All content by Mark is listed below:
I got my first teaching job in 1984, working at a large boy's secondary school in El Obeid, Sudan. This experience made it very clear to me that there's a lot more to teaching English than just being able to speak the language!
Monday - March 19th, 2012
This is an activity to raise students' awareness of the way words are modified in connected speech. In particular, it focuses on the way consonant sounds are linked, elided or assimilated.
Friday - March 16th, 2012
Wednesday - March 14th, 2012
Event date:
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - 09:00
New Edition of English Pronunciation in Use, out just last week! There's plenty that's new here, including a much clarified approach to tonic stress placement, and a section focusing on receptive pronunciation (ie, pronunciation for listening), including variation and accents.
Monday - March 5th, 2012
The students read a holiday email which is full of nonsense and contradictions. They have to identify the nonsense and say what is wrong with it.
Monday - March 5th, 2012
This activity helps to make students more aware of the divergence of pronunciation and spelling in English. In order to do the crossword, they must be able to think of the word as a sequence of sounds rather than as a sequence of letters. More pronunciation ideas?
Monday - March 5th, 2012
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).
Monday - March 5th, 2012
This is a short mystery story in two parts. The questions challenge students to imagine or deduce what happened. The story was inspired by the Roald Dahl tale The Landlady, and I first wrote it for New Ways to Go 4 (CUP).
Monday - March 5th, 2012
In this group discussion, the students have to rank 5 different crimes in order of seriousness and decide on an appropriate punishement for each.
Sunday - March 4th, 2012
This is a short murder story, with a note taking activity. The story is rich in past simple passive, and there is an extension activity to focus on this language point. There are audio downloads in case you want to make this into a listening activity rather than reading.
Tuesday - February 28th, 2012
Here's a song/rhyme to focus on the pronunciation of the past tense ending -ed. There are three audio tracks to download: the poem read aloud; the poem read aloud with backchained drill repetitions for students to pause and repeat, and finally, the poem as a song lyric accompanied to music.
Pages