Featured

Textploitation for students has arrived

December 23, 2021January 13, 2022 / textploitationtefl / Leave a comment

In 2019, I remember going to a talk by Peter Watkins and one thing he said really stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing but it was essentially that what students needed in the early days of (and indeed throughout) the language learning process was lots and lots of comprehensible input. At the time it really struck a chord with me as I was learning Spanish and all I wanted to do was read, read, read. Sadly, the only graded readers I could find were pretty rubbish and much to my chagrin, I just couldn’t understand the news in Spanish. It was very frustrating.

Well, with that in mind we decided to bring Textploitation directly to learners of English with Tiny Texts for Learning English. The plan being to give learners the opportunity to read a little & learn a lot.

If you have students who need to work on their reading, send them our way. They’ll find recipes, diaries, stories, articles, reviews and much more, all at their level. With each text, they get a little task that helps them exploit what they’ve just read. They even have the opportunity to push themselves, produce something related to the text and get feedback from us and our community.

Click here to see more.

Howard’s End: Reading for natural reactions – high level learners

April 12, 2020 / textploitationtefl / Leave a comment

So, the origins of this lesson go back to the sunlight times when I taught the Cambridge Exams. Forster’s Howards End was a set text for, I think, CPE. I always loved the three letters that begin the book and those who have followed this blog for a long time will know a lot of the earlier lessons had a literature base. This then, is a return of sorts.

The text itself gives us the chance to do some Danny Norrington-Davies style grammar activities and the chance to really look at how we examine gist.

As always when I use some Literature in class it is only fair to draw attention to Gillian Lazar’s excellent book: Literature and Language teaching.

There is a lot of reading in this lesson and this gives us the chance to look at prepositions as part of chunks of language.

Level: advanced C1/C2 (High upper Ints could maybe manage if scaffolded well)
Aim: to examine tone and how it is conveyed in an authentic text
Time: 2-3hrs

Materials:

Worksheet word doc: Howards End Worksheet
Worksheet PDF: Howards End Worksheet
Letters word doc: Letters
Letters PDF: Letters

Procedure:

For all of these activities I would recommend asking the students to look on their own first and then work in pairs or groups.

Reading and Reaction

The reading here aims to give the students the chance to react more naturally to the text than the standard gist questions. Answers obviously some are subjective here. Your job is to probe the reasoning. I have put some answers below. I would give them time to read, and then put them into groups to answer the questions.

How old do you think Helen is? (Why?) perhaps young – refers to aunt, whole style of the piece
What is the relationship between Helen and Meg? sisters
Who do you think Tibby might be? brother
Who are the Wilcoxes and where did Meg and Helen meet them? family they met while travelling
What is the impression given of the Wilcoxes? Sporty – different from Helen’s family

However, accept any reasonable answers. Here the key is to encourage the students to engage and come to their own conclusions.

Vocabulary from context and co-text

This activity is about building a skill rather than teaching ‘key’ lexis. We want the students to be able to work out meaning from context and co-text. The students will enver need the word wych-elm, but they will need to be able to see when a lexical set is being referred to as it is here.

it is a tree and they can see this from the following sentence ‘I quite love that tree already’
There are 6:

‘Also ordinary elms, oaks—no nastier than ordinary oaks—pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine. No silver birches, though’

Focus students on the reflective activity, we want them to know why we have done the task. Ask them where they can use it next.

Grammar Focus

This is about moving away from established rules and looking at why a tense or structure is used and how they work together. This can be important as a lot of students can trot out the rules for tenses but don’t seem then seem to be able to use them productively. This type of activity aims to address that.

mostly present simple as it is a series of descriptions of things as they are now. e.g. ‘it is old and little’
This extract gives the chance to see different tenses interacting.

I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. She evidently loves it. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out.

Which tenses are used here? past simple / present simple / past continuous
What difference in meaning do the different tenses show us here?

Past simple – used for main activity in the anecdote
Present simple – Helen’s comments on it
Past continuous – an activity that happened over a period of time in the anecdote.

The interesting thing here is the present simple which is used in an interesting way. The other two tenses follow what we would expect in a story.

3. Now look at the conditional in the sentence below:

…if you shut your eyes it still seems the wiggly hotel that we expected.

What type of conditional is it? Does it refer to present / past / future / all time? 0 conditional talking about all time
Why is it used here? I think to give them impression of this being like a dream – the idea of being able to go back to their assumptions about the house and people who live there.

Reading and Reaction II

Now look at the letter again and answer these questions

Is there anything unusual about the letter? things have been omitted, lots of fractured sentences, the use of burn this
What impression does Helen give us about Aunt Juley? that she is boring
Can you think of three adjectives to describe Helen? Any answers fine
Use your phone to find a picture of what she looks like to you and compare with your neighbour. Any answers fine

Reading and Reaction III

All answers in this section are up to the students, you should put them into groups and let the students discuss them before coming together in all class feedback to check them.

Preposition focus

The aim here is to get the students to focus on chunks of text. Too often students think of prepositions without seeing them as part of larger chunks.

There is the secondary aim in that looking in the letters for the answers gives them scanning practise.

We can scarcely pack in as it is
… and there are the stairs going up in a sort of tunnel
I must get on to my host and hostess
… she kept on smelling it
how good of her to come
the others do not take advantage of her
I laugh at them for catching hay fever

Reflection

These questions are just to make them realise the point of the different activities so put them in groups to discuss and monitor.

There is a lot more you can do with this text if you wanted, but these are some hopefully interesting things.

Invisible Women: Independent Research Skills

March 7, 2019March 6, 2020 / textploitationtefl / 2 Comments

We feel strongly that one of our jobs as teachers is to encourage discussion. For this reason, each year we write a lesson for international women’s day (9th March) in an effort to increase discussion on this topic specifically.

You can find our previous lessons here, here and even here. Or, you could try our latest one.

This lesson marks a bit of a departure from our norm as I will not actually be encouraging the use of the whole text and I will be encouraging you to allow your students to use their own phones to read the text…I know, I know. But the way I see it, people these days don’t tend to sit down with a broadsheet and read it cover to cover, they dip in and out of articles online and follow the trail wherever it takes them. I wanted to reflect this in class.

Note: I will include the text as an attachment for those whose students to not have access to the internet in class.

Objective: by the end of the lesson, students will be more confident researching online and reporting their findings.
Level: Upper int / Advanced
Time: 1.5 – 2 hours

Material

Teachers’ Notes:

Discussion:

This is a simple discussion designed to create interest in the topic and see what learners already know.

Introduction:

I find that learners can sometimes rely heavily on their own language / sites for internet research. The idea here is that they consider googling in English.
By the end of this section, they should have googled the key words from the article and found it on their phones. They should all be ready to read.

Reading:

This is quite a tricky article. There are a lot of cultural references and high level language. I would like the learners to choose which of these they look up. Whether it is specific words or information, it should prepare them to discuss the main point of the introduction.

Reading 2:

I have specifically chosen not to read the whole article here as I didn’t want it to take away from the research and discussion and I wanted it to mirror real life. If they’re really interested, they’ll read it themselves later on. If not, that’s ok. They can move onto something else.
I think it’s important to engage with the text and the facts but I wanted them to consider how they would tell others.

Useful phrases:

I’ve just given them a few phrases here. I would encourage them to report their favourite facts to each other, using some of the phrases.

Engaging with the article:

It is important to give them space to discuss the article, perhaps in ways you might not have imagined. I’ve tried to leave this as quite an open discussion. Feel free to add questions or poke and prod as needed. The aim is to encourage discussion and to see where their interest is taking them.

Language Focus:

I’ve isolated the introduction here as it is quite important to understanding the whole article but there is quite a bit of tricky language in here. I’ve focused on the 4 words that students might be thrown by or might need to describe the article:
- patriarchy / prejudice / jaded / neophiliac

Independent Research

Learners follow the instructions and choose something related to the article to google. They make notes, following the research tips.
They then report what they’ve found to their partners. Remind them to use:
- the reporting language
- any key vocab from their research
- key vocab from the text they’ve just read

Reflection:

I always think it’s important to take time to reflect. They haven’t just read part of an article today, they’ve learnt how to engage with online articles in English and report what they’ve found. This can be applied to any interest.

Further practice:

Take them to a news website (e.g. BBC News) and let them run free on their phones, researching a story / topic they like.
In groups, they can report back to their partners.

Hand in hand, arm in arm, we all read together…

November 21, 2018November 21, 2018 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

I should say that this is not a lesson but rather an idea to put into your reading lessons.

Recently at my school we were running some sessions on developing reading skills and I remembered a website I used to use quite a lot to help students read more quickly and to read in chunks instead of one word at a time.

The idea is simple:

Choose a text
Copy it into online teleprompter software
Choose the speed
Set the task
We all read together…

For students who tend to read one word at a time instead of in chunks, it forces their hand a little.

There are just a few things to take into consideration though:

Your students may find it stressful at first. It’s very important that you explain to the students what you are doing and why you are doing it.

The task must be appropriate. It should probably just be a gist question as you are asking them to skim read the text really.

It’s important that you don’t just test their reading skills. You have to help them to develop. After choral reading, discuss how they felt, what their strategies were. Discourage them from reading one word at a time.

My favourite website to use is this one as it’s easy to use and soooooooooooooo free.

Check it out and let us know how you get on.

Responding to a Reading – Critical Reading

June 17, 2018 / textploitationtefl / Leave a comment

Continuing the theme of IELTS lessons, this is another that looks to help students with their exam but also their university studies after.

This looks to explore what arguments are being made and then asks students to respond to them. Stance and criticality are key elements of university study. The ability to understand a writer’s ideas and then use them in their own writing will be tested but sometimes perhaps gets lost in the IELTS classroom. This is a lesson which will work a little on reading skills, but which mostly seeks to prepare students for university. That in turn makes it suitable for any high-level class.

Of course, you can, and should, do all the other lovely textploitation things with a grammar and lexis focus.

Level: IELTS / Advanced / Proficiency

Aim: To give students an opportunity to examine a writer’s opinion and respond to it.

Procedure:

Reading Skills – Prediction

Direct Students to the worksheet and put them in pairs to discuss what the terms could mean. Focus students on the form of the words. Remember to stress the importance of prediction as a reading skill.
Read to check – Now ask the students to read the text and find out what the two terms mean. Ask the students which reading techniques they will use: ‘Scanning’ to find the terms and then ‘deeper reading’ to understand.
To check understanding and practice paraphrasing, ask the students to write their own definitions. Encourage them to think of synonyms and to use different grammar structures. This might be a time to bring in the idea of plagiarism if they haven’t discussed it before. Below are the sections of the text that would need to be paraphrased:

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a policy whereby a financial payment is made to every citizen, unconditionally, without any obligation to work, at a level above their subsistence needs.

Half-Earth – the simple but profound idea that environmental repair could come from allocating half the Earth’s surface primarily for the benefit of other species

Reading – Note-taking

This skill will help with IELTS tasks such as matching, but it is a skill I encourage all of my students to do every time they read an exam text. Ask the students to skim read the text – set a time limit (5mins) – encourage them to take notes in the margins.
Now ask them to compare their notes to their classmates. Make your own notes and see how similar your students are.

NB The article roughly fits a situation / problem / solutions / questioning solutions and conclusion structure.

Reading – Stance and argument

Ask the students to reread the text and look for the writer’s opinions. Then follow the instructions on the worksheet.

Answers: People would still work; break link between work and consumption; ability to say no to undesirable jobs; chance to think long-term

Answers: Reforesting already in action / our views on nature are forged by our society / re-establishing humans as part of nature / seems popular

note taking on different sections – explain how it helps with matching

Students’ Reactions

Ask students to work in pairs or small groups and discuss the points on the worksheet.

Writing: summary and reacting to it in an academic style to be set as homework.

When marking, encourage students for their content, don’t just mark the grammar and the vocab. Look at the structure, arguments and how they are supported and their paraphrasing / summarising skills.

Materials:

Word Doc: Text
PDF Doc: Text
Word Doc: Worksheet
PDF Doc: Worksheet

Original article taken from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/12/universal-basic-income-and-rewilding-can-meet-anthropocene-demands

Reading and tense discovery: “I caught a falling baby”.

April 16, 2018April 17, 2018 / textploitationtefl / Leave a comment

So, the inspiration for this came yesterday at the Pearson Amazing Minds day in London. Ken Beatty mentioned this story and as he put up one of the direct quotations, I found myself just looking at the past tenses thinking, “ooooh, lesson”. I really am that dull.

The lesson itself is fairly standard textploitation. We have a text, we are going to look at the grammar used, look to build learner autonomy with the vocabulary and investigate a litte bit of pronunciation. Also borrowing in the grammar from the wonderful Danny Norrington-Davies ( https://dannynorringtondavies.wordpress.com/ )asking students to identify what the grammar is doing and why it is used.

Like with all textploitation this focuses on a little and often.

Let’s go.

Level: Intermediate (with support) / Upper Intermediate / Advanced

Objective:

By the end of the lesson, students will be better able to analyse language in context and to recognise subtle differences in meaning.

Aims:

To analyse language in context (vocab / grammar)
To build the skills needed for the above
To practice the schwa and connected speech

Time: 2-3hrs

Procedure:

Pre Reading:
Prediction task.

Write the phrase “I caught a falling baby” on the board and ask students what they think happened immediately before.
Ask them to create and build a back story.
Put them into pairs or groups for this.
Then do feedback as a class.

Prompt them with questions such as where did this happen / when. Also, ask them to justify these answers.

Reading:
Skimming

Ask them to quickly find out:

Where the story took place?
How the baby got out of the apartment?
Why was it not surprising the woman caught the baby?

Natural Response

Place the students into small groups and ask the following questions:

Did you find the story interesting?
Did anything surprise you?
Do you think the woman is a hero?
Do you think that the parents of the baby should be punished?

(you could break these questions into two sets if you prefer)

Grammar:

Rather than looking at the whole text this lesson breaks the text into little chunks.

Make sure the students really look at the function and use of the grammar. Do not let them just trot out grammar book rules.

Exercise 1

(picture is of Christina Torre just for context and as the sheet was looking dull)

“I’ve always known that I’m very quick with my hands. If someone throws something, I catch it almost before I’m aware it has been thrown.”

present perfect and present simple
Present perfect is used to describe a skill / ability that the person has had for ever. – the adverbs ‘always’ is a natural fit here. Present simple is used for a fact / ability. Encourage the students to think of how the present perfect and present simple work with each other.
0 conditional + the present perfect time clause
0 conditional is used to refer to something that always happens “If someone throws something, I catch it”, the present perfect here relies on ‘almost before’ and I think places the time close to the first ‘throws’ in the conditional. It doesn’t neatly fit any rule, and that is important for you to get across to your students.

Exercise 2

For these put students in pairs to check before doing all class feedback.

“I was going to visit a friend with her newborn and was on my way to a toy store to buy a gift. I’d once lived in the neighbourhood and on a whim I decided to head back to my old haunt, a cupcake shop, for a coffee.”
Vocabulary

On a whim (adverbial phrase) – spontaneously – normally used in positive stories. It is important to let students think about connotation as well as meaning

I decided to head back to my old haunt – My old haunt – a place i used to spend a lot of time in. Get them to give you examples of their own ‘old haunts’ and provide examples yourself. Also, worth highlighting the meaning of head back to here.
Grammar

Past version of be going to used to talk about a plan that did not happen.
Past simple used for the main actions in the story.
Past perfect used to refer to a time before the time of this story.

Extra – ask if they can find other examples of these tenses being used.

Exercise 3

“I just wanted the child, who I later found out was called Dillon, to feel safe”

extra info
yes

(if they ask about why there seem to be two clauses in the relative clause I told them that find out always needs an object) sentence could be rewritten as just “who was called Dillon”. If they don’t ask, I wouldn’t raise it at this stage)

Exercise 4

We didn’t practise together, but I guess my reflexes must have naturally developed.

it could fit in the beginning, between the clauses, or at the end. (Though) We didn’t practise together, (though) I guess my reflexes must have naturally developed (though).
The first place sounds more formal, the middle is possible but quite informal(to me, not so natural), the end is also informal

I was approached by a typical Brooklyn older man, who in a calm and very matter-of-fact way told me to call 911, because there was a baby on a fire escape.

because –> as / since
because (informal / neutral), as (neutral), since (formal)

(If you wanted here you could extend this by asking them to rewrite using ‘despite’ or in the second sentence maybe think about restructing using ‘so’

Exercise 5

“what would have happened if I hadn’t caught him.”

“if we let intuition lead us, we can deal with anything.”

A – elicit the form from students
Imaginary / hypothetical past – to talk about regrets or how situations could have turned out differently. “If I hadn’t been late, she wouldn’t have dumped me”
It talks about every time / general time. It is general advice for the future.
It is used at the end, to provide a motivating ending / student’s own answers may be more interesting than that.

Exercise 6

Vocabulary

This is focused on developing learner autonomy, so do not let them use dictionaries until they have tried to work out the meaning themselves. Explain why, get them to think of substituting other words etc.

looking around nonchalantly – without a care
baby boy became my only priority. – my main focus
Apparently he had slipped through pieces of cardboard – people told me (might suggest surprise)
Instinctively, he grabbed on as he fell, – without thought
my attention was purely focused on my intention to catch the baby – purely means solely or only here
As he tumbled, he hit a protruding plastic sign – tumbled – fell / protruding – it was sticking out
it turned out it was only his lip that had been cut – we later found out
Dillon’s parents had been woken by the commotion – the noise and fuss

Exercise 6

The reality of saving someone’s life is intense. I play it over in my head so many times, I think it has changed me. I am calm and more at ease with things. I study mindfulness, and I see now that if we let intuition lead us, we can deal with anything. I think I was meant to be there.

This paragraph has present simple / present perfect / past simple and a 0 conditional. Again get them to think about why each tense is used – sometimes the reasons are not the same as earlier.

Pronunciation

The idea is to look at the schwa and the effect that it has on rhythm when we are speaking.

Schwas are in bold (different native speakers may decide differently. To me, this is the most likely.) Connected words underlined

‘The reality of saving someone’s life is intense. I play it over in my head so many times’

Ask the students to practice saying the words, model and drill, but really focus on the schwa and the connected words.

If you wanted to do further work, you could ask them to work in pairs and select another piece of direct speech and examine it, looking for the same features.

Further practice:

You could ask students to find a news story that they found interesting and examine the grammar in it. Bringing it to a future class and asking them to explain it to others in a group and discussing it.

Materials:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/18/experience-i-caught-falling-baby

Murder Mystery Part 3 & 4

July 18, 2017July 20, 2017 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

So, this is the follow up to the lesson: https://textploitationtefl.com/2017/07/11/modals-of-deduction-a-murder-part-1-2/

It has quite a bit of listening, they are included here, but feel free to rerecord them using colleagues. They are not my finest.

Aim: to practice modals of deduction / create opportunities for using them in speaking. Reading and listening practice and vocab building.

Level: Pre-Int / Int / High Int / Upper Intermediate (The lower levels will find it challenging, but that is fine, as long as you tell them it will be, and provide lots of scaffolding and support)

Procedure

Reading:

You could do this as a jigsaw reading, where the students have different information they have to share with each other, if you have the right number of students, or you could dictate one and get students to do the remaining two as a jigsaw. Alternatively, you could pass them all to the students.

For further reading on Jigsaw readings see: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/jigsaw-reading

Vocab:

Answers: A – 4, B – 6, C – 1, D – 5, E – 3, F – 2

Modal verbs:

Just an opportunity for the students to practice the target language. Encourage them to share ideas and support them with linking words. As groups ask them to present the questions or pieces of information they would like to be able to say who committed the crime.

Listening:

This is challenging, you might need to play it more than once. For the answers try to encourage the students to give fuller answers.

If they are really struggling you could ask them to read it and listen at the same time.

Answers:

No they have different interests.
He says they get on fine as they avoid each other.
He wanted Adam to take over the family business.
He uses it for his photographs.
Obviously this is subjective, but no, he is rude, arrogant – try to get the students to explain this.
Not happy at all.
Yes very.
Working with stones from the fruit trees – encourage students to think why this may be significant.
He didn’t say what really, he just said some tools.
It’s normal / he is surprised it is illegal.

Encourage them to think further about the new evidence and to make suggestions. If you have time get them to build up a picture of what they think happened and explain it to the class.

Prepositions

on
of
at (but in also works)
up

Optional task

This is something I like to do, but can easily be left out, ask the students to find a picture online using their phones which represents what they think the three characters look like and ask them to justify their choices.

Modals

Encourage the students to make statements using must have and can’t have related to the story.

The ending

I did this as a cut up and asked them to match the sections to the different times shown below.

9.00
11.00
11.45
15.00
16.00
18.30

The end is in order, but the times are attached in the tapescript page.

After, ask the students to explain in pairs or groups what has happened in the story to check understanding. Monitor and do all class feedback.

Ask them what surprised them / annoyed them about the story.

Follow up:

I asked them to write a short newspaper article which enabled us to practice passives and recycle some of the vocabulary seen. I did it as pair work, but of course it could be done as homework.

Materials:

Worksheet Word: Murder Mystery part 3 & 4
Worksheet PDF: Murder Mystery part 3 & 4
Tapescripts: Tapescripts

Adam Brown

Jim Birch

Leslie Forbes

Modals of deduction – A murder – Part 1 & 2

July 11, 2017May 2, 2020 / textploitationtefl / 4 Comments

So, I have been teaching modals recently and I wanted to make modals of deduction a little more interesting. Voila: here we go.

This lesson has a lot of reading, which should give the opportunity for some past tense work as well as lexis.

It’s a murder mystery and the students work out who did it from clues, gives them the chance to work as pairs.

It is a challenge; I haven’t really altered vocabulary too much. I hope though that it gives them some good reading, grammar and speaking work.

It is also a long one, so I am serialising it. The next section is here: https://textploitationtefl.com/2017/07/18/murder-mystery-part-3-4/

Aim: to practice modals of deduction / create opportunities for using them in speaking. Reading practice and vocab building.

Procedure:

Start with the reading – Part 1.

The aim of the gist is just to get the students thinking about the set up of the story. For me the answers are all in the text except for the 4th question, which is all about opinion. Some students said they were rich, others poor. At this stage that doesn’t matter, but encourage them to justify why they think that. Here is also a place for them to use modals so you could board some examples.

E.g. He’s sat at a desk so they might have a study so they could be rich. / They have two floors so the can’t live in a flat.

She is the dead man’s wife. / widow
They are married
He has died
We don’t know, but see above
Not in London – “she was away in London”

Ask the students to write 3 sentences describing the situation using could / might / must in the present.

The vocab section encourages learner autonomy, try to discourage them from using dictionaries.

a) wrist
b) icily cold
c) slumped
d) tut
e) pulse

Modals:

First use of modals: monitor and board examples, correcting errors and encourage them to think about the pronunciation of have – /əv/
Group feedback – see what the students think – get them to talk to each other in groups.
board examples and correct errors

(Feel free to do other normal textploitation things, such as focusing on the tenses used. I use it to ask the students what the pronouns refer to as I often find these are overlooked.)

Pronouns:

Ask the students to underline the uses of ‘it’ in the text.

The room felt icily cold as she walked into it. Her fingers felt for the light-switch on the wall. It was never where she thought it was. She found it and suddenly the room was bathed in light. Her husband was where he normally was, at his desk. He was slumped over and was sleeping. She walked over to the desk, put the lid onto the open bottle of whisky, and tutted. She didn’t like him drinking so much, but he always did when she was away in London. She ran a hand through his hair. He felt cold. She pushed him back so that she could look at him. It was then that she realised something was wrong. She stared at him, he wasn’t breathing. She grabbed his wrist, no pulse, nothing. Upstairs her son was woken by the sound of uncontrolled screams.

what does each one refer to?

the room
light-switch
the light-switch
the light-switch
the moment she pushed him back

Reflection: Ask students how the text would be different if ‘it’ hadn’t been used.

Extra:

N.B. I was unsure that my students had fully followed all the details of part 1 so I asked them to act it out in small groups, I had 12 so I put them into groups of three, one of them being a director and telling the others what to do. I was surprised how willing they were and it ended up being really good as a way of checking understanding in a different way and gave the class a different feel.

Part 2

Prediction: Encourage your students to take guesses about the victim from the photo and only then let them read the report to check their assumptions.

Students read the police report, take notes and discuss ideas as to what has happened, have their ideas changed?

Checking understanding:

Ask students to decide if the following questions are true or false – ask them to try to answer from memory – they can check after.

He has been married once.
He sometimes plays golf.
He owns a company making computers.
He is well off.

Answers:

false
false – he is a keen golfer and member of the club, probably plays more
false – distributes components / parts
true – owns two houses

Vocab:

Read the forensic report and ask them to match the definitions to the words in the text.

a) the deceased
b) appeared
c) condition
d) intruder
e) other substances
f) laboratory

Listening:

Ask the students to take notes and then compare them in groups. I played the recording 3 times.
Then ask them to decide which pieces of information was the most important for the case.

Below is the tapescript with the sections I think most important underlined

Hi is that the chief inspector? Good, good. This is Laura Donavon from the lab. Right, I have some information for you. Mr Brown did not die of natural causes. In fact, from the tests we’ve carried out on his body we are 75% sure he died of poisoning. Yes, I know. We examined the crystals in the glass and it was definitely poison. Now, this is the really interesting bit. We think it was cyanide, and I know what you are thinking, but let me tell you a bit about cyanide. It can be swallowed, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin and it stops people being able to take in oxygen, causing an ‘internal asphyxia’. The victim suffocates to death as he breathes in oxygen he cannot use. Yeah, not very nice is it. Yeah, yeah, effects are almost immediate. Oh, and you might want to know something about this, it can be made from the stones of fruits as well as from chemicals, so something for you to think about there. Yeah, good luck with the enquiry.

Reflection:

Once the students have understood this, ask them to reflect on what they know so far and what they think may have happened now.

More to come soon and let us know what you think.

P.S. thanks to Jess for recording the text for me. x

Materials:

Word Doc: Murder Mystery part 1 & 2

PDF Doc: Murder Mystery part 1 & 2

Listening:

Reported Speech: Trump in Quotes

June 18, 2017June 22, 2017 / textploitationtefl / Leave a comment

So, I was challenged by a friend to write a lesson using Donald Trump’s quotes for reported speech. It was tricky but here it is.

The idea is largely about bridging the gap between the language rules and the real world. We don’t always just step back a tense, very often we focus on the message and paraphrase.

Objective: By the end of lesson, students will be better able to report longer pieces of speech.

Sub aim: to encourage students to think about using their language / synonyms to understand difficult words in context.

Time: 2 – 3 hours
Level: Intermediate and above

Materials:

Trump in quotes

Ads on the Tube – Reported Speech

April 3, 2017 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

So, I’m a huge fan of using adverts for lessons. I suppose my aim is that if I do it often enough, my students will go out and start analysing these tiny little snippets of language themselves. There’s so much interesting language out there plastered all over the walls. Now, obviously not everyone lives in an English speaking country so the opportunity might not be there but there are ads all over the internet or maybe it’s our job to bring these ads to them.

Either way, here’s yet another lesson using an advert from the tube. If you’re looking for others, you could try:

Level: Elementary / Pre-Intermediate

Time: 1 – 2 hours

Objective: By the end of the lesson, students will be more aware of how to report speech in English.

Aims

To analyse context
To read between the lines
To analyse language in context

Materials:

Tube ads – reported speech

Procedure:

Intro: the idea here is just a discussion to get them thinking about the idea of using ads for language analysis.
How to say: This is a word I find sts often struggle with and there is quite a difference between British English and American English. I personally think it’s easier to steer them towards “ad” or “advert” which I feel are more common anyway.
Reading between the lines: The nice thing about this ad is that it seems quite obvious to us but only if you assume the reader knows about the Tube, knows about how people can sometimes treat tube workers and understands that this is a child speaking.
Vocab focus: This is a straightforward matching exercise and by the end of this and the previous discussion, sts should be able to answer the single comprehension question, thus showing they have read between the lines.
Language focus 1: This shouldn’t take too long or be too taxing but it sets the sts up for the final practice section and encourages them to analyse language when they see it.
Language focus 2: For some of them this may be new. Take them through it one step at a time and they shouldn’t have any issues.
Practice: This can be adapted to any kind of story that might be relevant for your learners. Something short and snappy that might encourage them to use reported speech is the key.
Final reflection: Discuss with the learners what skills they have practised today and how they could use them in their real lives. Encourage them to tell short anecdotes at the beginning of the next lesson. Encourage them to bring in pictures of ads they have found.