In speaking styles, there is a continuum between mumbling and rolling your ‘r’s –. What I mean by mumbling here is speaking with as little mouth movement as possible in order to minimize effort on the part of the speaker.
Mike McCarthy gave the opening plenary at English UK Academic (North) conference last Saturday (Oct 4 2014), revisiting the topic of the grammar of spoken English. Spoken language, he pointed out, is in no way an imperfect, poorly realized version of the written form.
Stephanie began by pointing out why video adverts are a fabulous resource in the ELT classroom: they're short; adaptable to different levels; authentic; relevant to most student's worlds; offer visual support; context rooted and catchy and motivating by design. A compelling list of attributes.
David Bradshaw explained how speaking is a very difficult skill to promote in secondary school classrooms, and how he used to dread it. He then went on to demonstrate a series of activities which he has found to work in that context, really motivating the students to want to talk, and incidentally providing excellent preparation for Cambridge exams.
A pairwork activity in which students and their partners describe their pictures and find the differences. The pictures are so designed as to contextualize and elicit the present perfect tense, such as 'I've failed my exam'.
Let your class get creative with funny pictures from the internet. This is a story-telling activity based on pictures from the internet. You will need to either print the pictures or project them in class. You may use the example pictures provided here or else find your own.
This is a fun way to introduce the topic and vocabulary area of describing people. It is a sample activity from English Result Intermediate by Mark Hancock and Annie McDonald (Oxford University Press)
In this activity, students read an article in favour of internet censorship. Then they prepare for a class debate for and against this kind of censorship. The activity is inpired by the debates in For and Against by L G Alexander (Longman 1969).
