PHƯƠNG PHÁP HỌC TRỰC TUYẾN

 Thời lượng học từ 25p - 75p

 Online games:
 Kahoot: https://youtu.be/7XzfWHdDS9Q
 Quizizz: https://quizizz.com/
 Jeopardy: https://www.playfactile.com/
 ESL games +: https://www.eslgamesplus.com/
 Activities:
 Describing Pictures: There are many situations in life where we have to describe things, such as a person’s
appearance or clothes, a city, house or events in a story. You will need language for talking about size, shape,
physical appearance, actions and objects, to name but a few. Describing pictures is a great way to practice
this language and the internet is full of interesting and current photographs that you can access with the
click of a button. Try describing a photograph to your online teacher by imagining that they cannot see it.
Your teacher will be able to give you the vocabulary you don’t know and you will remember it easily because
you can connect it with the image. This activity is not only challenging, but can inspire lots of interesting
conversations about who the people in the photos are, what they are doing and how they are feeling.
 Spot the difference: Spot the difference is another fun activity which involves you and your teacher
comparing two pictures. You can see one picture, and your teacher can see a different one, but you cannot
see each other’s. At first glance the pictures appear to be the same, but when you look at them more closely
you will notice that they have a number of small differences. The aim of this speaking activity is to find all of
the differences by asking lots of questions about each other’s picture. This is a really fun way to practice
grammar that is normally boring to study, like question forms and prepositions of place (next to, on, under).
You won’t even notice you are practicing grammar!
 Compare and Contrast: In the compare and contrast picture activity your teacher will give you two different
pictures which share a related topic. For example, for the topic of ‘work’, in one picture you might see a
farmer working in a field, and in the other you might see a school teacher in a classroom. You can use these
images to talk about the similarities and differences between working in a field and working in a classroom,
or talk about which job you would prefer to have. This kind of activity can help you practice using very
common language like comparative phrases and expressions for speculating. It’s also a fun launching point
for interesting debates about the differences in people’s lives.
 Debates: Having a debate is a really fun and challenging way to take your speaking skills to the next level.
Usually your teacher will start by giving you some material about a topic to inspire you – it could be a
newspaper article, a Youtube video or a photograph. After discussing the topic for a while, they will give you
a controversial question or issue to discuss related to that topic. You can choose to support one side of the
argument, or discuss both sides. For even more of a challenge, play ‘devil’s advocate’ and argue for the side
that is in opposition to what you really believe. The great thing about doing a debate during your English
lessons online is that you can have a one-to-one discussion with your teacher without other classmates
around so you can really maximise your speaking time.
 Role-plays: Role-plays are a really popular activity that allow you to be anyone you want to be! Let’s say you
are learning about restaurants in your Skype English lessons. A fun way to practice phrases and vocabulary
for ordering food is to imagine you are a customer in a restaurant and get your teacher to act as a waiter!
For even more fun you could play different types of characters, such as a rude customer, a customer who
has a food allergy or a customer who complains. This will definitely put your language skills to the test as you
step outside of your ‘normal’ way of speaking!
 Tell a story: An exciting way to practice your speaking with your English teacher is to tell them stories or
anecdotes. One way is your teacher can send you a picture of an interesting scene over Skype and you have
to make up a story about what what happened before that picture was taken. Another fun activity is to play
‘Am I lying?’ In this game, your teacher gives you a topic such as ‘the most embarrassing day of my life’ and
you can either choose to tell a true story or invent one – your teacher can ask you questions and try to guess
if you are lying or not. Telling stories can help you to practice using different past tenses and develop your
fluency by pushing you to speak for a long time without stopping in a fun and engaging way.
 Predicting the news: Taking classes over the internet is the best way to use technology in your English
lessons because of the availability of online news podcasts and radio programmes. One fun listening exercise
is to predict the daily news headlines. Try to imagine what the biggest news stories are for the day and your
teacher will play the news headlines over Skype. You can listen for details such as how many news stories
 are in the headlines, the countries where the events happened, information about the events, etc. You and
your teacher can discuss any unknown vocabulary, and you can try to use this vocabulary to imagine the
whole news story. Practice being a news presenter and tell a news story to your teacher for a fun way to
improve your listening, speaking and vocabulary!
 Youtube: One thing that’s different about taking online English lessons instead of in a traditional classroom is
that you have access to Youtube videos that you can play instantly. Youtube offers so many different topics
and varieties of English accents that you will never get bored. For one activity, your teacher sends you a
Youtube video to play without the sound, and as you are watching it you can pretend to be a character and
act out the dialogue that the actors are saying. Another thing you can do is use the subtitles and try to copy
the pronunciation and intonation of the voice you are listening to. You can also watch a video with your
teacher to start a discussion about the topic. The activities are endless!
 Music and songs: Everybody loves music, right? Tell your teacher what kind of music you like and they can
easily play a song for you over Skype. There are so many fun activities with songs that will make you forget
you are studying English. For example, you can look at the lyrics of a song for grammar, vocabulary and
idiomatic expressions. Songs are great for learning about rhyming words – words that sound the same. In
fact, singing along to songs is a great way to improve your pronunciation. You can also discuss the meaning
of songs and how songs make you feel. Listening to songs will put you in a good mood for learning!
 Internet Treasure Hunt: This is a great activity that can be adapted for students of all ages and abilities.
Create a worksheet with a series of questions for students to research and find the answers. Students can
work individually or in groups in a race to see who can successfully navigate the Internet to find the answers
to the questions.
 Presentation Assignments: As an increasing number of students are beginning to attend foreign universities,
the need to present information in a variety of forms other than essays is becoming more and more
widespread. Dossiers are a common form of presentation styles of assignments at universities throughout
the world. I like to assign my students with a country to research and find out certain information, preferably
a country that is not too familiar to the student. I generally ask my students to find out information about a
country, such as population, religion, food, system of politics, environmental issues and current news items,
and present the information in the form of a dossier. Rather than focus on the structures of writing, a
dossier looks at the student’s ability to research information, focusing on the ability to summarise and
dissect a large sum of information. Students also enjoy collecting the information and presenting the
information in a colourful and creative way.
 News Tasks: I am a big believer that students should know what is happening in the outside world, and one
of the best way for the students to practice their English and find out what is happening in the outside world
is to make use of the Internet and take a deeper look at the news happening around the world. I like my
students to bring in an item of news once a week and to discuss it with the rest of the class, adding their own
opinions and possible solutions to the situation. This activity can potentially turn into a classroom discussion
or debate, and gives the students control over the material used in class.
 Email Buddies: While Facebook and Twitter may initially appear to be a distraction to the learning process,
teachers can easily harness the popularity of social networking and use it to their advantage. I like to
encourage my students to find what we used to call a pen pal, and write on a regular basis. An email buddy
gives students the chance to personalise the structures and grammar used in class and put it to practice on a
personal level with someone that they can grow close too and become friends with. They can develop this
relationship over a period of time and report back to the class over time and talk about the ups and downs
that happen in their email buddy’s life.
 Surveys: Ah yes, the age old school activity where we used to go to our local shopping centre and ask
members of the public various questions, which the answers we will correlate at a later stage. Well, as
technology has advanced, students can conduct their surveys on the Internet. I like to give my students a
topic and then get them to conduct an online survey. The survey could be about any topic at all, and
students could conduct the survey with their friends using social networking websites such as Facebook.
Surveys are great for students to analyse responses and provide a short writing that allows the students
describe the findings. This is an important skill that students will need later on when undertaking task 1 of
the writing component of IELTS.