in Street style.
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| Minuses: |
from my working with this technique in class I do not see any serious downsides.
If, however, you find some, let us know so they can be mentioned in future editions of the Teacher's Book. |
| Acknowledgement: |
I learnt this technique from Dave Allen at NILE in Norwich, and he tells me he picked it up from a colleague working in the Gulf States. Thus does the EFL methodology oral grapevine grow! |
The Light pages 44 -45
- Divide the students into four groups. Give them these four tasks:
Group 1: pick out 12-15 keywords or phrases from the text
Group 2: summarise the main content of the passage in one sentence
Group 3: summarise the main content of the passage in two short paragraphs
Group 4: students notice their own reaction to the text and express this is 12-15 keywords of their own and or taken from the text
- When the students have had time to do the above four tasks, ask them to re-group in fours, with one person from each of the original groups. They share their work and explain why they wrote what they did.
| Pluses: |
if you know your class well, you may want to choose who goes in which group. So, for example, students who are good at chunked up thinking, at generalisation, might work most efficiently in Group 2.
This exercise allows you to usefully differentiate, giving individuals a task appropriate to their thinking and linguistic strengths.
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| Minuses: |
some students may find the LIGHT text too long and complex to easily summarise. You might want to try the activity on a more succinct passage. |
| Acknowledgement: |
The activity above is taken from Humanising your Coursebook, Rinvolucri, Delta 2002., where you find loads more reading activities. |
Unit 4 pages 52 to 65
- group your students two concentric seated circles. If you have immovable desks, ask the students to stand in two concentric circles
- Ask one person in the inner circle to tell the group about a bad thing they haven't done e.g.:
I haven't nicked money from my mother's purse
I haven't yet murdered my little sister
I haven't crashed Dad's car
Ask the person who has spoken to point to another student in the inner circle
and say their name.
This second student then reports what the first student hasn't done and tells
the group something bad they haven't done.
Student 2 designates the next student in the inner circle.
Student 3 reports the bad things that St 1 and 2
have not done and tells the group what bad thing she hasn't done.
Continue this way until 7 people in the inner circle have had a turn.
- Ask the inner and outer circles to swap places. Repeat the above steps, but
this time with seven people from what is now the inner circle.
| Pluses: |
This activity has a touch of naughtiness that appeals to mid-teenagers as they
take a look at the shadow side of things.
The activity is effectively a present perfect drill, though well disguised.
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| Minuses: |
Maybe, in some schools, even negativised expression of personal
wrong-doing is taboo? |
page 64 The Tide is high
- once the students have listened to the song and done the exercise suggested
by the authors, group them in fours.
- Tell each foursome that they are the directors of visuals to go with each line
of the song . They need to come up with a "storyboard" to show roughly what the camera will see.
Tell them you will give them just 14 minutes for the exercise and that you will tell them which language to speak during the exercise.
- Two minutes of German
Two minutes of English
Two minutes of German etc...
- Invite a couple of the foursomes to present their visuals on the board,
And ask them to do this in English
| Pluses: |
Thinking up pictures to go with a song is an activity in tune with teenage
thinking and feeling and reinforces impact of the language in the lyrics.
Ordering the students to work in alternate bouts of MT and target language
is a potent way of moving them away from use Mother Tongue.
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| Minuses: |
Not everybody in your class probably likes thinking visually. |
| Acknowledgement: |
Alternating MT and Target language is a simple technique I learnt
from Jim Wingate, author of The Peaceful Teacher. |
What really happened? page 74
- Once the students have worked on the reading passage in the ways suggested in the book, read them the LISA AND EMMA text again and stop at the words listed below, and ask them to offer you semi-synonyms for the words suggested.
Have a secretary at the board noting down each word and its semi-equivalent
We went out and started...........give me another word for started.........
to look for............another word for to look for............
started
look for
nearly
started
go back
quickly
shouted
knew
found
ten metres (eleven yards)
phoned
mobile (cell phone, US)
answer
worried
- Tell the students t o copy down the list of words from the board into their
books.
- Tell the students to close their books. Now read them the passage using the
synonyms. Their task is to "correct" you, calling out the original words.
| Pluses: |
This activity helps students to become aware that that there are many ways of
saying nearly the same thing in English. It broadens their view of the target
language.
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| Minuses: |
The activity is a bit linguistically elitist as it favours the top half of the class
and may overload weaker students. |
Same Sound page 94
- Before the students work on Same Sound, give them this homophones dictation ( books shut):
You say sea : they write down sea or see and three words they associate with the word they have written down.
Ask them to do the same with by
die
right
know
wear
our
dear
- Ask four students to all come to the board and write their associations with
sea/see
Carry on calling up students to come to the board for each of the word pairs.
- the students now do the composition work proposed in their student book.
| Pluses: |
the linguistically strong students in your class will tend to love this
homophones exercise.
|
| Minuses: |
Students with a logical-mathematical turn of mind may find the activity
trivial. |
| Acknowledgement: |
My thanks to Dictation, Paul Davis et al, CUP, 1988, where you find plenty more teenage-friendly stuff. |
A Celtic Bracelet page 110
- in preparation, try to read the passage in three different ways:
Way 1: stand facing the audience, pull your shoulders back.. Read the passage fairly fast and in a fairly high pitch. Give the students eye contact
from time to time. Your breathing will be from the top part of your chest.
Way 2: sit facing the audience, in a comfortable, slouched position with your shoulders forward. Read the passage slowly, pausing a lot - don't give eye contact and use a low pitch but with plenty of volume. Your breathing will be slow and from the stomach.
Way 3: on your feet, and this time read the passage as eloquently as you can, changing speed and pitch to suit the meaning, stressing and drawing out key words. Use plenty of gesture and move your body. Lots of eye contact. You will be breathing from high in your chest.
Practising these three ways of reading will be fun. Do it is enough to be sure
that there are real differences between the three ways.
- In class, tell the students you will read the passage in three different ways.
Their task is to tell you which reading they like best and specifically why, i.e.
what features of your reading please them.
- Read the passage in the three ways.
- Pair the students so they can discuss their reactions.
- Ask students to tell you which voices they liked best with a show of hands.
Now asked a student who preferred the first way to tell you exactly why. Do the same for the other two ways of reading.
| Pluses: |
Giving the students a task apparently unconnected with listening
comprehension frees up their minds to actually do it much better,
without stress or fear. The students who like choice and options will
tend to appreciate the activity.
|
| Minuses: |
" But I'm not an actor!" I can hear some colleagues thinking.
Actually, since you are a teacher, you are inevitably a member of
the drama community. Like all actors you live in public, you relate to
an audience , you have to a script ( this coursebook) to bring to life,
and you have developed enormous audience controlling skills since those
days when you were preparing the Second Staats Examen!
! No me digas que no eres actor! ! No te creo! |
For use with any of the vocabulary lists pages 160-188
page 161 Check-n word list
- Ask the students to read through the bi-lingual wordlist and to read the
notes in the right-hand column.
- Ask each student to put all twelve words into categories of their choice. There must be at least two categories and less than 12!
Tell them their categories can be to do with the meaning of the words
the sound of the words
the shape of the words
the grammar of the words
their associations with the words
words they like, words they don't
etc...
Tell them to give each of the categories a heading. Help them find the right English words for the headings.
Avoid giving them a clear example as they will take your example as a model and this may clip the wings of their imaginations.
- Once they have written their categorisations, groups the students in fours and
ask them to share what they have done.. Tell them to each read their headings and
then the words in that category.
Examples of categories that have come up:
SHORT WORDS LONG WORDS
VERB NOUN ADVERB
SCHOOL WORDS GENERAL WORDS
GERMAN SCHOOL WORDS ENGLISH SCHOOL WORDS GENERAL
WORDS I LIK WORDS I DISLIKE OTHER WORDS
SOFT SOUNDING WORDS HARD SOUNDING WORDS
| Pluses: |
This is a revision activity that can be re-used many times without getting
Boring, thanks to its openness.
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| Minuses: |
Categorisation is a mental activity that privileges the logically-
mathematically minded students, the students who already tend
to please their teachers. |
| Acknowledgement: |
This idea comes from Caleb Gattegno's Silent Way of teaching
languages. |
Sam's Timetable page 163
- Get the students on their feet . Select a "volunteer" to demonstrate the exercise
with you. Choose an extrovert who likes movement and is a bit looney!
Stand facing the student:
You: Timetable (deadpan)
Student: Stundenplan (also deadpan)
You: Stundenplan...timetable? (Ingratiating, rising intonation)
Student: Stundenplan, Stundenplan, Stundenplan!
You: Stundenplan, timetable, Stundenplan?
Student: Timetable, Stundenplan.
- Give the students the next pair of words: time and mal
And ask them to have a dialogue like the one above using only
the two words you have given them, but using them as many times
over as they like and with a full range of intonation.
Tell them you will give them just 20 seconds for the dialogues.
Time this.
- Repeat the same procedure with six more pairs of words.
| Pluses: |
This simple drama technique is marvellous for extrovert students and
for those who learn mainly through their ears. It can also be used
when the English lesson flags and the students start drooping!.
In how many other academic lesson do students get to move their bodies?
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| Minuses: |
shy students and those with strong intra-personal intelligences
are happy when this activity is over.
You may judge the activity to be somewhat outside your teacher range,
perhaps a trifle undignified?
You might also wonder: "What's the point of surrealistic dialogues?" |
| Acknowledgement: |
This activity comes from Using the Mother Tongue,
Sheelagh Deller et al, Delta 2003 |
In Scotland, pages 182 -183
- Before the lesson pick out some of the abstract words from Pages 182-183
identification glad to be excited to be nervous angry although
all the time love (liebe Gruesse) as soon as weather to promise
to hope fortune (Schicksal) work
- Ask each student to take a clean sheet of paper and tell them you will
give them exactly 20 seconds to draw a picture for each word.
To make the beginning easy, start with two non-abstract words:
car (20 seconds timed) and then river (20 seconds times). They write the relevant word under each picture.
Continue with the words above, 20 seconds each.
- Get the students up and moving round the room, comparing their
drawings.
| Pluses: |
after an initial reaction of "how can I draw as soon as? most students
get into the swing of the activity and, without realising it, they explore the
meaning of each word.
There is a real buzz as they see the imaginative range of each other's
drawings, and the visual excellence of some of them.
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| Minuses: |
Initially the activity is nasty for people who hate their art class or their art
teacher. You may not want to have them do the exercise if you yourself
were bad at art as a child, illogical though this may be. |
| Acknowledgement: |
This simple technique comes from Vocabulary, Morgan et al, Oxford University Press, 2004 (new edition)
The book is jam-packed with word learning activities. |
List of irregular verbs page 210
- for homework ask the students to revise, say, the first 25 irregular verbs.
- In class ask them to close their books and stand up.
- Tell them to watch what you do and listen to what you say;
when you do it for the second d time they imitate your actions and
your words. Here's what happens:
You touch your toes: you say DRINK (inf.)
You touch your hips: you say DRANK (past)
You throw your hands above your head: you say: DRUNK (past part..)
You touch your toes: you say TEACH
You touch your hips TWICE: you say TAUGHT TAUHT
You touch your toes three times: you say: PUT PUT PUT
Repeat the above actions and verbs with them imitating you. Speak and act with energy as your lead will energise the students.
Go through the same routine with four more of the verbs they studied for home work.
- Bring some one who is self-confident out of the group and whisper a new verb
in her ear.
She then leads the group with the three actions and the three parts of this verb.
Bring out the next "volunteer"...whisper them the next verb...
| Pluses: |
This activity helps very kinaesthetic students to get a handle on English irregular verbs. For them this somatic re-categorisation really works.
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| Minuses: |
You may personally dislike leading drama-style activities... but the success of this work with your students may reduce your disinclination. |
| Acknowledgement: |
I learnt this technique from Frau Gerlinde Wissiol in Muenchen, some 8 years ago. |
Please check the Secondary Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
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