As an English teacher Halloween is one of my favourite events. Not because I particularly enjoy wearing costumes (I don’t think I’ve worn one in the past 10 years), but because I love using TV series in my lessons. There are some great Halloween episodes around and these are two of my favourites, one to be used with adolescent groups and another with adults.
Collocation
Comfortable in your own skin: a conversation lesson about tattoos.
So last week I had come across a very personal article where a man explains why he has got dinosaur tattoos. I thought it was interesting and save it for a future lesson. As luck would have it, I saw a YouTube video on my timeline last night that talks about tattoos in a very similar way. And thus a conversation/vocabulary lesson was born.
Narcos and Breaking Bad
In my very first post on this blog I shared a lesson about drugs. Today’s post shares a common theme with it, as it presents two TV series focused on drugs, through a video snippet and a text.
Giga Coasters
Amusement parks have been on the news recently because of Banksy’s Dismaland. However, the topic of today’s blog post is much more cheery.
Two of my students are big fans of amusement parks and when I found an article about Giga Coasters, I thought it would be perfect for them. It may be interesting for your adolescents students too.
New Girl: a video-based vocabulary lesson
Whenever possible I try to illustrate new language students come across with a video snippet. I believe it helps make the language more memorable and it’s also a great way to work on pronunciation features like connected speech.
So, last week, after using a text to talk about the protests in Brazil, I was looking for a video with the phrasal verb ‘fed up with’. The snippet I found had so many interesting bits of language (including not my cup of tea) that it ended up becoming a lesson on its own. Continue reading
Conversation lessons and error correction
Last week I took part in my first BrELT Chat, the topic of which was conversation lessons. At the very end of the chat participants were asked to contribute a final thought and I said ‘aula de conversação também tem correção’ which translates to ‘there should be correction in conversation lessons’.
In a lot of ways, I think the same techniques can be used for error correction in both a conversation lesson and a ‘regular’ lesson. You can see some examples in my previous post on the same topic. What may change, however, is what I choose to correct, rather than how I correct it. Continue reading
