Use of English Part 4 Made Fun. CAE

I knocked up a little powerpoint with some of my students favourite activities to practice UOE part 4. This is for the Advanced exam but it can be easily adapted for CPE and FCE.

There are 4 basic "games"

The first one is to simply remove the word. students then try and guess the newly transformed sentence and with it the missing word.

The second is a little more tricky. One student (S1) has to sit with their back to the board. The other students (S2) work out the answer and must relay the answer to S1. S1 then has to guess what the first sentence is. This is an excellent activity as it makes students think carefully about exactly what grammar they have used. Whether S1 has to use a noun or a verb. If it's a set phrase or a phrasal verb. It's really tough at first but once they get the hang of it they seem to really enjoy it.

The third activity is mix and match. Students have to find which sentences match and then try and guess what the answer is. They are provided with all of the words, however, they have to figure out which one goes with which question.

The final activity is by far the most fun. It's exactly the same as the previous one but done with glue and a piece of card. Students are given six questions cut up into their various parts. They have to stick them down in the correct order, with the correct word and then figure them out.


I hope you find this useful. My class and I spent a full hour and a half working through these as did my CPE class last year. I was told it was the most useful class they'd had in terms of exam prep, so I hope your students like it too.

You can find the PowerPoint just here and the Cut and Stick workshet here.

Enjoy

Unfill and Fill it yourself

Something all teachers understand is how much work goes into the preperation of classes. With a little bit of experience planning time is reduced massively but when it comes to prep we`re all accutley aware of how much time it takes. That's why we all love the internet so much. Ideas can be shared, used, reused abused adapeted and so on. For those quick ideas I love the internet.

One thing I love even more, however, is learner autonomy. Students taking charge of their own learning. I, like a great number of you out there, also like to take this one step further. Rather than the students simply being in charge of their own learning why not let them take charge of their fellow students learning. The best source of information, support and materials is obviously the students themselves.

A week or so ago I posted a blog with a questionnaire about my students so I could tailor the class to their needs, likes and desires. I've used this in my classes to get my students more involved in class.

Added to this I've always been keen on students taking control of the class and teachers sitting back and shutting up. The esl classroom is a place for students to learn and use the language they're learnt. Not a place for teachers to fulfil their unacheived ambitions of becoming an actor and hogging the entire class.

The first small step towards this, as I've found, is asking students to create their own gap fill exercises. First for a song they like (as you can see here.) Then for a part of the Use of English exam from an article they have read.

Here is a very basic lesson plan for this kind of actvity.

1. After using the questionnaire here to find out some of the things your students are interested in, suggest a few different websites or blogs they could read to improve their English. A number of my students love football, I tell them to read BBC sport or I trawl back through the archives of the joy of six from The Guardian news paper. Here's a great one about Hipsters' favourite football clubs.

2. Next I ask students to read their text.
If they're making a part 1 reading activity I then ask them to write 5 or six multiple choice activities for the text.

3. For reading part two simply take out a few seperate sentences and invent a few new ones.

4. If they're making a Use of English part one I ask them to select two paragraphs and remove words they can then find synonyms for. Particularly those which are parts of phrasal verbs or have a strong collocation or a dependent preposition.

5. If they are making a Use of English Part 2, again just two paragraphs this time removing the function words like prepositions, pronouns, relative pronouns and so on.

6. The final exam part I usually ask students to do is the UOE part three where they remove words from the text and place a root word as a hint. The word formation activity. I try and make sure they find at least one negative within their text.

You can do this next part in a couple of different ways.

7. I tend to use these examparts as a quick review in class and i get the students who has prepared it to correct the work and then explain to the group why each answer is what it is.

An alternative option here is to get all of your students to do one part then in the class do each others work, then mark them together. I find this good as a fun way to do it but far less productive than the other option. With option one there is real ownership of the work and you're provided with a wider variety of exam practice.

This activity can take a little while to get into production but once it gets going you'll see some remarkable results and the constant search for past exam papers can slowly come to an end.

It also takes the fear away from the exams as they see just how easy it can be when you know what you're doing.

A mob with a bad rep. Clippings and their uses

Good afternoon one and all,

I trust this finds you well. As I mentioned previously, my recent Advanced and Proficiency classes have been based, almost entirely, around the book, "The Story of English in 100 Words." By David Crystal.  I've also previously mentioned my desire to get students reading in English. Now it seems in class they do an awful lot of reading, of course they do, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get through the exams that are constantly thrown in front of them. But while they're reading do they actually digest any of it? Do they process any of the information? Do they learn from it? The resounding answer I get from other educators is No. Students smash off the part of the exam they have and then completely forget about it. I can say with some degree of certainty that if you asked your students to tell you something from within an exam part from a day or two previous, they wouldn't have a clue. What's most upsetting for me is the fact that one or two of the Cambridge exams have some mildly interesting content and students could learn from them. There is also a huge amount of new vocabulary that they could take in.

It's for these reasons that I have tried to get my students into memes to peak their interest. Along with this I've started to bring non-exam related readings into class. Things that I enjoy and can share my passion with my students. I have also started a new project with students to bring in articles about the things they enjoy doing. The endless reems of Real Madrid propaganda is beginning to get somewhat tiresome though.

As you may have seen with yesterday's post I talked about Americanisms especially related to Harry Potter. My students really got into this, used the worksheet on the back and actually digested some of the information. Of course, some of the boys didn't really care much for the reading and went straight for the worksheet, others just didn't do it. But a good 50% of the class, took interst, paid attention to what they read and have now improved on what they already knew. Much like with the words Debt and Money from Mr Crystal's delightful book. Some of the students have really started to realise that paying attention to a words etymology can really broarden their vocabulary. And let's be honest at Advanced and Prof level expanding on vocab and seeing the world or new collocations out there is exactly where we need to be taking our students.

With that in mind I took another word from the book, Rep. This time, rather than creating a worksheet, I gave the full text to my students and let them read it through. Next I gave them a cut version of the text with UOE parts 1 and 2 incorporated into the text and asked them to give it a try. Those who care about what they read did very well, those who don't, not so well.

The worksheet is attached at this link Rep sheet. With the original here Look for Words. Something else I've been doing for a while my students is to get them to read their text and make their own exam parts for their classmates or to do each others. Again it shows students that they really do need to read what is in front of them and they can learn an awful lot more that way. It also allows them to own their work and take the class themselves. This step towards autonomus learning can end up being a giant leap.

Next class go back and check what they've learnt and how much of it  has stuck.

'til next time