Well, it's been a while hasn't it. Too long some might say. How on earth have we gone on with our lives without your frequent updates Harry? I don't know, but it seems you have and so have I.
I recently took my ESL presenter train, well bus, off to Madrid for TESOL Spain 2014. Despite speaking at 09:30 on a balmy Sunday morning I got a pretty decent turn out, so thanks to everyone for showing your faces. Upon my return I've jumped right back into work and a mere three weeks later here I am, posting again.
There'll be a few more posts over the next few days because my brain has been simply overflowing with ideas.
This first one came about due to my students, who are all Spanish, constant use of the word No as a question tag. Try as I might I couldn't get through to them that, while English speakers do use no as a question tag, they really aren't "supposed" to. I also explained that in an exam situation they'd be looked upon in a much better light if they used the correct question tag. Or at the very least. Right?
The question tag unit in the book came at just the right time. I started by playing question tag dominoes. Which you can see below. I just cut them up and handed them around. It's a great introduction.
(I'll add the downloadable doc to my the useful links above)
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aren’t we?
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You’re name’s Harry
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isn’t it?
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You’ve been here before
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haven’t you?
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Let’s make a move
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shall we?
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You didn’t see the film
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did you?
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She’ll be at the party
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won’t she?
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You couldn’t lend me five euros
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could you?
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You can speak Spanish
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can’t you?
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You haven’t seen Gavin anywhere
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have you?
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He’s bringing Barbara
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isn’t he?
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She won’t tell anyone
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will she?
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Give us a hand with this
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will you?
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We are all agreed
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Next I did simple matching exercise. I used this one here:
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/questions/question_tags.htm
Finally I got students to select the most obscure thing they could find in the room and played 20 questions with them. However, this time with tag questions. I started by giving them examples so they didn't get stuck on isn't it?
When the students felt they were getting closer I told them to change their intonation to a falling intonation to show they pretty much knew what it was but just wanted confirmation.
Here were a few of my examples.
We use it every day, don't we?
Marco has one in his bag, doesn't he?
It starts with a letter from the first half of the alphabet, doesn't it?
So that's all for now folks.
I'll be back in a couple of days with my newest activity Imagine if.... a great way to practice phrasal verbs and dependent propositions. Not to mention an imagination booster.
'til then.
H
Follow me on twitter for regular updates: @sirhofthebomb
The talk has evolved ever so slightly so for all y'all who saw it at TEFL del Sur, there are some new treats and one or two changes and additions.