Have you ever felt that your Advanced coursebook does not fully meet your students’ needs? In this practical session, I will look at both low and high-tech ways of supplementing the coursebook in order to provide a greater focus on collocation, deal effectively with persistent L1 interference, and promote greater exposure to authentic English inside and outside the classroom.
Catherine Morley (BA, RSA CELTA & DELTA) has been teaching English to adults and young learners since 2001, and currently works with adults at the British Council in Alcalá de Henares. She is a Cambridge CELTA and ICELT teacher trainer and Cambridge Oral examiner.

ACTIVITIES

Agree / disagree / not sure statements

Stick 3 posters up in the classroom labeled ‘I agree’, ‘I disagree’ and ‘I’m not sure’. Write a statement on the board (or read it out) related to the topic you want to focus on. Students move to stand next to the poster that represents their view, and discuss with other students standing in the same position why they agree / disagree / are not sure. Repeat with further topic-related statements. Meanwhile, the teacher monitors and makes notes of good and incorrect language use, and ‘gaps’ in the students’ language use. After an ‘error correction’ slot in which the teacher deals with mistakes, focuses on good language use and highlights other ways for students to express their ideas, students discuss some of the statements again, this time with the person sitting next to them, and try to incorporate some of the ‘new’ language.

‘Unplugged’ anecdotes

  1. Tell your own anecdote, giving students a task as they listen, e.g. to come up with some questions to ask, or to note the main points in order to retell your anecdote.
  2. Show students some prompts. Give them a few minutes to prepare their own anecdote. They can use a dictionary / ask the teacher for any vocabulary they need.
  3. Students share their anecdote in pairs, and ask questions about their partner’s anecdote. While speaking, they should quickly make a note (in Spanish) or anything they wanted to say in English but couldn’t.
  4. The teacher deals with any mistakes and good language use she heard. She also feeds in any useful language she noticed a need for, and deals with questions about what students wanted to express but couldn’t.
  5. Students repeat the task with a different partner, incorporating as much of the ‘new’ language as they can.
  6. As reinforcement of new language, students could also write up their anecdote for homework.

Exploiting texts

See ideas on Anthony Gaughan’s blog:

‘40 things to do with a text’, Dominic Braham and Anthony Gaughan

You can find the ‘No Trousers Tube Ride’ text used in the session on the Daily Mirror website:

Some ideas used / mentioned in the session were:

  • Dictogloss the first paragraph of the text
  • Students rewrite the first paragraph using as many synonyms as possible in place of the original words
  • From the title / pictures and first paragraph, students write their own comprehension questions which they expect to be answered in the text.
  • Students look for phrasal verbs and other useful collocations in the text
  • Students write their own discussion questions related to the text and exchange them with another group
  • Students use the phrasal verbs / collocations they highlighted to write their own similar news stories

Translation (L1 interference)

  1. Make a list of typical mistakes your students make that result from L1 interference (looking back at notes made when monitoring speaking activities is a good way to do this!)
  2. Translate them into Spanish and make cards with Spanish on one side and English on the other.
  3. Students in groups look at the Spanish sentences and translate them into English, before looking at the other side to check.
  4. At the end you can deal with any alternative translations the students came up with to discuss as a whole class whether or not they were also correct.
  5. As an extension, you could focus further on a few of the sentences which students found the most difficult. Write the English sentences on the board and collect the cards in. Students translate the sentences into Spanish. Write the Spanish sentence next to its English equivalent, and erase the English sentences. Students translate the sentence back into English. Give the cards back to the students so they can check.

How do parents sound in English?

From ‘Using the Mother Tongue’, Sheelagh Deller and Mario Rinvolucri, Delta, 2002

  1. Before class, think of a few ‘parent’ phrases which you heard a lot in your childhood.
  2. In class, write them on the board (in English). Explain who said them, and in what kind of voice, e.g. angrily, resigned.
  3. Students in groups brainstorm other ‘parent’ phrases in Spanish. They then work together in their group to translate them into English.
  4. Check the English phrases as a whole class, and elicit how the parent might have said them. Drill with appropriate intonation.
  5. Students can write a ‘parent poem’ incorporating these phrases.

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