Children and youngsters thrive when there is structure in their life: so starting and ending lessons in a familiar way rounds them off. Particularly at the beginning of the school year and for various months following I like to start off lessons with songs and chants which introduce and revise the date, weather, time and seasons. These introductory chants are not only meant to be sung repetitively but are meant to introduce the various topics: when we speak of the date we possibly look for and stick up the corresponding day, date and month on the board. (I have laminated sticky-backed ‘signs’ to substitute day by day – see picture). As for the weather, once we have imitated the various kinds of weather with gestures during the chant, I have various cards which they can in turn hold up asking their friends, “Is it sunny?”, “No, it’s not / Yes, it is,” until they can also stick the appropriate weather card on the board. We practise saying different times and seasons according to whim and so all these activities consolidate their knowledge of dates, cardinal and ordinal numbers, years and times – numbers in a foreign language being a notable hurdle even for adults. The end of the lesson is usually rounded off singing a few expressions to tidy up and wish a nice time until our next appointment. These are useful expressions which can also be used in everyday life. So below you have the scripts and audios to all these chants to download. Hope you have fun using them! Susan
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PLAYING WITH CARDS to FORM SENTENCES makes language learning MUCH MORE FUN and CONSOLIDATES THE STRUCTURES. It's the beginning of the school year and many students are struggling to concentrate after a summer of fun so games like this can get them to FOCUS ON GRAMMAR and interiorize it whilst HAVING FUN! It takes a little preparation but you can also try getting students to help out with the cutting and sorting into categories - they seem to enjoy it whilst practising new vocabulary such as 'cut it out', 'put it over there', 'put it on that pile'. You can download the cards below. Let me know how you get along with it! Hope you have fun with it! Susan
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS: Try teaching and LEARNING GRAMMAR with fun repetitive songs - my experience is that even beginners can learn more complicated grammatical structures when they are used repetitively in a song. I added some prepositions and collocations to my originally simpler song. Try it out for yourselves - you'll be surprised!! You can download the song below: Have fun with it and learn! Susan
Repetitive NURSERY RHYMES with their easy rhythmic tunes and well-known NURSERY TALES lend themselves to SINGING and ACTING: two activities which children love doing!! Many years ago I ADAPTED three NURSERY TALES in increasing difficulty to RECYCLE the most important LANGUAGE we had learnt during the school year. Children loved it and parents enjoyed watching their children's progress. HAVING FUN was another key element to making sure they learnt EXPRESSIONS IN A MEANINGFUL CONTEXT. NURSERY RHYMES can also be ACTED OUT whilst they are being SUNG to consolidate their meaning and enable children to pronounce somewhat complicated sentences to PAVE THEIR WAY TO FLUENCY... GOLDILOCKS is the second in order of difficulty of the three to download with the pronunciation guide as well to help children practise alone at home. (See previous post dated 9th July 2015 for the easier LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD). In those days children had no other way of practising autonomously. Nowadays I prefer to RECORD AUDIOS of the pronunciations for them TO LISTEN TO REPEATEDLY all collected in a Dropbox folder for easy access. Try these out! Hope you have fun with it! Susan
Many language students tend to dedicate a long time studying rules and doing written exercises yet not many manage to apply them in spontaneous conversation. Despite exposure to texts and listening activities, unless they practise speaking intensively few are talented enough to be able to express themselves orally without sounding unnatural. For this reason I am trying to create useful songs and chants which incorporate repeating collocations, prepositions, phrasal verbs combined with movements to allow students to embed and practise their oral expression in a fun way and lasting manner without feeling bored or embarassed. I believe in 'learning by doing' and practising speaking can never be enough! The following song is about a pupil's DAILY ROUTINE: Download the VIDEO below to see the movements connected to the EXPRESSIONS in the simple song! (Unfortunately I could not upload the Video with subtitles due to 34MB size - I will gladly email it to you on request.) Try it out and have fun! Susan
I have been setting expressions to music and rhythmic chants for decades with excellent results. Distinguishing when to use the different sets of PRONOUNS and POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES are always a problem in my classes - students just don’t seem able to distinguish them - so I have invented this chant in the hope of fixing these expressions forever!! 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. Taking turns when playing games – many students don’t know when it’s their turn and the others like to ‘wake them up’ but telling them so: I insist they use English, thereby practicing their pronouns at the same time! Here is another chant for them to remember the expression. You can download the worksheets to the chants below. Hope it's useful! 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. LISTEN TO ME. and GO TO are two expressions which are constantly wrong in my classes - students just cannot remember to use the preposition with these verbs - so I have invented this chant in the hope of fixing these expressions forever!! You can download the worksheets to the song below. Hope it's useful! Susan
Engaging young people in conversation with English-speaking peers not only increases their vocabulary, grammar, fluency, comprehension and confidence but is also much more motivating because they think alike, have similar interests and are usually on the same wave-length.
It is that more beneficial because they pick up and interiorise the language without thinking and translating - the expressions and collocations become "second-nature". At a recent venue abroad a very fluent non-native English speaker kept up a running commentary on the athletic events taking place. However some basic mistakes made it obvious that he was not thinking in English: he wanted to remind the athletes to wear their tracking equipment using the phrase, "Think ON the transponder and number" (in German: Denk AUF...) instead of "Think ABOUT / OF..."; he often repeated, "This is the last lap IN FRONT OF the finish" meaning "the last lap BEFORE the finish", (die letzte Runde VOR dem Ziel). VOR in German means IN FRONT OF as well as BEFORE and if he had learnt them as collocations he would never had made these mistakes! The best way to learn a language is 'living' it in context. The younger the better... The sooner the better... that is why speaking to peers is essential: either for free on various social networks and conversation exchange websites or with paid online lessons which guarantee conversation with serious youngsters who have a wider range of topics to discuss due to their cultural backgrounds and interests which may not only improve a teenager's English but also broaden his horizons. Check out for example CONVERSATION ONLINE for TEENAGERS by a TEENAGER... Another language experience I had in my mother's nursing home in Germany the other day was when all the elderly were sitting watching an event and a German woman SUFFERING FROM obvious DEMENTIA overheard us speaking English and intervened with an excellent accent and correct fluent sentences. This goes to prove that WHEN LANGUAGE IS WELL EMBEDDED IN THE BRAIN THE ELDERLY RETAIN IT even when they are no longer capable of participating in life in the 'present'. Some food for thought! Susan
Actions can be practiced easily with a fun miming game.
I like to introduce more complicated actions like “popping a slice of toast into the toaster” by providing two teams with a list of less commonly known expressions in a fun miming game. In this manner whilst they are trying to guess what the action represents, they are continuously scanning the various new expressions on the list thereby fixing them in their memory and using them to find out if the action corresponds. In fact, as the game progresses they become faster and faster proving that they are learning the expressions at the same time. There are a few rules to follow: 1. Each team receives the same lists (but I usually give three different sheets to each team – one per person – so that everybody is involved in the search since not everyone in each team has the same sheet and so they cannot ‘sleep’ as they have to contribute if their teammates haven’t got the expression they are looking for). 2. The person who is going to mime picks an expression (you have previously cut the expressions into strips) out of a bag. 3. The person miming does so for their own team so that they are forced to do it well. The team members ask: "Are you ....ing?" Answer: "Yes, I am. / No, I'm not." 4. If the team guesses the first time they gain 3 points, if they guess the second time they get 2 points and if they guess the third time they only get one point. 5. If they still haven’t guessed the opposite time gets to try for one point. 6. If they don’t guess the original team has a go for one point and they alternate until one team wins the point. 7. Then the opposing team starts miming again for three points… The game is always very popular and fun as well as being effective. You can download the worksheets below. Feel free to delete or translate the Italian into another language. Hope you have fun with it! Susan
Combining movements to rhythmic chants in order to memorize words and meanings in a FUN way without having to translate has always been popular with children and adults. I invented the DIRECTIONS CHANT for teenagers decades ago and many of my former students still remember them.
Download the VIDEO below to see the movements connected to the DIRECTIONS in the rhythmic CHANT! Try it out and have fun! Susan Children and adults alike have always benefited from combining movements to rhythmic chants in order to memorize words and meanings in a FUN way without having to translate. I have been teaching a PREPOSITION CHANT that I invented for children and decades later I meet former students who still remember them with pleasure.
Everyone stumbles at some point on a longer sentence, be it beginner, intermediate or advanced, young or old... but many years ago I read a very simple TRICK which WORKS INFALLIBLY every time and your students gain lots of confidence in a jiffy: prepare saying it backwards! Update: Try out my LISTEN & REPEAT exercises to BOOST YOUR FLUENCY from my Video Course
Also: Try out my LISTENING COMPREHENSION with Susan’s A WEARY TRAVELLER'S TALES on my YouTube Channel:
Repetitive NURSERY RHYMES with their easy rhythmic tunes and well-known NURSERY TALES lend themselves to SINGING and ACTING: two activities which children love doing!! Many years ago I ADAPTED three NURSERY TALES in increasing difficulty to RECYCLE the most important LANGUAGE we had learnt during the school year. Children loved it and parents enjoyed watching their children's progress. HAVING FUN was another key element to making sure they learnt EXPRESSIONS IN A MEANINGFUL CONTEXT. NURSERY RHYMES can also be ACTED OUT whilst they are being SUNG to consolidate their meaning and enable children to pronounce somewhat complicated sentences to PAVE THEIR WAY TO FLUENCY... Below is the easiest of the three to download with the pronunciation guide as well to help children practise alone at home. In those days children had no other way of practising autonomously. Nowadays I prefer to RECORD AUDIOS of the pronunciations for them TO LISTEN TO REPEATEDLY all collected in a Dropbox folder for easy access. Try it out! Hope you have fun with it! 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
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