IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

More tested lessons, suggestions, tips and techniques which have

all worked for ETp readers. Try them out for yourself – and then
send us your own contribution.
All the contributors to It Works in Practice in this issue of ETp
will receive a copy of Meetings in English by Bryan Stephens,
published by Macmillan. Macmillan have kindly agreed to be
sponsors of It Works in Practice for this year.

Towers of fun Basket case

By introducing numbers at This is a game that can be played by blank. They then write the number of
an early stage in your young students of intermediate level and that blank on the ball and throw it in
learner English classes, you above. I usually play it with three teams the basket. Set a time limit for them to
are putting in place a of five students each, but the numbers do this. If they miss the basket, they
structure on which your can be varied. The aim is to have some have to retrieve the ball, return behind
fun whilst practising the present the line and throw it again.
students can expand their
perfect tense. You will need to prepare
vocabulary, and providing a At the end, check the contents of the
in advance three copies of a reading
base for a variety of games three baskets. The team with the most
text whose focus is the present perfect,
and activities. correct answers wins. In the case of a
with twice as many words or
tie, the team which finished first wins.
Building towers is a fun expressions as there are students on
game. With the children each team blanked out. Each blank Variations:
seated in a circle on the should have a number. You will also The text can be written on the board or
floor, place a pile of need some small plastic balls (one for displayed via PowerPoint.
coloured wooden blocks in each missing word or expression for
each team), pieces of paper and three There can be more than three teams or
the middle of the circle.
large waste-paper baskets. Write the fewer, depending on class size, and the
Everybody takes turns to roll
missing words/expressions on paper number of the members of a team can
a large dice and then collect
and attach them to the balls with tape. vary. However, the number of blanks
the corresponding number should always be double the number of
of blocks in order to build a Divide the class into three teams, A, B the members of each team.
tower. The children become and C. Each has a basket labelled with
the letter of their team. The basket is If the teams are not of equal size, the
engrossed in building their
placed two metres away in front of team with an extra student will need an
towers, with the highest one
them. extra couple of distractor balls, carrying
being the winner. There is
words that cannot be used to fill in any
equal enjoyment afterwards Each set of balls should be laid on the of the blanks. When they identify a
as each tower is knocked floor behind each team, at least one distractor ball, the team should write Ø
down. The final tidy up of metre away. A line should be drawn on on it and then throw it in the basket.
returning the bricks to a bag the floor (or it could be an imaginary
one) where the students have to stand This game can be used for practising
or box, ordered by colour,
to throw their balls in the basket. other grammatical structures, writing
introduces and practises
(adding topic sentences to appropriate
further vocabulary. The students need to read the text and
Emma Saul paragraphs) or vocabulary.
find quickly the ball that carries the Mohammed Arroub
Essertines sur Rolle,
Switzerland correct word or expression for each Homs, Syria

40 • Issue 72 January 2011 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

 Students’ posters
My first-year students in the faculty of This has required some preparation, 4 Writing skills
chemical and food technology in mainly cutting them into sections, To practise summary writing, some
Bratislava, Slovakia, end their English removing the titles supplied by the posters are kept intact, with just the
language course with an examination students and sorting them according to abstracts at the beginning and the
in the summer term. One part of their topics and needs. Here are the ideas we conclusions at the end removed.
oral exam involves presenting a poster have come up with for using them: Working in pairs, the students have
on a scientific topic. The students can to write a summary and/or abstract
1 Vocabulary practice
choose any technical topic they are for each poster.
Teaching new and unknown
particularly interested in, preferably 5 Describing diagrams,
technical terms, expressions and
related to chemistry. Most of the graphs and pictures
their meaning. Determining the
material they use is taken from the The graphs, charts, pictures and
key words (with the correct
internet, encyclopaedias and chemistry diagrams included in the posters are
pronunciation) is very important
texts. After the examination, we keep ideal for practising descriptions. This
practice for our students, along
the posters in the department, so each means that we no longer spend hours
with giving definitions of new
year there are hundreds of posters searching for suitable visuals in
words in English.
left. We tend to display the best in the textbooks for the students to describe.
classrooms, while others serve as 2 Grammar practice
examples of good and bad work for the Students have to identify I would like to emphasise how easy it is
next generation of students. Some, structures typically used in to motivate students just by getting them
unfortunately, end up in the bin. technical language, such as to work with materials that have been
passives, participial phrases, time created by fellow students the previous
As this seems such a waste, this year year. They are always eager to see in
clauses, nominal compounds, etc.
we have decided to keep almost all the detail what the posters look like, and
posters (with topics relevant to our 3 Reading skills
they realise that they must be properly
courses, eg oxygen, fractional Articles are chosen and exercises
prepared – not just for the exam but
distillation, wine production, coffee, prepared for reading comprehension
because they will be used later by a new
the water cycle, the environment, etc). (eg true and false, gap fill, whole
generation of students.
We have found various ways of using sentences removed from a text that Magdalena Horakova
them as additional teaching materials. have to be matched up, etc). Bratislava, Slovakia

Syrian whispers
If possible, clear all the desks and chairs to the side of the group, and so on till all the group members have heard the
room. Ask four students to leave the classroom and divide sentence. The listening student may not ask for clarification
the remaining students equally into four groups, A, B, C but has to do their best with what they have heard. When a
and D. (With smaller classes you can have fewer groups and student has delivered the sentence to another member of
send fewer students out of the room.) Ask the students to their team, they should sit down so it is clear how many
put Post-it notes on their foreheads indicating the letter of group members are left. The last student from each group has
their group. They should then mingle together and move to go to the board and write down the sentence as they heard
round in the classroom. it. At the end of the game, there should be four sentences on
the board, equal to the number of groups. The winners are
Assign a group to each of the students outside the
those whose sentence most closely matches the original
classroom and give each a sentence to memorise. They then
which you gave to the student outside the classroom.
have to rush into the classroom looking for the members of
their group (as indicated on the Post-it notes on the This game might sound easy, but in reality it is quite
students’ foreheads). They have to whisper their sentence, challenging: students often mis-hear some words in the
once and once only, to one of them who, in turn, hurries to sentence and end up with a totally different sentence.
whisper the same sentence to another member of the Riyad al Homsi
Homs, Syria

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 72 January 2011 • 41