Improve Your English

Tips for Indian and Pakistani English Speakers

Word: hotel
Culprit: pronunciation, meaning

The first I was asked if I wanted to go out to a HO-tl (pronounced with hard retroflex t) on a Friday night, I had to ask the speaker to clarify. She wanted to go out to eat at a nice restaurant, while I was wondering why we'd go out just to sleep in a hotel. In standard English, a hotel is a place where you stay or sleep. Many nice restaurants in the subcontinent happen to be in 5-star hotels, so it's understandable how the term 'hotel' came to mean 'nice restaurant.'

In standard English, the word 'hotel' is pronounced with stress on the second syllable, 'ho - TEL' and with a soft [t] not a hard one. The [t] should be pronounced right behind your teeth, in a similar position to the Urdu-Hindi softer sound.

There is also no verb 'to hotel,' which means we can not 'go hoteling' tonight. If that were a verb in English, it would have to mean something like going out to sleep in different hotels. What you want to say is, "Let's go out to eat tonight."

For more tips see here:

Avoid These Common Mistakes in English

ESL Grammar Lesson Plans

Here are some links to complete ESL Grammar lesson plans:

Grammar

1) ESL Lesson Plan: Comparatives & Superlatives
Have fun teaching adjectives with this interactive lesson.

2) ESL Reading and Speaking Activity: Comparatives & Superlatives
Students read about and discuss 5 young world record holders as a reading exercise.

3) ESL Lesson Game: Action with Adverbs
An interactive group game to practice adverbs. Great for ESL students or native speakers learning grammar.

4) Lesson Plan: Make Narrative Exciting with Adverbs
A lesson plan to integrate grammar with writing skills

5) ESL Lesson Game: My Amazing Imaginary Life
This creative activity will help students master the use of perfect tenses

6) Lesson Plan: Fun with Verb Tenses
This interactive and fast-paced group game will help students review simple and perfect tenses. It can be adjusted for use with any other tenses as well.

7) Lesson Plan: Perfect Tenses
Presentation material for teaching present perfect, past perfect and future perfect

8) Lesson Plan: Verbs Daily Routine
Adjustable lesson plan to practice different verb tenses by filling in the daily planner of a superhero

Resources for Teaching and Learning English Pronunciation

Pronunciation can be one of the most difficult areas to mast in any foreign language. Have a go at reading the following poetic verse out loud:

“I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?”

(Attributed to George Bernard Shaw)

Not so easy, was it? English pronunciation is, in part, so tricky because English spelling is not phonetic. In a phonetic alphabet, each letter will only represent one sound, and each sound will only be represented by one letter. In English, this is certainly not the case! Other teachers are always asking me for good resources to teach pronunciation, so here’s a list of websites along with their descriptions. Many of these sites are good for both language teachers and language learners.

Sounds of English

Sounds of English is primarily a site for English teachers. It includes some great links, handouts from presentations, pronunciation pages including sound and video files, activities and exercises for pronunciation and listening, teacher tips, and printable worksheets with answer keys. It’s one of the best sites for English language educators.

To continue reading article and access more great links, click here

Teacher Tips: How to Keep Student Attention

Many times teachers find it a struggle to keep students paying attention in the classroom. You may have been teaching in forty-five minute periods for years, and then suddenly your school has switched to block scheduling of ninety minute periods. How can you keep students' attention? How can you prevent them from falling asleep during your lectures? Here are some helpful tips:

Strong Presence

Students will surely doze off if you aren't able to speak loudly, clearly and with a bit of personality. Avoid speaking in monotone and try to make your lectures lively. Students will be more apt to pay attention to a teacher who smiles and establishes good rapport, than one who scowls and uses fear tactics to keep students in line.

Read more here

Creative Writing: Showing Rather Than Telling

Outcomes:
Students will be able to differentiate between "showing" and "telling" in writing.
Students will be able to add details in order to improve descriptive passages.

Time: 30 minutes

Resources: white board/markers

Presentation:

Ask students: Which of the following endings is better? Why?

A. I had finally finished the long race across the Sahara desert.
B. As I crossed the finish line, a surge of excitement went through my body. I knelt down and kissed the ground. Finally, after weeks of trudging through endless sand dunes, it was over.

Allow students to discuss the two endings. The second ending is better because it gives the reader a vivid picture of what happened. The first ending only tells. When writing, we want the reader to be able to see, taste, smell, hear and sense things just as we are. It is important to use details that invoke imagery.

Write the following sentence on the board: Today the weather was nice.

Ask students: How could we add more details to this sentence? We don't know what the weather was like at all. Was it sunny, raining, cloudy, or what?
Ask students orally to think of ways to better describe the nice weather, jot down ideas on the board.

Continue reading the detailed lesson activity here

Making Story Outlines

Key Concepts: genre, setting, characters, plot, outline
Time: 45 minutes
Resources: 1 copy of Sample Story Outline per student OR this material on an overhead, white board & markers

Presentation: Elements of a Story Outline (15 minutes)

Genre

Ask students, "What does genre mean?" Elicit answers from students. If they are unable to define it, you can tell them it means "type."

Ask, "Can you think of different movie genres?" Write student responses on the board. Responses may include romance, horror, documentary, western, science fiction, comedy, action, adventure, musical, etc.

After writing all the responses on the board, say, "It's the same thing with books! Just like we have different types of movies, we have different types of stories. Can you think of what types of stories there are?" Again write the answers on the board and compare them to the movie categories. Inform students that whenever they want to start writing a story they should first decide the genre.

Setting

Say, "The setting answers the questions where and when." Explain that when writing a story we need to describe the place."

Continue reading lesson plan here

Speaking Fluency Part II

Objectives:
1) Be able to recognize features of formal and informal speech
2) Analyze a natural speech sample
3) Be confident in using features of natural speech including discourse markers & fillers to sound more like a native speaker
4) Be able to share a narrative in a fluent fashion by making use of natural speech features

Time: 120 minutes

Resources:
Text for Activity 1 on handouts (one per student)
White board & markers
Speech Sample for Activity 3 on handouts (one per student)

Lesson Components

Warm Up (10 minutes)

Greet each student with a different slang greeting.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Hi. How's it goin'?

"Hey man. How're things?"

"Yo! What have you been up to?"

"Hello. What's up with you?" (pronounced "wichu")

Explain to students that we do not always say the same greeting when we meet each other. Some are more formal and others are more informal. Write the new slang expressions on the board and have students practice greeting each other.

Presentation 1: Features of Informal Spoken English (15 minutes)

Say, "When you speak fluently you are usually speaking in an informal situation. Due to this fact, it is important to be able to recognize and imitate features of informal spoken English such as the following:

Read Complete Lesson Details Here