Category: Speaking

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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SPEAKING GAMES: revise VOCABULARY, VERBS, 3rd PERSON PRESENT, PRESENT CONTINUOUS & OTHER TENSES with SIMPLE REPETITIVE GAMES

28/1/2018

SPEAKING IS NEVER PRACTISED ENOUGH at any level and one of the easiest ways to do so while also REVISING VOCABULARY and TENSES is to take a pack of flashcards such as JOBS to represent people, take a pack of VERBS such as CHORES around the house and get students to turn over one of each card creating very SIMPLE FUN SENTENCES:

Cards: BAKER / HOOVER the living room

Student 1: WHERE DOES a baker WORK?
Student 2: A baker WORKS in a bakery.
BUT the baker isn't working now.
Student 1: WHAT's the baker DOING?
Student 2: She's HOOVERING the living room.

Cards: DANCER / HANG the laundry

Student 1: WHERE DOES a dancer WORK?
Student 2: A dancer DANCES in a theatre.
BUT the dancer isn't dancing now.
Student 1: WHAT's the dancer DOING?
Student 2: He's HANGING the laundry.

As you can see, it's good to practise affirmatives, negatives, questions, continuous tenses etc.

Depending on which cards randomly appear, amusing sentences may be created.

You can practise other tenses, too:

Cards: BUTCHER / IRON the laundry

Student 1: WHAT DID the baker DO yesterday?
Student 2: He DIDN'T WORK in the bakery.
He IRONED the laundry.

Cards: POLICEMAN / MAKE the beds

Student 1: WHAT HAS the chemist DONE today?
Student 2: He HASN'T WORKED at the police station.
He HAS MADE the beds.

Cards: HOUSEWIFE / DO the gardening

Student 1: WHAT IS the housewife GOING TO DO?
Student 2: He ISN'T GOING TO WORK in the house.
She'S GOING TO DO the gardening.

The OBJECTIVE is to help students make sentences speaking and PRACTISE THROUGH REPETITION rather than through grammatical explanations. Using the language is the best way for students to learn it.

You can also introduce frequency adverbs with a dice to add fun and practise.

Please write any other ideas you may have in the comments box below.

A FUN ALTERNATIVE is to SPIN the WHEELS below to create RANDOM sentences.
(Make your own wheels at Wheeldecide.com)

I hope these ideas were useful for you!

Susan

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TOONTASTIC for GETTING STUDENTS TO SPEAK ENGLISH creating cartoons

23/1/2018

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thereby unleashing their creativity, hiding their shyness to speak English behind the characters of the cartoon.

Image credit: https://toontastic.withgoogle.com

Hi teachers and language students! Have you ever heard of TOONTASTIC?

Today I'm really excited to present to you TOONTASTIC, which I discovered very recently. It's an excellent app that you download on your phone. You then ask students to prepare, either spontaneously or with a script, a small sketch in which they take advantage of all the fun activities that are available on this to create a short story.

It's very exciting, very easy to use, can be used offline as well and I'd like to give you some examples of what some of my students created in the video below.

The very young students under age six need a lot of help with laying out the story and practising what to say before recording the one-minute scenes but older students are able to do it all by themselves. I also use this with some high school students and they can explain a scientific experiment, a historical event or represent a topic, as some 10-year olds did recently, by inventing a sketch on bullying which was very effective to convey an important message.

Image credit: https://toontastic.withgoogle.com

There are three possibilities: a 3-scene sketch called Short Story, a 5-part sketch called Classic Story or a 5-part Science Report. The students can use the characters proposed as they stand, customise them changing their colours, adding photos of the students' faces on them or drawing the characters themselves. For language learning purposes I ask them not to waste time on changing the characters because our objective is practising the English language.

There are various settings to ignite the students' imaginations and in each setting many exciting things happen such as the cannonball shooting out when ignited, the volcano exploding when touched, the cable-car starting and stopping, doors opening and closing, all activated by the students touching various parts of the settings. The characters themselves also have exciting surprises such a those whose parachute opens, those whose tongue licks out unexpectedly and so on.

As you can see, it's a very flexible app that can be used by all ages and what's exciting is that even shy students can speak because they hide behind the character and it really gets people talking. So the most interesting characteristic of this application is that we're getting students to finally speak and speak spontaneously. That's why I don't correct every mistake they make because it's better for them to become confident making a few mistakes than correcting every grammar point and then being shy to speak.

So I definitely recommend TOONTASTIC. Have fun with it, try it out and as you can see, at the end it really turns out like a real film: they also show who made it which makes it a little more fun and realistic - directed by... starring... etc.

Please write your experiences with the app in the comments below. It will be really interesting to hear all the different ways you use this app.

Hoping to have shared some useful information.

Your fluency teacher,

Susan

Images credit: https://toontastic.withgoogle.com

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Do you want some TOP TIPS ON HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH CORRECTLY WITHOUT TRANSLATING?

28/8/2017

Well, my theory is that it's best to learn to speak English, or any language if it comes to that, naturally. Therefore it's fine to learn grammar and vocabulary in the traditional way but that won't really help you speak it naturally.

You have to think of languages as a puzzle. Every language has its verbs, subjects, objects, prepositions, adverbs, adjectives etc. but every language has a different combination of these. If you can think of language like Lego pieces - some languages will, for example, have the adjective before the noun and others will have it after the noun, so learning all these things individually doesn't really help you to speak naturally and correctly.

So what's the best way to learn to speak naturally and as a result also write naturally? Well, the best way is to think of these puzzle pieces in bigger chunks, learn them and then put the bigger puzzle pieces together and that will help you speak more naturally.

Now, of course, you need to practice this. Practicing anything is the best way: so if you want to remember that an adjective goes before the noun, as it does in English, you have to remember the structure and practice it in many, many ways: you can say, “my sister has long curly hair, my son has short curly hair, my brother has short wavy hair" and if you repeat the structure in various contexts, slowly, slowly you'll get better at it. The important thing is to repeat the longer structure, the longer puzzle piece and then put the puzzle pieces together.

So the trick is to take chunks, complete chunks which you can pick up from books, audios podcasts, films, anywhere - you can notice notice them even in your traditional books, the ones that you've been studying; you can notice that there are pieces we fit together and then you have to practice them all the time in your daily life. For example, you know that TO is usually connected to movement so you can say, “I'm going TO the supermarket, I'm going TO work, I'm going TO church, I'm going TO hospital” and if you practice it enough “ going TO will become second nature. Of course you have to remember the exceptions, such as “going HOME” which doesn't have the preposition 'TO'.

The best is actually if you can personalize it and make it something that is important to you and therefore you'll remember it. For example you could pick your daily routine to practise using “go TO” and start off with: "in the morning I go TO work but on the way I take the children TO school then when I return HOME I go TO the gym - so if you are putting it into a personalised context it's that much easier to remember and much more meaningful.

So try it out and let me know how you get on.

I hope you find this advice useful.
Susan

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USE CHUNKS - it's NOT ONLY A QUESTION OF FLUENCY but also USING NATURAL LANGUAGE

9/7/2017

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

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HOW do CHILDREN LEARN A LANGUAGE so easily? The SECRET to FLUENCY!! - Student learning tips

25/6/2017

What's the best way to learn a language?
How do children learn a language?

Last summer I was on holiday at an international campsite in Croatia watching children and listening to how they interact with each other. There were children from Germany, Italy, Croatia, from all over the world and they were all talking to each other while playing together.

How do they do that? They listen to each other and repeat. That's also how they learn their own language.

When children are born they grow up listening to their parents and to their friends for about two years before they actually start repeating. Then they start saying words and sentences but they don't study grammar, they don't study how to read or write until they're much older. They do, however, have an enthusiasm for copying what the others say, copying the good language and the bad language.

So what's the easiest way to learn a language? Listen, listen, listen, listen and repeat - even if you don't understand. Listen and repeat! Slowly you'll pick it up, you'll understand from context and you'll be able to use the language correctly without studying the grammar. You'll be able to pronounce it correctly if you've been copying the pronunciation you hear rather than how you remember the words are written.

So listen and repeat! Listening comes way before speaking and there are a myriad of possibilities to listen to & repeat authentic language on the internet nowadays!

Try listening to and repeating what native speakers say on the VOSCREEN.com website – fun, excellent for listening practice, comprehension and pronunciation practice:

listen until you think you can repeat what they said (repeat! Not translate!)
check the subtitle to compare with what you said
don’t worry about the terrible Google translator translation – we are practising comprehension of the words in English and pronunciation – not translation!
Repeat what you hear (not what you read!!)
Continue with next 5 seconds film
Practice, practice, practice.

These are just a few tips to help you along with your fluency.

Please write in the comments box below how you find this method works for you.

If you want MORE SPECIFIC SPEAKING PRACTICE, download my 10-Minute-A-Day FREE FLUENCY TRAINER on-the-go Exercises to experience the benefit it has on your fluency and confidence in English! Follow these tips and enjoy learning English easily!!

Your English fluency teacher,

Susan

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IMPROVE your ENGLISH by THINKING in ENGLISH! But how…?

23/6/2017

5 Comments

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

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How I TURNED COMMUTING TIME into QUALITY TIME for LANGUAGE LEARNING and MUCH MORE...

16/6/2017

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!

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How about answering some exciting WOULD YOU RATHER… questions? - Susan’s Conversation Tips

13/6/2017

Dana writes:
I have just tried the fast training for fluency... it's miraculous!!!
At the end of the listening I could say the text fluently and without any mistake! That's great I'm training my muscles! Thanks Susan, this is really a good exercise!

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

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10-minute-a-day FAST FLUENCY TRAINER on-the-go: Why I decided to develop this course and its REVIEWS

3/6/2017

10 Comments

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!

Follow the path to fluency & have a great day!

Your English fluency guide,

Susan

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STOP TRANSLATING!!! DESCRIBE, DEFINE and EXPLAIN the meaning IN CONTEXT! - Susan’s Student Tips

26/4/2017

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

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HOUSEHOLD CHORES Lesson: an ACTION SONG, a CARD GAME and a FILM with QUESTIONS

27/2/2017

The ONLY WAY to BECOME FLUENT in A LANGUAGE is BY USING IT. I have therefore created A SONG TO MEMORISE EXPRESSIONS regarding housework, A CARD GAME TO CONSOLIDATE these expressions and A FILM WITH QUESTIONS TO TEST how well they have been retained.

So to start with, for the younger ones the expressions are introduced with an ACTION-SONG.

I then usually get them to play SNAP with CHORES CARDS seeing if they can think of a complete sentence using this expression, perhaps adding a little fun by ringing a bell for the first person who can think of a sentence. (Get students to draw pictures to illustrate the CHORES CARDS)

or PRACTISING NATURAL SENTENCES with SPECIAL custom-made DICE.

Every time they turn a card they have to throw one or more dice and create sentences accordingly.

Finally I show them a film with questions to verify how many of the expressions they remember. The film is about a boy voluntarily carrying out a lot of household chores for a specific reason. It’s very touching.

The results are surprising: students are constantly engaged, having fun and learning a lot!

I hope you find this useful.
Please leave any comments below and if you like this blog, please subscribe for more updates.
Susan

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SOCIAL MEDIA Lesson: A DISCUSSION followed by A FILM WITH QUESTIONS

24/2/2017

54 Comments

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.

so to start with, I divided the class into groups of 4-5 students and gave each group a pack of excellent Nomination-Cards by Tekhnologic, which have the function of obliging every member of the group to speak when called upon at random by the card that was picked. This made sure that even the shy and reticent had to participate and it really worked.

https://tekhnologic.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/nomination-cards-giving-students-a-chance-to-speak/

I then gave them a series of questions on social media to discuss which went down well since they enjoyed the topic.

Finally we watched a film simulating social media for which I had created questions which stop during the film and have to be answered for the film to continue.

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

social_media_-_can_i_be_your_friend__questions_to_discuss.docx
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nomination-cards_tekhnologic.pdf
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The PROVEN VALUE of GAMES & SONGS for LEARNING ENGLISH due to their REPETITIVE NATURE which favours memorisation.

21/2/2017

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.

so to start with, for the younger ones ACTION-SONGS represent a fun, repetitive and meaningful way to learn natural expressions easily.

once the expressions have been introduced, by action songs, flashcards or other means in the case of adults, I usually get them to play SNAP with the cards seeing if they can think of a complete sentence using this expression, perhaps adding a little fun by ringing a bell for the first person who can think of a sentence.

but the MOST INTERESTING repetitive FACTOR which HELPS the STUDENTS CREATE and PRACTISE NATURAL SENTENCES is the introduction of SPECIAL custom-made DICE with the language you would like them to practise.

Every time they turn a card they have to throw one or more dice and create sentences accordingly. As you can see from the picture, it’s very easy even for beginners or younger students to form sentences and the constant repetition helps them instill the grammatical structure naturally so they get a feel for the language just as a native learner does as he’s growing up.

Custom-made dice I have been using are:
Subject pronouns
Frequency adverbs
Time expressions
Expressions for Present Perfect (already, just…)
Expressions for Simple Past (yesterday, ago…)
Clock faces for learning to the time
+ affirmative, - negative, ? question to practise all forms
Object pronouns
Possessive adjectives

You can make the dice on the following website: http://www.toolsforeducators.com/dice/

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

chores_routine_song.docx
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sports_routine_song.docx
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EXCITING EXAM SKILLS PRACTICE 2: Describing & Expressing Opinions

30/1/2017

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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

23 Comments

EXCITING EXAM SKILLS PRACTICE 1: Describing & Hypothesizing – MAY – MIGHT – COULD

29/1/2017

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

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GET EVERY STUDENT SPEAKING with creative speaking prompts! - Susan’s Teaching Ideas

21/11/2016

25 Comments

How to GET even YOUNGER STUDENTS or ELEMENTARY students SPEAKING EASILY!

Speaking is the least practised skill due to limited vocabulary, shyness and a tendency to be ashamed of making mistakes. Yet it is the most important skill for communicating and the one which one needs most when travelling and on the job, be it face-to-face or over the phone.

So speaking is very important right from the start, even with limited knowledge of vocabulary and tenses. Getting the mouth to shape the words and making mistakes is fundamental to building confidence and practising pronunciation.

I always encourage speaking from the start even for elementary students and young children. But very often they are at a loss for ideas of what to say.

So I decided to get about 80 small pictures and laminate them, dividing them into two categories:

PEOPLE / ANIMALS / THINGS
PLACES

I put a small piece of rough velcro on the back of each and made ‘velcro boards’ with the soft part of the velcro so that students can stick the two pictures on the board next to each other. It takes a little preparation but they can be reused infinitely, creating new sentences every time.

(‘Velcro boards’ also allow students to quickly create ‘stories’ with a series of pictures or daily routines which they can then tell the rest of the class.)

The two categories are spread out onto a desk, category 1 on the left and category 2 on the right.

Students have to simply choose two pictures: one from each category. They then invent a sentence in whichever tense you are practising to describe what is happening.

Younger children also enjoy making up silly sentences (e.g. ‘A dolphin is flying in the sky.’) but as long as they know the meaning it adds up to a little creative fun.

More advanced students can enrich the sentences with adverbs, adjectives and perhaps why this event is taking place:

‘The airplane is flying over the waterfall,’ can become ‘The airplane is flying over the waterfall to show it to the tourists.’
‘The dog is running in the forest,’ can become ‘The big black dog is running in the forest to get some exercise.’

I hope you find this useful.
Please leave any comments below and if you like this blog, please subscribe for more updates.
Susan

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WHY go to all the trouble to LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE when there's Google translate?

19/9/2016

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Why waste time, money & effort when you can communicate through Google translate?

SPEAK Languages & TRAVEL the World as the name for my website just cropped up in my mind spontaneously one day without having to think at all. After a lifetime of travelling and speaking various languages it just came very naturally because I have always appreciated being able to communicate more or less efficiently during my travels. One of the only countries where I had great difficulty in 1987, when I was one of the very first independent visitors to enter the country, was in China, a still very medieval country in every way then. It was that much more interesting, like going back in time, a real challenge for communication also because of the Chinese characters which we couldn't read. A tiny phrase book came to our rescue when hands, feet and drawings failed to communicate our needs. Nobody, not even in the big hotels, spoke English then!

Exactly 29 years later I have returned to China to watch my daughter compete in the World Inline Speedskating Championships in Nanjing. What a land of contrasts today: Nanjing is an ultramodern town full of very efficient services like the clean, fast metro; the extremely wide roads and roundabouts are lined & adorned with beautifully groomed trees, plants & bushes turning them into incredible parks and young people dressed like in the west are all engrossed in their smartphones. Yet there are many tell-tale signs that make me feel the countryside I haven't had the opportunity to visit this time around is much more traditional in its ways: meeting women with baskets balanced from their shoulders like scales, full of fruit to sell; the loud clearing your throat before spittle lands noisily on the floor; the women with scythes cutting the grass along the roadsides and leaving their pans of rice dishes in the sunshine to warm up for lunch; the shyness in meeting foreigners...

Yes, while China has made progress in leaps & bounds from medieval to ultramodern in just 30 years - Beijing, an invasion of bicycles, only had taxis and cars for diplomats 30 years ago - my experience in town, even in the big hotels, even young doctors, was that 90% of the young population still does not speak any or does not feel comfortable even trying to speak English. Most people avoided me if I asked a question because they felt embarrassed. No one thought of using hands, feet or drawings but many googled the expressions they wanted to use into their smartphones, sometimes coming up with very funny expressions which had nothing to do with our conversations.

So why go to the bother of learning a foreign language when you can 'Google' it?
Because communication is not only about basic needs but also about expressing feelings and emotions that need human contact and not only a 'cold' digital translation. Learning a foreign language gives you insight into a people's culture and opens your mind. Let's not give 'Google Translator' the opportunity to take away those incredible experiences from us. Let's carry on learning languages to travel the world!!

2 Comments

ENGLISH for ATHLETES: Answering LIVE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS professionally

1/8/2016

21 Comments

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

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STUDENT CHALLENGE: See HOW MANY QUESTIONS YOU can PREPARE to ask other blog readers by using THE HISTOMAP - write the questions in the comments box below and see how many answers you get – intermediate / advanced / teens / adults

23/6/2016

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrvV_PywFOlxgfR5RpMw7rLsI6ai3yHai

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)

histomapwider.jpg_2.097×9.554_pixel.pdf
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REPETITIVE CHANTS: An opportunity to LEARN COLLOCATIONS NATURALLY...– beginner/intermediate / advanced / children / teens / adults

3/6/2016

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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

i’m_good_at…_i’m_not_so_good_at…__are_you_good_at_…
File Size:	55 kb
File Type:	i’m good at… i’m not so good at… are you good at …

19 Comments

SOUNDING NATURAL in English: ... and afterWARDS… - Susan’s Student Tips

31/5/2016

2 Comments

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

2 Comments

Tricky English Made Easy: How to SAY NUMBERS CONFIDENTLY – Susan’s Student Tips

29/5/2016

3 Comments

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…

the first thing to distinguish is THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NUMBER AND A DATE:

a NUMBER is just read like any cardinal number: 21, 22, 24, 24, 25
a DATE is always read as an ordinal number: 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A YEAR AND A NUMBER:

a YEAR is usually read TWO by TWO in British English:
- 1995 = 19 95 (nineteen ninetyfive)

unless we are referring to the years between 2000 – 2009

2009 = 2009 (two thousand AND nine)

only since the turn of the century in American English it is acceptable to continue this system referring to the year as

2016 = 2016 (two thousand AND sixteen)

a NUMBER is ALWAYS read as a whole:
- 1995 refugees disembarked = 1995 (one thousand, nine hundred and ninetyfive)

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.

A PRICE: £2.10 = £2. 10 (two pounds ten) / $2.10 = $2. 10 (two dollars ten)

A STATISTIC:
- 20% = 20 % (twenty percent)
- 1.5 = 1 . 5 (one POINT five)

A TEMPERATURE:
- 18°C = 18 ° C (eighteen degrees Centigrade) /
- 64°F = 64 ° F (sixtyfour degrees Fahrenheit)

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

how_to_say_numbers_confidently.pdf
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