FCE Speaking Practice

Good day one and all,

I'm not sure how easy you guys find it to get fresh and new FCE speaking practice. It takes me a while. I decided this year to just make a few new parts every week. It's a work in progress but there are a good few practice parts on the link below.
I like to give my students a couple of minutes at the start of every class to get used to the format of the exam and remove any nerves they might have when exam day come around.
I find the grab activity works really well with drilling useful language.

https://sites.google.com/a/thenglishouse.com/harry/

https://docs.google.com/a/thenglishouse.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=dGhlbmdsaXNob3VzZS5jb218aGFycnl8Z3g6NTMxZWI0ZDFjNmJiZjA2NA

I hope you find them useful.

H

Parts of a Picture

Here I am then, back from the dead and ready to share more love with everyone.
I always use this picture at the start of a course. Especially with B1 whereby they have to describe a picture. I've found it useful with B2 classes as well as it gives students areas of a picture to compare and contrast. Most importantly though I actually find it useful language for students and not just exam bashing.

downlaods available above as always. (Just a few materials)

'Til tomorrow.

Speaking Part Three. What´s in Your Kitchen?

I thought today would be as agood a time as any to share one of my favourite and most successful ideas. I’ve found most books have a unit on food so I use this in conjunction with that unit. I usually do this as a two-three phased activity. First I remind students of the useful kitchen vocab before starting the task.I use either the worksheet below, or at this link https://sites.google.com/a/thenglishouse.com/harry/, or the PowerPoint on the same page. 

This actuvity, with the ppt, improves students timing during part three of the speaking exam, the discussion. It also helps with speculation(use the previous post's language grab to further aid students with speculation). The uses for the pictures are below. Have a guess at each one before you look ahead. 

Phase three of the kitchen discussion involes the students a great deal more. I ask each of them to bring their favoutire kitchen utnesil to class and then give them three minutes to answer the same question as in the activity below. This time with more confidence and a better knowledge of what the kitchen gadgets are actually used for. 


Vocab:  Phase 1

Task: Phase 2 (Works really well with speculation language grab).

1. All Round Avocado Tool. 2. Orange Squeezer. 3. Potato Masher. 4. Knife Sharpener. 5. Strawberry Huller. 6. Salt and Pepper Mill.


Students bring their own utensils: Phase 3.

As always you can follow new updates on twitter. @sirhofthebomb

Until tomorrow and more bright ideas.  

Language Grab - Speculation

Something I always find amazing is how unwilling students are to speculate. Rather than take a guess at what something might be they tend to say they don't know. Be it a picture in an exam, how people are feeling, an answer to a question or just what they're going to do at the weekend.  I use the below activity in the same way I do with my previous two posts.
Laminate, cut and pass them to your students.

I like to use them to help students describe pictures like the one below.

Ask students how the tree got like that? How long it's been there? Which animals it may have effected?

I can´t be sure but I think…	Obviously
I imagine	Probably/Perhaps….
Without a doubt	I´m pretty sure that
There’s no doubt in my mind that	It’s clearly
I guess	It must be
I don’t really know but if I had to I would choose…….	If I had to hazard a guess
It might be	It could be
To my mind	I reckon

Zombie Outbreak

Constant speaking exam practice can be rather dull for both teachers and exam students. Sadly, as we all know what's important during the exam isn't the students' opinions, it's the language that they use. Creating new, more interesting, speaking exams can engage your students a great deal more and lead to a much livelier debate.

Below is an idea which will forever be popular among teenage students, even more so now with the ridiculously popular TV show the walking dead.

I have to give huge props to Matt www.tiredwireframes.tumblr.com for the Zombie idea.
As always the PowerPoint and worksheet are availiable for download @ https://sites.google.com/a/thenglishouse.com/harry/

So now you've got them interested, how do you get them to use relevant language and stop repeating themselves over and over again? More on that later.