Speaking

Tackling Pronunciation with Technology

computer with flowers

At the end of last semester I was wrestling with how to work on pronunciation.  Alas, I was tired of hearing “Il essssssssssssst anglaissssss” and so I started to brainstorm ways students might be able to work on this problem without me.  This particular pronunciation issue is, in my opinion, an input and reading issue.  …

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Is it…Guessing Game

This last summer I spent some time with my six year old cousin. He has some speech issues and sees a speech therapist weekly and is not, in general, a great talker…yet.  However he loves playing the Guess Who game.  Do you know this game?  You have cards with images on them that you slide …

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Je sais pas – Let’s ask Google!

Hello Is this thing on?

Sometimes I’m a little late to the technology party.  Until yesterday when I had to reset my phone, I’d hardly used the voice tools on my phone.  And then yesterday I fell in love with Google Assistant. Though the whole idea of talking to an object feels odd to me, I am super excited about …

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Higher Level Thinking with Novices

light bulb with a question mark inside

When I was doing my student teaching (in English) our methods teacher said something like, “The complexity of your language is a reflection of your complexity of thought.”  While I can get behind this statement for a native language, this isn’t true for a second language.  I mean, I’m entirely capable of complex thought, but …

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Three No Prep Activities for the First Day

It’s Back to School time!! Officially school started over a week ago at the high school and I don’t go back to school at the college for another week. Here are three no/low prep activities you can do with any class, but the newbies.  (For my take on starting with the with the newbies see …

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Giving Textbook Activities a Purpose

Not every activity in a textbook is awful.  And sometimes, with just a small tweak, they can be pretty darn good. The Tweak So my friend Lewie (You know Lewie, right? Everyone knows Lewie!) Lewie has been talking a lot about giving a real purpose to student communication.  I took this idea and tweaked the “interview your …

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18 Mix and Match Activities to Talk about the Weekend

18 Ways to talk about the weekend

A couple of weeks ago I had a short exchange on Twitter about what to do the first day after vacation. I was thought “Ooh, I know this one!” For me there’s only one activity to do after a vacation or weekend and that’s to talk about what you did.  Think about it- what do …

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Find a Partner

Two weeks ago at my Instructional Coach training, the trainer had us do an amazingly simple partner activity.  We divided a sticky into four quadrants and in each one wrote a word: Winter, Summer, Fall, Spring then we had to stand up and find a partner for each square.  We wrote the name of that …

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Voice Typing to Practice Numbers

I am always up for some good number practice.  In my perfect lesson plan there would be some attention to numbers every day- I just feel like students always need more practice.  Of course, there’s a ton of ways for students to practice listening to numbers, but not so many for them to practice speaking …

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Five Activities to Challenge Students Beyond Yes and No

    A few weeks ago I was  about to do an activity where I knew I was going to push students to expand their answers  (Angelina Jolie is a better actress because …..) that it got me thinking about ways we can challenge students to do than just respond with yes or no; because in addition to …

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