2.

Songs: recognizing English lyrics

Listening to songs with English lyrics is an excellent way of boosting skills in listening and pronunciation, and confidence in using
the language. And students will always respond positively to a lesson that involves their favorite singer or bands.

Ask your learners to write down their favorite artist and a song by them that they like and have listened to a few times. They can
then try to remember the lyrics, or look at the video on YouTube – they only need to write down a few lines of the song.

Then ask them to listen to the lyrics for useful vocabulary, phrases and expressions for everyday language, including colloquial
speech. The language used in lyrics can be casual, tell a simple story or convey strong emotions, which should help learners to
establish a connection with the language because it will give them new ways to describe their feelings in different situations. You
could even ask them to come up with alternative words, as a way of further increasing and using their vocabulary.

Some song lyrics are commonly misheard, so you could create a quiz in which learners have to choose the next words – words
that grammatically fit into the lyrics. This can be a funny lesson – for you as well as your students!

Post reading: Content

 What is the main topic of the text?

 What did you find interesting / surprising / funny / hard to believe / confusing?
 What is there in the text that you want to know more about?
 What might be the most controversial ideas in the text? What are your views on the topic?
 Draw a picture of what you imagine each character looks like, with notes on what you know about
them.
 How do you imagine each character feels? Why? Do their feelings change during the text?
 Who wrote the text and who did they write it for? How do you know?
 Look at the picture/s that accompany the text. What do they add? What other type of picture might the
writer have chosen instead? How would a different picture change your experience of reading the text?

Post reading: Text Organisation & Style

 How would you describe the register of the text? Is it formal, semi-formal, or informal? What words or
phrases in the text tell you this? Why do you think the writer has chosen this register?
 What three adjectives would you use to describe the text? Why?
 How many paragraphs are there in the text? What is the purpose of each paragraph? Underline the
most important sentence/word in each paragraph.
 Why do you think the writer has organised the paragraphs in this way? How would the experience of
reading be different if the text were organised differently, i.e. if something you learnt towards the end
of the text was moved to the beginning?

Post reading: Language focus

 What words are there in the text that you found confusing or didn’t understand? Discuss them with a
partner; look them up in a dictionary; discuss them with your teacher.How important are they?
 What language do you notice that is specific to the topic or subject of the text?
 Choose a word or phrase from the text that you don’t often use but would like to. What appeals to you
about it? What other contexts might you use it in?
 Underline all the adjectives in the text. What synonyms do you know for these adjectives? Why has the
writer chosen these words? How might the meaning change if the writer had used different adjectives?
 Underline all the verbs in the text. Look at the verb tense and aspect in each case. Why has the writer
chosen these forms? Are any other forms possible? How might other forms change the meaning?
 How might the language in the text be different if it were written: for a child? As a set of instructions
for something? As a complaint? As a dialogue?

There are specific sites online with news adapted for lower level learners (such as BBC Learning English), and the style of some
newspapers seems to be clearer than others (I find the Telegraph quite good for learners, though it wouldn’t be my personal
reading choice). I also rather like happynews.com, which ‘scoops’ news articles from various different sources, but guarantees that
all the stories are positive (for when you don’t want a worthy but depressing lesson).

TV/VIDEO

1. Fill in the Blanks

This is one of the most common ESL activities that English teachers use with video and other
authentic materials. As a teacher, you can listen to the movie and prepare a part of the script and
blank out words for students to listen to and complete. Very often the script can be found online
as well.

To make this activity a little more challenging, you can ask the students to guess the word or
phrases that have been blanked out using the context around it. And to make it simpler, you can
provide the first letter of the word or phrase or just provide options in a box for students to choose
from.

2. Spot the Word

Another fun listening ESL activity is to give the students a set of words or phrases that they have
to listen for and check them off on a handout. This can be even set up like a bingo card and
students can yell ‘Bingo’ when they have them all.

3. Spot the Still Image

Similar to the ESL activity described above. You can provide the students with a set of still
images from the movie. As the scene takes place, they must let you know they’ve recognized it.
This is ideal for lower-level students and to ensure they pay attention while watching.

4. Match the Dialogue to the Character

Another listening activity would be to give the students a dialogue that has been mixed up. And
they have to match the sentences to the characters who say them. An extension to this activity
would be to ask the students to pretend to be those characters and read out the dialogue trying to
imitate the way the characters speak. This extension can actually be applied to many other
activities and it helps develop fluency and intonation.

5. Silent Watching

A fun ESL activity to use with video is to watch a scene without any sound and ask students to
guess what is happening and why. More advanced students can be challenged to guess what the
characters are actually saying and re-create the dialogue. As an extra challenge, you could ask
them to read the lines they created as the movie plays silently. This is a great activity to help
develop more speaking fluency through practice.

6. Comprehension

When watching a full movie, or full episode, comprehension questions in short answer form or
multiple-choice form can help you check how much the students understood. Even students who
are not good at listening skills tend to do better with full movies or TV shows because the context
helps them to comprehend more.

7. Write a Summary or a Review

For teaching writing skills, you can ask students to write a summary in order to recommend the
movie to their friends. Another fun ESL activity is to write a review pretending to be a critic.
Ideally, you could let them read some reviews of other movies so they can understand the style in
which to do it and integrate reading skills in the lesson.