I vastly prefer the idea of using Fry Phrases to the most frequently encountered words. Primarily because it’s often the content words that matter most.
It is important to remember, never turn on the GAS before STRIKING a MATCH.
People who say KEYNES is wrong are INCREDIBLY MISGUIDED.
OBJECTS in the REARVIEW mirror may be CLOSER than they APPEAR.
But phrases, collocations. These can be used as fluency exercises and are much easier to match up with content words.
My plan was to cut up a bunch, drill a few with students and then hand …Continue

So this post combines two of my recent topics–how (despite my reservations about dogme) I do a lot of speaking grammar exercises materials-light. And Jason Renshaw’s Open Source/Sauce.*
I originally bookmarked the Time Flies Template as one that would be good for the mixed-verb tenses chapter in our book.
In fact students have real issues with the future, particularly when to use will and am going to and the future perfect. So I planned to do (among other things) an activity found in many a textbook where students have …Continue

More and more, I really enjoy teaching ideas that are materials light because I think they produce a lot of authentic practice and often involve a lot of fluency. (Though Jeremy Harmer has me questioning what really does involve fluency!). In any case, I often find that when I try to think of a real situation where we use certain vocab or grammar so my students can practice authentically, materials and worksheets just don’t come to mind. We rarely have props with us when we speak. So recently, I was …Continue

I’m answering the ELT Bites Challenge (and I really hope that that pun is fully intended) to describe a lesson plan that takes nothing more than you and your students. Full Disclosure: I always use the whiteboard to write down directions/keywords/vocab/grammar structures and also to draw pictures. I think it’s important to get those visual learners too. And I always let my students write stuff down before they speak if they want to. Unless it’s a fluency exercise. But this activity doesn’t actually require any writing or papers or pens …Continue

Saw this activity a while back on So this is English…. You can click the link to read the full activity, but basically the idea is that you show students a picture for a few seconds and then get them to describe it. I have done similar things in the past and it works really well, especially if the picture is interesting and has lots of weird details. Students start arguing about what they really saw.
I posted once about my first course as a teacher and how my poor students …Continue

As I’m working on my ESL Discussion Lessons for Every Day of the Year project, I discovered that Sean Banville has beaten me to it with ESL Holiday Lessons. Not surprising given how prolific he is and how fast he gets topical lesson plans up.
Sean’s site only covers unusual or fun holidays–today is No Housework Day, and the lesson plans are done in his usual format of a short reading, a phrase match, gapfills, comprehension questions, vocab work, ordering the text, a short writing with discussion questions written by …Continue

The first of April might seem a strange time to launch something new. However, that’s what I’m doing.
I’m going to try to write a discussion lesson plan for every day of the year. 365 discussion-oriented lesson plans on a different theme with some connection to the date. Everything from holidays like Valentine’s Day and Christmas to World Health Day and Science Day to historical anniversaries and events.
Of course there’s no reason you have to follow the lesson of the day if another topic captures your fancy.
Each lesson has a …Continue

How to pick topics and questions that will lead students to discuss. What topics do they have something to say about and what kinds of questions can actually be answered with a long answer?

It seems like my most popular lesson plans are for discussion/speaking lessons. And generally when fellow teachers come to for advice, it’s about running English clubs (And not for anything else :) ) So, I thought I would share my ideas on how I run an informal discussion club on the off-chance it’s useful to anyone. And also so I can get some feedback. I’d love to hear from others about how they do it.

This is just an idea I had to use New Year’s resolutions to teach the future tense. That in and of itself is probably nothing new. However one major issue that many students have with talking about the future in English is distinguishing between when we use “going to do”, when we use “will do” and when we use present continuous, “I am doing”. So here’s a way to help them understand the difference.