SONGS in the classroom: PRESENT SIMPLE – beginners / elementary - teens / adults

27/5/2015

A BOY DOES NOTHING - Alesha Dixon

Songs always bring a breath of fresh air into the classroom 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.

For beginners/elementary students studying the Present Simple Tense I find that THE BOY DOES NOTHING – Alesha Dixon is rather fast and has difficult vocabulary but repetitively stresses the third person singular with a very catchy tune so that the very few gaps they have to fill in with easy words while listening can be easily managed. When checking their comprehension with the words they filled in, I ask them to spell the words so they can practise that too before I write the words on the board. All in all a fun consolidation activity.

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 the Present Simple Tense?

Hope you have fun with it!
Susan

a_boy_does_nothing__-_alesha_dixon_-_student_copy.docx
File Size:	39 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

a_boy_does_nothing__-_alesha_dixon_-_teachers_copy.docx
File Size:	38 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

a_boy_does_nothing__-_alesha_dixon_-_student_copy.docx
File Size:	39 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

If you have problems downloading these files (they work for me but apparently not for everyone) please contact me at Susan@speaklanguagesandtraveltheworld.com - thank you!

7 Comments

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Author

My name is Susan Brodar, born in London into a multilingual family and brought up bilingual English / Italian.

I went to school in London until 15 when we moved to Germany where I finished my British education at Munich International School. I started teaching Italian at evening classes aged only 17 and studied Mass Communications and Journalism at Munich University.

I continued teaching parallel to interpreting at trade fairs and business meetings as well doing translations. After working at the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade for a year I married my Italian globetrotting companion in 1983 and we set up our home near Venice, Italy where we continue to live with our two teenaged children.

Having taken my British High School-leaving ‘A’ Level exams in English, Italian, French & German I am completely fluent in all four languages and am taking a DELE certification in Spanish to complement them.

ENGLISH (native)
ITALIAN (native)
GERMAN (C2)
FRENCH (C2)
SPANISH (B2)

Chiara link

24/7/2015 10:36:54 am

I can't download the file! :-( I've always used this same song to practise third person and I'd like to see your worksheet.
I also use "Tom's Diner"and "Lemon Tree" (p.Continuous), "Yesterday"a nd "The Cat Came back" (Past simple), "I still Haven't Found" (Present Perfect), "Tears in Heaven" (second conditional) and "Accidentally in Love" to revise verb tenses.

Susan Brodar

26/7/2015 07:52:32 pm

So sorry, you are right. The download doesn't work for some reason. I am abroad at the moment but will sort it out when I am back on Thursday. I'll be happy to get some feedback on it.

Irina Brass link

27/7/2015 04:52:19 pm

katerina

21/10/2015 12:57:56 am

thank you so much for this! made my life a lot easier!

Alcira Carolina Caceres

7/2/2016 01:58:46 pm

Excellente this oral activista. Please can you send me any other oral Activities for beginners and elementary students. They Will help me a lot.

Susan Brodar link

7/2/2016 02:11:45 pm

Hi Alcira,
glad you like the materials. The best is you look at the different categories: in particular SONGS but also SPEAKING.
This is a link to easy grammar to do and read aloud:
http://bilingual-communications.weebly.com/bilingual-communications-a-blog-about-languages/focus-on-children-beginners-verb-to-have-to-be-sentence-forming-game

Autumn

15/6/2020 12:44:46 am

I cant download the files. Pls fix it. Thx in advance.