It is no news that practising a language with games makes boring work much more fun and as a result much more effective, too.
I am always trying to create opportunities to practise the language in a motivating manner and although I had already mentioned using random wheels such as those of Wheeldecide, I have recently been caught up in such a frenzy of wheel creation, inspired by the enthusiasm of my students of all levels & ages, that I thought I should share some of them here, in the hope of inspiring you to create more of these fun wheels. 1 - END OF YEAR REVISION (or as a STARTER for the new school year) The last days of school are always difficult to manage with everyone tired & looking forward to the holidays. So I devised a game with a wheel of random questions based on the content of the class book (in this case DIGITAL ENGLISH FILE ELEMENTARY & INTERMEDIATE) for my adult evening class students. Easy to play: hit the wheel & take turns in answering the questions. It was a great success with my normally not so easy to engage adults & at the end of the game everyone had practised speaking various times whilst revising a year's content. Would make a great starter revision activity at the beginning of the year, too. Create your own wheel based on your classbook or wheeldecide.com or feel free to use mine:
2 - TENSE REVISION
Combining two wheels can provide endless combinations of effective, fun learning. Take my TENSE REVISION WHEEL and combine it with a wheel you make specific to vocabulary or expressions you are studying (for example a DAILY ROUTINE WHEEL). Then spin them both: get students to say (and perhaps write for consolidation) what comes out: SIMPLE PAST + GET UP = Yesterday I GOT UP late. PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS + WAKE UP = I HAVE BEEN WAKING UP in the middle of the night recently. As you can see, the game can be useful for all age-groups & ranges of ability.
3 - FREQUENCY ADVERBS & CHORES
Similarly for elementary students needing to practise frequency adverbs & simple present tense, my 3 wheel game can be an effective way of repeating the sentence structures until they become second nature: Spin the SUBJECT PRONOUN WHEEL , FREQUENCY ADVERB WHEEL & CHORES WHEEL and say or write what appears paying attention to the third person: He always sweeps the floor. We never do the washing up. Add a fourth wheel, the AFFIRMATIVE-NEGATIVE-QUESTION WHEEL, for a complete cycle of sentence structure training.
4 - GETTING TO KNOW YOU
This wheel can be made for various age groups & used at the beginning of the year as a class or even better in pairs (on tablet or mobile phone). I also used it at the end of my school year as a way of consolidating acquired knowledge with primary school children.
5 - VOCABULARY RECOGNITION IN PICTURE
Choose a detailed picture (for children I like those for the Cambridge Starters exam - yle-starters-word-list-picture-book) and teach the vocabulary, verbs & expressions. Then write them on a wheel, spin & have the children identify the various words & expressions but showing them to you in the picture.
Remember to click the option to make the wedges on the wheel disappear if you don't want to repeat them.
Let the WHEELDECIDE and have lots of fun!! Please add any ideas of your own in the comments. Follow these tips and enjoy helping people learn English easily!! Your English fluency teacher, Susan
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 Today I'm here to talk to you about how graded readers can improve your English. Now I know you are always very busy and that reading is something you can't do whilst you're doing other activities. However, there is a fantastic website which I'd like to recommend to you because you can download an e-book absolutely free and you can download the audio accompanying it. That means you use the audios whilst you're driving to work and you have the PDF or even mobi for kindle or epub for Apple devices so that you can read them, too. You can read these books and whilst you're listening or you can listen and read separately but the fact that you're using your ears to listen and your eyes to read these are two senses which will help you consolidate the expressions such as phrasal verbs, vocabulary, the idioms and the grammatical construction of a sentence. This means you won't have to use traditional text-books to practice your English because you'll be picking it up very naturally as if you were in full immersion. That's why I recommend you read a lot but these books are especially good because they are graded according to levels and this means you'll start with a low level and you won't have the frustration that it's too difficult for you. Then as you improve, as you experience success, you'll be motivated to go to the next level and if you do it very gradually you'll notice the improvement very, very quickly and English will become very natural for you. It'll actually be very good if you sometimes stop an audio and then just repeat it with the same intonation and so also improve your fluency. The website is called https://english-e-reader.net and these are graded readers. You can download them or read them online for FREE. The website is divided into elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced. These adapted books are one of the best and most interesting ways to increase your vocabulary and improve all your English skills quickly and easily. There is a very wide choice of books of all kinds from classics to quite modern books so you can really choose anything. Every book will show you the book cover, give you a small description of what the story is about, tell you how many total words there are and how many unique words. It'll also give you a few words that you may not know. What's exciting is that you can also download the mp3 versions so that you get them all. I think it's quite exciting actually because you can also have the audios to listen to when you don't have time to read. That way you make sure you are 'reading' a little every day but also practicing your listening skills. There are lots of audiobooks on the web but very often they've been it read by volunteers and they're not a very professional nor particularly exciting. Instead these are really read by professional actors in an exciting way with background music to give the atmosphere just like in films. That's why I recommend this website rather than other ones because at NO COST you have a really professional audio. I suggest you use this website so that you can improve your English by practicing daily listening, reading or listening and reading together. Tell me if this suggestion was useful to you and I'd love you to comment in the box below how you get along with them. Your fluency teacher, Susan  Chants are a very repetitive way of embedding expressions in the brain so that they become second-nature and just 'sound right' without having to resort to learning grammar rules and translating from one's own language with the inevitable often horrific results. I have been setting expressions to music and rhythmic chants for decades with excellent results. What did you do today? is an action song for kids, which, through repetition, teaches the question form in the past simple tense, the answer with relative prepositions, shop vocabulary, infinitive of purpose and prepositions with transport. The idea is that you fix these expressions through repetitive chants so that they flow from your mouth spontaneously when you are speaking, without having to think. After having written and recorded a video of the song I realised it contradicts my lessons on the Present Perfect Tense always being used with 'today', 'this week' etc. and according to the grammar books you shouldn't use 'today' with the Simple Past Tense. This proves that a language is alive and more flexible than the rigid rules of a grammar book because the sentence is completely natural and widely used. The explanation lies in the fact that this question is asked at the end of the day when the events have already taken place and therefore are considered to be in a period which is completely finished, therefore using the Simple Past Tense despite the word 'today'. I hope you have fun with this repetitive chant. You can download the worksheet to the song below. Hope it's useful! Susan 
 International venues are the perfect place for you to practise your English & for me to discover mistakes which I can teach my students to avoid. Today I'm at the European Inline Speedskating Championships in Portugal & the speaker is doing an excellent job of introducing the skaters and cheering them on, giving us the results in a variety of languages, the main one obviously being English. He speaks it very fluently and comprehensibly but makes mistakes because he sometimes thinks in his own language and uses the wrong collocations. As we were leaving the track, for example, he kindly wished us, "Make a good lunch!" Now MAKE LUNCH means to prepare it whilst he almost certainly meant, "Have a good lunch", because HAVE LUNCH means to enjoy lunch. So it's very important to learn chunks of language to sound as natural as possible. Chunks can also be longer groups of words which are always used together. When you read, listen to native speakers and watch films, observe the sentences which are used repeatedly together and learn to use them so you sound natural. Chunks are like Lego pieces of different colours, sizes & lengths. You can build them together in various combinations but you will always sound more natural than if you translate. Take my word for it, use chunks to sound more natural! I hope these tips were useful for you! Write some chunks in the comments box below for others to learn. Your English fluency guide, Susan  Why is thinking in English really important? I've always stressed that listening is the first thing to help you learn English naturally with all its expressions, grammar, collocations and phrasal verbs. The more you listen, the better you'll be able to absorb all the grammatical structures. On the other hand, you also need to practice speaking. All this can only be done if you're thinking in English. How can you think in English? It's not as difficult as it seems: you have to incorporate it into your daily life and the best way is to talk to yourself. So if you're alone, it's no difficult feat; of course, if you're in company, it's a little harder. I have tested it on myself: I have taught myself a little Spanish and I always practiced when I was driving. What you have to do is to literally speak to yourself - you see a pedestrian who is crossing the road in the wrong place and you think, “Well, couldn't he have gone on the zebra crossing?”, that is, if your level of English is at least pre-intermediate, but you can also say, “Oh look at that man: he's not on the zebra crossing!” That's for beginners or for people who have less experience learning English. What you have to do is to use the little language you do know and say it out loud to practice your speaking & pronunciation - at the same time, you'll inevitably be thinking in the language. I always recommend incorporating it into daily life. I often send my students out of the lesson saying, “Okay, now open the door, close the door.” As you're walking towards your car you can think, “Hmmm, where are my keys? I'm putting my hand into my pocket; I'm pulling out my keys; I'm putting the key into the .... “ Not everyone will know the word 'lock' - 'to unlock the car' but you make a mental note, “Okay, I don't know the word for that thing with which I open my car.” When you have time, you can either google the word on your smartphone or when you get home you can look it up in the dictionary. Not knowing a word mustn't worry you. You have to just carry on and say, “Okay, so I'm opening the door; I'm pulling the door; I'm getting into the car; I'm closing the door; now I'm turning on the engine and so on.” Speak to yourself during any of your daily activities - when you get out of bed: “I'm going to the bathroom and brushing my teeth”. Use any activity where you can speak to yourself out loud. If you're speaking out loud you're sure that you're thinking in that language and don't be deterred by any vocabulary you don't know. Simplify - use simple words to express things and make a mental note of the words you can't think of. Then check them and if you do this regularly - you don't need to do it all day but regularly every day, regularly in any case - you'll see that your pronunciation will improve and also that you'll be thinking in English. Thinking in English is one of the first steps to improving it, to making the language become yours, to make the language become part of your being. That's when you start really improving because if you can listen a lot, speak a lot and think a lot, you're already on the way to raising the level of your English or any language if it comes to that. So don't forget: think in English... speak out loud... you'll notice the dramatic improvements within a couple of days. Hope you implement this advice! Please write in the comments box below how you feel after trying it out for a week or two! Looking forward to your comments, Your English fluency guide, Susan My personal experience... So many students complain that they'd like to practice their English but they don't have enough time. Other high-performing businessmen and athletes manage to squeeze in a lot of activities into one day. What's their secret? How do you spend your commuting time? Is your commuting time WASTED time or GAINED time? When my son was only three years old I chose to send my children to a very good school which was about half an hour's drive from where we lived. Now many people I know criticized that choice, saying that we would have been wasting our time two hours a day because it was a 30-minute drive one way and that was only one of the many disadvantages. In reality it turned out to be gained time because, on the two laps with my children in the car, going to and returning from school, when they were young, we sang songs, spoke to each other, told each other stories, practiced various languages and as they grew we also did spelling as well as times tables but what was most important is that we spoke to each other about our concerns, our worries and in particular, any questions about life they had we discussed: the existence or not of Father Christmas, human reproduction, smoking, drugs and all things which were concerning them as they grew up. In that commuting time I managed to also teach them what I thought were the values of life so we built a really deep relationship through commuting and talking together - we were strapped in the car, we couldn't escape from each other and we really got to know each other; I got to trust them and they got to trust me. It bonded our relationship and I know that if we hadn't had this commuting time we wouldn't have built such a strong relationship because I would have done my own thing in the house, with all my household duties, whilst they would have gone to play and it wouldn't have been such an opportunity - so if you use this commuting time wisely, it is only gained time. Not only was it quality time when we were together, but on the journeys where I was alone, on the way to pick the children up or coming back from having dropped them off, I used the time to discover the joys of audiobooks. I had really never used audiobooks and that's when I started discovering how exciting they are! Then I started learning Spanish and realized the advantages of language learning in the car, so for me commuting does not only have the disadvantage of the hassle - sometimes I'm stuck in a queue - commuting isn't only something negative, it's something positive. So that's why you, who I'm sure are very busy, as I always have been, can take advantage for your language learning too because you can listen to podcasts, you can sing songs in English, you can listen to various audio books in the language you're studying and take advantage of audio courses where you listen, where you repeat and even if you don't want to do any of that, you can just talk to yourself in the language you're studying - for most of you that'll be English: talking to yourself will help your jaw get used to forming the words in the language you want to become fluent in and, best of all, nobody can laugh at your mistakes! As a result you'll feel very confident and the more you talk to yourself in this language, even if you're making mistakes, it doesn't matter, you improve your fluency. That's why I think that taking advantage of commuting time means that when you get home you've done your daily dose of teaching yourself a language or practicing it and then when you're home you can dedicate your time to relaxing, doing sports, spending time with your family and that's very important, to have the feeling that you've done something for yourself, without stealing time from the things that you love, which are not necessarily language learning. This is why I've developed this course where you can, while you're in the car, listen, repeat and practice your fluency, practice your listening comprehension and practice your grammar because the exercises, over the weeks, gradually revise the grammar from easy to difficult including phrasal verbs and typical expressions. These are all things that you can do, in particular, in the car whilst you're commuting - I recommend you don't just use the time for listening to music and chatting to your friends on the phone but actually as a kind of training for yourself. Now take advantage of it, see the positive side of it! I teach a lot of doctors; I teach a lot of people who are really, really busy and don't have much time but do commute. These courses are especially useful for people who have a very busy schedule so if you think that you'd be interested, download these courses I developed especially for you busy people - try them out. It's only ten minutes a day every day and you can listen, repeat and practice all your skills - the only skill that isn't really contemplated is writing but that you can practice in the comments box here below. This course was actually conceived for listening and repeating; so download it - the first week is absolutely free – if you find it's useful then you can go on my website and check out if you want to buy one or more weeks of the subsequent course. Turn commuting time into GAINED TIME and enrich your life! I hope you found these tips useful, your fluency guide, Susan P.S. Check out my podcasts to download & listen to whilst commuting if you have no time to watch my videos! How about answering some exciting WOULD YOU RATHER… questions? - Susan’s Conversation Tips13/6/2017 Answer my questions motivating your choices!!  Stimulating students to speak is always a challenge. Would you rather... questions give students two specific choices to discuss and they can give their personal opinion moving on to the next question but it can also be subject of debate in class – each standing for their own opinion and trying to convince the others... Do you know the meaning of WOULD YOU RATHER...? Would you rather means would you prefer... and I have five exciting would you rather questions for you to give you some food for thought: Now, I'd like you to write the answers to these questions in the comments box below because it's exciting to hear all your different opinions. 1. Would you rather work for yourself or for an employer? Would you prefer to be an entrepreneur or would you prefer to work for someone else? Personally I don't enjoy working for an employer because I'm a very independent person and I like to do my own thing so that's my answer... but what about yours? 2. Would you rather spend the night in a luxury hotel or camping surrounded by beautiful scenery? So spend the night in a luxury hotel or would you rather go camping and be surrounded by absolutely beautiful scenery? Would you rather stay in a luxury hotel or camping? Well, my answer to that one is I love nature so I have no doubt that I would enjoy camping in most beautiful scenery. 3. Would you rather win an Olympic Gold Medal or win the Nobel Peace Prize? Now that's a difficult one because both are really exciting but personally maybe I'd like to impact the world with peace and therefore win the Nobel Peace Prize even though a gold medal sounds really exciting at the Olympic Games. What about you? Write your opinion in the comments box. 4. Would you rather have your 1st child when you are 18 or 40 years old? Now I didn't really plan on having children that late but it so happens that I was closer to 40 than to 18 when I had my children and despite it not being a choice, it turned out to be very good for me because it gave me plenty of time to do all the traveling that I really loved and then it rejuvenated me because I had to face all the challenges of bringing up two young children at not such a young age so I wouldn't recommend 40 but if it so happens, don't worry about it because it can be really exciting and rejuvenating. What about you? What's your opinion? 5. Would you rather your kids wore a school uniform or clothes of their own choice? Would you rather they had the possibility to choose their own clothes every morning? School uniform or your own clothes? Well, I went to school in Britain and of course there we all have a school uniform so I didn't even think about it but then later my children wore their own clothes to primary school so when the school implemented a uniform at middle school we weren't too happy about it. However, it did work out to be very practical because you got up in the morning and didn't worry about what you were going to wear; you always knew that you had the school uniform to wear so it wasted less time in choice it also reduced our wardrobe. A uniform does have the effect that there are no comparisons: “look what I'm wearing”, “mine is nicer than yours” and so on, as can happen in some schools. So I suppose a school uniform is not a bad choice after all. Now what are your opinions on these would you rather questions? I'm looking forward to reading your answers in the comments below. I hope you find these questions stimulating. Susan 10-minute-a-day FAST FLUENCY TRAINER on-the-go: Why I decided to develop this course and its REVIEWS3/6/2017 Please leave your REVIEW in the COMMENTS below... I wonder if you are like me…. There are so many things that interest me… books, art, music, creative activities, sport… and so I promise myself every week that I’ll find time to read a little, do daily exercise, both to improve my physical and mental health but then… - I want to do my best in my job so I spend a lot of time reading up on the latest developments, I take courses to update my professional skills… - I have a family that needs my attention and with whom I want to spend quality time… - a household that needs managing and taking care of... … and so the days slide by and weeks turn into months and before I know it another year has passed without doing anything for me personally, something I believe I need. This is the reason I decided to develop this course for you, my Fast Fluency Trainer. The idea behind it was to give people the possibility to train their fluency, their speaking skills, while commuting, going for a walk or doing household chores. The beauty of it lies not only in being able to practise without taking away time from all your other activities but it gives you the possibility to speak in private, without feeling that someone is listening and judging you. This gives you the feeling of freedom to make mistakes and experiment with your mouth the different sounds you can make at different speeds, because language can sometimes be a tongue twister and your mouth needs to be exercised. If you practise just 10 minutes a day for 7 days I promise you will feel the language flow easily from your mouth and you will be excited to feel this improvement not only in how easily you speak but also to how well you express yourself naturally without too many grammatical mistakes. So take on the challenge right now - what have you got to lose? Download my FAST FLUENCY TRAINER exercises onto your phone and start listening and repeating them! … and don’t forget to let me know if you found them helpful by adding your comment below!STOP TRANSLATING!!! DESCRIBE, DEFINE and EXPLAIN the meaning IN CONTEXT! - Susan’s Student Tips26/4/2017  Did you know that TRANSLATING is very BAD FOR your FLUENCY and generally for learning to speak English well? Now why is that? Well, translating is really, really bad for your fluency because in other languages or in every language, actually, the WORDS are PUT TOGETHER in DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS so no language will have the same combination of words to express an idea, to express the concepts and therefore translating makes no sense because you will have the exact meaning very often word for word but when you want to reuse that expression, you'll put together the words that you have in your mind, you'll translate them and not necessarily put them together in the correct order. So what does that mean? Let me give you an example: for years I've been fighting a problem that many of my students have when they talk or write about themselves and the typical phrase they say is: "my family is composed of four members" or "my family consists of four people", in any case always wrong compositions of words, so what should one really say? One should really say "there are four people in my family" that's what a native speaker would say or "there are four of us in my family" or "my family is made up of four people". The other words are technically and grammatically correct but no native speaker would say them so it makes no sense to use words that don't sound natural, that no native speaker would say. That's why translating is really, really bad and the only way to overcome this is to IMMERSE yourself IN THE LANGUAGE, first of all but secondly to make sure that you USE DEFINITIONS RATHER THAN TRANSLATIONS that so when you don't know what something means, look it up in the dictionary of the same language you are studying, for example English-English and look for the definition or ask a person what it means by explaining it to you, defining it so at that point you'll have the expression embedded in your mind in the correct format and you won't make a mistake - you'll just learn" there are four people in my family" or "there are four of us in my family" and you won't even think of using any other expression. Translating should be used at a very, very high level when you are really advanced to understand abstract concepts which are not so easy to define so I'm not saying that translating is absolutely wrong but certainly it should be used for the very occasional word which doesn't fit in any context that you can define and understand, so practically very rarely. Another example I can give you is that there was an expression when I moved to Germany which I presumed meant something and I never ever translated it because it fitted into every context really, really well. However, after three years this word didn't fit into that particular context, so I looked it up in the dictionary and what I had interpreted as its meaning was ninety percent of the time correct but there was a ten percent possibility of using a meaning which was similar to that one but not identical and that's where I needed to use the dictionary because it didn't make any sense to me. In any case, that took place three years after having heard and used this expression perfectly correctly in all contexts. So FORGET TRANSLATING! Try and immerse yourself in the language, listen to a programme, sing songs but also looking at the lyrics so you pick up what I call blocks or chunks of language. It's the chunks you have to learn in the correct sequence of words and then you won't make any mistakes because you'll be saying the complete chunk correctly just very naturally the same way as any native speaker would do so. Therefore that's what I recommend: don't translate, pick up the language by listening, repeating, absorbing the language just as children would do; children absorb the language without translating - they just pick it up from the context. Follow my advice and improve your English! I hope you find this useful. Susan 
Image Credit: Author: Rafi License: Royalty-free, Free for personal and commercial use
GETTING TEENAGERS INVOLVED in English LESSONS is a difficult task since this is an age when many lack motivation for things which they are relatively interested in. In fact my best students are the ones who love watching YouTubers in English, listen & sing songs in English and are generally active on social networks with people they ‘meet’ from around the globe.
So this lesson on Social Media worked surprisingly well in my class of 13 year-old teenagers, some of whom do not usually like participating actively in English conversation.
https://tekhnologic.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/nomination-cards-giving-students-a-chance-to-speak/
The students participated actively and it was an overall successful lesson. Try it out for yourselves! I hope you find this useful. Please leave any comments below and if you like this blog, please subscribe for more updates. Susan
 How can we GET STUDENTS to LEARN A LANGUAGE BY USING IT so that they BECOME CONFIDENT and FLUENT? First of all LEARNING has to be FUN for younger students and at least ENJOYABLE for adults.
    
 The results are amazing because they not only create sentences easily but also practise the use of the 3rd person and consequently have to remember the addition of the ‘s’. The games I have been using recently are a complete success in the amount of fun the students have not only playing but managing to create a lot of correct sentences with the pronouns I, he & she, the frequency adverbs and a time expression. I have introduced affirmative, negative & question dice for older and more proficient students. I recommend trying it out for yourselves! Check out my latest Household Chores Routine Song for some language to make playing cards with, as well as my recent Morning, Afternoon, Sports & Clothes Routine Songs I hope you find this useful. Please leave any comments below and if you like this blog, please subscribe for more updates. Susan
 Image Credit: Google Arts & Culture features content from over 1,000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online. Many exams involve describing, comparing and contrasting pictures as well as hypothesizing about them and giving opinions.
I love using artwork in my English lessons as it exposes people to lovely works while practising language skills. Using the GOOGLE ART PROJECT a few years ago I expanded a painting to its maximum size to expose incredible details not normally visible to the eye, at the same time making the painting difficult to recognize. This is excellent to hone describing skills as well as hypothesizing about its style and artist, hopefully leading to recognizing the painting. I therefore CHALLENGE YOU to SPEAK ABOUT this SECOND IMAGE of the painting and SEE IF YOU CAN GUESS what PAINTING it is! More images of the same painting to come soon… Write your answers in the comments below! Some language to use: In my opinion… I think it’s… The dog could be a … Mongrel Bulldog Terrier Poodle Setter I’m not sure… could may might It must be… It can’t be… I don’t think it’s… Perhaps it’s… Maybe it’s… This activity can also be done in pairs so as prompt each other with questions such as: “What do you think?” “Do you agree?” “Have I missed anything?” I disagree. I hope you find this useful. Please leave any comments below and if you like this blog, please subscribe for more updates. Susan  Image Credit: Google Arts & Culture features content from over 1,000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online. Many exams involve describing, comparing and contrasting pictures as well as hypothesizing about them and giving opinions.
I love using artwork in my English lessons as it exposes people to lovely works while practising language skills. Using the GOOGLE ART PROJECT a few years ago I expanded a painting to its maximum size to expose incredible details not normally visible to the eye, at the same time making the painting difficult to recognize. This is excellent to hone describing skills as well as hypothesizing about its style and artist, hopefully leading to recognizing the painting. I therefore CHALLENGE YOU to SPEAK ABOUT this FIRST IMAGE of the painting and SEE IF YOU CAN GUESS what PAINTING it is! More images of the same painting to come soon… Write your answers in the comments below! Some language to use: I’m not sure… could may might It must be… It can’t be… I don’t think it’s… Perhaps it’s… Maybe it’s… This activity can also be done in pairs so as prompt each other with questions such as: “What do you think?” “Do you agree?” “Have I missed anything?” I hope you find this useful. Please leave any comments below and if you like this blog, please subscribe for more updates. Susan Something YOUR BODY USES TO LEARN WITH…  The five senses are expressed in many different ways in the English language, making us 'feel' these senses depending on what words we choose to use. Unusually teachers do not dedicate too much time to teaching them, robbing us of 'rich' sensations which are fundamental to learning about everything around us by touching, smelling, looking, hearing, tasting and feeling. FIND OUT more about THE DIFFERENCES in HOW TO USE these FIVE IMPORTANT WORDS by WATCHING this VIDEO!
 EUROPEAN INLINE SPEEDSKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS 2016, Heerde, NL Credit: Timsimaging.nl International sports events bring people from all over the world to compete together - English being their common language of interaction. Some speak it better and some speak it worse but somehow, even basic communication illustrated with explicit gestures is sufficient for them to understand each other. The real problem arises when the cameraman makes a closeup of your face while someone interviews you live about your performance. I travel around a lot to follow my children in their international speed skating events. We are just returning from Holland after an eight day European Speed Skating Championship from which I can proudly say my daughter is returning with one silver medal and one gold!! She confirmed herself European Champion in exactly the same race as she won gold in last year. A part from my children, who I made sure speak fluent English (bilingual with Italian), all the other athletes from different nations had varying degrees of difficulty and/or shyness to let themselves be interviewed. Those from Mediterranean countries having many more difficulties expressing themselves in English & so avoiding interviews or speak telegraphically: 'Yes', 'No', 'Very good', 'Very happy'.  Laura Lorenzato GOLD MEDAL in 10,000 POINTS RACE, European Speedskating Championships 2016 I have therefore decided to prepare some basic questions and answers with which athletes can prepare themselves to face a television camera with more confidence and answer the interview questions a little more professionally, making the interview also a little more interesting to listen to: Interviewer (I): "Hi, you have just won a gold medal in this race. How do you feel?" ATHLETE (A): "I'm really excited. I trained really hard to reach this level and this is the result." Interviewer (I): "Was the race difficult?" ATHLETE (A): "Well, it was a little fast/slow/tricky but I managed to come first." Interviewer (I): "What are your next goals?" ATHLETE (A): "With these results I hope to be able to take part in the .... Championships." These questions were conceived to be very general so they can be used for various sports. If you have any interview questions & answers you'd like to prepare specifically for your sport then please contact me through my website or also here. Don't forget to subscribe to my blog so as not to miss any blogposts. If you'd like to improve your listening and speaking skills take a look at and subscribe to my YouTube channel.  Laura Lorenzato SILVER MEDAL in 20,000 POINTS / ELIMINATION RACE, European Speedskating Championships 2016 CREDIT: Timsimaging.nl  THE HISTOMAP is the first historical map I have found which presents 4000 years of history and the relationships between populations at a glance! Below are just a few ideas, vocabulary and expressions to ask questions with: - Prepare questions using: How long...? Which... ? When... ? Where... ? Who... ? etc. - Comparisons. ' - more powerful than - the most powerful - as... as - New vocabulary, verbs, passive tense and collocations: - conquered (by) - reign lasted - were in power for - lasted - weak / strong - great - destroyed (by) - short-lived - long-lived - Western / Eastern world - Middle-East - developed - grew - maintained - people vs population You can download THE HISTOMAP below. I found it freely downloadable in Internet .. Hope you find some stimulating questions to ask with it! Susan If you have NO TIME to STUDY but want to improve your English in 10 minutes a day, while you are DRIVING TO WORK or MAKING DINNER, check out LEARN ENGLISH NATURALLY with GUIDED FLUENCY & LISTENING PRACTICE ONLY 10 minutes a day take you a very long way… http://bilingual-communications.weebly.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html Also check out MY PLAYLIST for more of Susan's ESL Learning Videos (Chants & Songs) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrvV_PywFOlxgfR5RpMw7rLsI6ai3yHai
Songs always bring a breath of fresh air into the SONGS in the classroom: GRAMMAR GALORE – intermediate / advanced / teens / adults lassroom and are greeted with joy. I usually try to choose songs, which are not only clear and fairly easy to understand but have meaningful content for language learners such as grammar, phrasal verbs or vocabulary pertinent to what we are studying. A wonderful song full of all kinds of grammar and expressions that is for intermediate / advanced students is HOLLYWOOD – Michael Buble. The catchy tune is fun to listen and sing along to whilst the rich assortment of language leads to all kinds of possible adaptations for practice – some of which I have suggested at the end of the document to download. You can download the worksheets to the song below. Feel free to delete or translate the Italian into another language. Can anyone suggest any other songs for practising grammar revision? Hope you have fun with it! Susan
If you liked this song, check out my playlist for other chants and songs:
YOU TUBE PLAYLIST: Susan's ESL Learning Videos (Chants & Songs)  Chants are a very repetitive way of embedding expressions in the brain so that they become second-nature and just 'sound right' without having to resort to learning grammar rules and translating from one's own language with the inevitable often horrific results. I have been setting expressions to music and rhythmic chants for decades with excellent results. GOOD AT is an expression which many of my students just cannot remember and I would like them to be able to use collocations spontaneously - so I have invented this chant in the hope of fixing this expression forever!! You can download the worksheet to the song below. Hope it's useful! Susan 
 Many of my fluent English students make mistakes that make their English sound UNnatural. One of these is when narrating events, they tend to say ... and AFTER I went shopping… instead of saying ... and afterWARDS I went shopping. AfterWARDS… means ‘after THAT’ and it avoids having to repeat what was mentioned earlier: I brushed my teeth and after brushing my teeth I went to bed. To avoid repetition we say: I brushed my teeth and afterWARDS I went to bed.  So next time you narrate a series of events, remember to say: First… Then… AfterWARDS… Finally… and your English will sound natural. I hope you find this useful. Susan
 NUMBERS – many students are confident speakers of English, yet when it comes to reading numbers out loud they stop, panic, stutter and nothing comes out. So instead of practising these unseemingly complicated digits, they shy away from them and never become confident in saying numbers. Yet in reality numbers are not at all complicated if you know the rules. Numbers are everywhere and form an important part of language speaking whether you are a tourist or a businessman. Numbers come in all kinds of formats: they can represent a statistic, a price, a date, a year, a time, a temperature… just to name a few. So let’s have a look at how to say numbers: Presuming everyone knows the basics of numbers from 1 – 100…
unless we are referring to the years between 2000 – 2009
only since the turn of the century in American English it is acceptable to continue this system referring to the year as
 Let’s analyse how to say longer numbers easily: 9, 876, 543 - to practise and gain confidence start from the end: 43 – forty three 543 – five hundred and fortythree and- it’s important to always say the AND after the word hundred even if we usually abbreviate it with ‘n ) 6, 543 – six thousand, five hundred ‘n fortythree 76, 543 – seventysix thousand, five hundred ‘n fortythree 876, 543 – eight hundred ‘n seventysix thousand, five hundred ‘n fortythree 9, 876, 543 – nine million, eight hundred ‘n seventysix thousand, five hundred ‘n fortythree as you can see, it’s really easy and only a question of practice. I recommend reading any numbers you see around you – the number of the car in front of you at the traffic light, street numbers and many more surrounding you in daily life… always start from the end until you become confident. 
Gain confidence with numbers - the more you practice the easier it gets! You can download this document for easy reference. Hopefully this will have clarified numbers for you. Susan 
  The QUESTION CHALLENGE: a fast, fun, highly effective and exciting question formulating activity for any tense or level.  Give each team of students a hotel reception bell (raising your hand is a less exciting alternative). Show only the first sentence with question prompt on the Interactive Whiteboard (or write it on the board).  The first team to ring the bell (or raise their hand) gets to formulate the question.
 The game should be fast paced for more fun and effective quick thinking  The questions I attach in the download are to be formulated in the simple past for A2 level but depending on the type of sentence, higher and lower level challenges can be prepared. The challenge ends when all the questions have been formulated. I hope you have fun with this activity. Susan
VERBS & TENSES practised in a FLEXIBLE CARD GAME – HAPPY FAMILIES created with younger students29/4/2016 – a fun activity to practice the different VERBS & TENSES after having MADE THE GAME TOGETHER with the students…   GETTING STUDENTS INVOLVED IN LESSON PREPARATION will make the CONTENTS MORE MEMORABLE...
ONE GAME – MANY VERBS & TENSES: This blogpost is the development of a previous one I had written on involving students in lesson preparation for Happy Families. Before the digital era I had dedicated many days to preparing a large set of Happy Families cards based on vocabulary sets: cutting out pictures from magazines, writing in beautiful handwriting in different colours, covering the cards back and front with transparent sticky film - no laminating in those days. After much fun play in class, my bag of carefully homemade teaching resources was stolen from my car together with my old school uniform, I kept to show my students. So I lost all motivation to create a new set. Recently, however, I felt the need for that very useful game and realized that in the digital age it would be much easier to recreate. I suddenly realized how well it would also work with verbs and am now in the process of making a pack of cards for verbs and another for vocabulary which I shall share in due course. Not having any cards ready, I decided to involve my students of varying ages in creating sets of cards based on different VERBS and explaining the rules at the same time. THE GAME WAS A HUGE SUCCESS because, HAVING PARTICIPATED IN ITS CREATION, it was EASIER TO REMEMBER THE VOCABULARY and WORDS. As a result I have decided I will involve my students in lesson preparation more often in order to make learning more memorable for them. The cards are very flexible: using VERBS allows for TENSE PRACTICE during the game. Depending on the level of the students you can ask: Have you got “go swimming?” Yes, I have. Are you “going swimming?” Yes, I am. Do you “go swimming” everyday? Yes, I do. Did you “go swimming” yesterday? Yes, I did. Have you ever “gone swimming” in the ocean? Yes, I have. Will you “go swimming” with your friends? Yes, I will. Do you like “going swimming” in lakes? Yes, I do. … and so on…
For those who don’t know how to play HAPPY FAMILIES:
You can download the game below in two versions:
Hope you have fun with it! Susan
 English pronunciation has no logic but if you LISTEN carefully you will be able to hear the SUBTLE DIFFERENCES between how a NATIVE says a word & how a learner of English will read a word. DON'T READ! LISTEN & IMITATE the sound you hear - that's the correct pronunciation! Don't be distracted by the way it's written - LISTEN & REPEAT IMITATING!! 
 Tricky ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION Made Easy is a series to HELP students PERFECTION their PRONUNCIATION in difficult areas of English. Want to speak like a native? Say FACEsssssssBOOK SsssssssLOWLY like a SsssssssNAKE.... Learners of English tend to pronounce the letter S before a consonant at the beginning of a word like a Z so they ZMILE when it ZNOWS; they like ZWIMMING ZLOWLY and they offer UZ a ZLICE of cake just to give a few examples. It gives USsssssss GOOSEsssssssPIMPLES to hear that they live in a HOUZE, that they post THIZ photo on FAZEBOOK! So if you want to speak like a native pay great attention to how we pronounce the letter S in various contexts: http://youtu.be/zMbxBm3gpO8 You can download the picture below. I hope you find this useful. Susan 
 Tricky ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION Made Easy is a series to HELP students PERFECTION their PRONUNCIATION in difficult areas of English. Pronouncing HUNGRY with a clearly AUDIBLE H and the subsequent letter U with a VERTICALLY OPEN MOUTH (opening the top jaw UP and the bottom jaw DOWN) seems problematic for some students who need to practise this movement and sound very consciously. In contrast there is the pronunciation of ANGRY where absolutely NO H must be heard and the initial letter A must be pronounced with a HORIZONTALLY OPEN MOUTH (opening the MOUTH WIDE from SIDE to SIDE). CORRECT PRONUNCIATION is often UNDERESTIMATED by students who repute us to be exaggerated in our precision but even teachers may have problems understanding a student who does not pronounce words correctly let alone a person on the street or members of an audience at a conference. Therefore CORRECT PRONUNCIATION is a very IMPORTANT part of language acquisition. PRACTISE PRACTISE PRACTISE !! You can download the picture below. I hope you find this diagram as useful. Susan  |
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AuthorMy name is Susan Brodar, born in London into a multilingual family and brought up bilingual English / Italian. Archives
December 2018
 
Connecting Online Conference (CO16) PRESENTER
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