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Teaching grammar
and vocabulary in
the socially-distanced
classroom
Matthew Ellman
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 Session outline
• Your current teaching contexts
• Ingredients of good language
teaching
• Practical ideas for teaching
• Q&A
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 Your current
teaching context
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 Education in the pandemic
• 134 countries implemented nationwide
closures and 38 implemented local closures
• School closures have impacted about
98.5% of the world’s student population
• 66.9% of teachers had to teach online for
the first time Figures from UNICEF, 2020

© Cambridge University Press Figures from UNICEF and the European Commission
 What age group(s) do you teach?
a) Pre-primary (under 5)
b) Primary (6-11)
c) Secondary (12-17)
d) Adult
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 How are you teaching now?
a) Online
b) Face to face
c) Online and face to face
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What effect do
anti-Covid
measures have on
your lessons?

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• Less teaching time
• Takes longer to set
up tasks
• Difficult to hear
• Group/pairwork
difficult
• Difficult to provide
1:1 support
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 What does all this mean
for us?
1. Keep it simple
2. Go back to basics
3. Be kind to yourself

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 Ingredients of good
language teaching
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 Processing
Noticing Practice

Context Feedback

Input Recycling

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 Processing
Noticing Practice

Context Feedback

Input Recycling

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 How do we do these things
in a pandemic classroom?

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 Input, context, noticing
and processing
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 Contextualised input
• Exploit course materials
(video, text, pictures)
• Unpack contextual features:
• Are these people talking or writing?
• Who is talking/writing? Why?
• What is the relationship between speaker and
listener/writer and reader?
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 What’s the context?

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 Noticing activities
• Inductive or deductive
• Video: sound on/off
• Audio: dictation or transcription
• Text: underlining / blanks
• Concept-checking questions
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 Processing

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 Processing

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 Processing

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 Processing

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 Odd one out
• That restaurant is always busy; it must be
very good.
• I didn’t hear my phone. I must have been
asleep.
• I’ve lost one of my gloves. I must have
dropped it somewhere.
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 Odd one out
• That restaurant is always busy; it must be
very good.
• I didn’t hear my phone. I must have been
asleep.
• I’ve lost one of my gloves. I must have
dropped it somewhere.
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 Word chain

Jenny was waiting patiently for me when I arrived.

Jenny was waiting patiently for me when I arrived there.
Jenny was waiting patiently for me when I arrived there yesterday.
Jenny was waiting patiently for me when I arrived late there yesterday.

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 Personalise

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 Checking processing
• For CCQs: thumbs up/down
• Mini-whiteboards
• Check outside class
• For pronunciation:
• Model pronunciation on video for students
• Short speaking task on voki.com or vocaroo.com
• Set ‘shadow speaking’ task
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 Practice, feedback
and recycling
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 Grammar practice tasks
• ...are a framework: the students have choices
• ...are focused on communicating meaning
• ...can involve any number of language skills
(reading, writing, etc.).
• ...make students think
• ...have a clear outcome
Ellis, 2003, Task-based language teaching and learning
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 Student A
What’s inside your fridge? Describe what you
normally have there.
Student B
Listen to Student A describe what’s inside their
fridge. Draw a picture of it as you listen.

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 Enabling practice
• Flip practice so that student input is
ready before the lesson
• Maximise thinking and planning time
• Bring in listening strategies (eg
prediction)
• Don’t be afraid to repeat practice tasks
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 Feedback: self-assessment
• Start with the task that students will
complete
• What are the criteria for success?

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 Prepare 2nd edition Level 1,
Cambridge University Press

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 Self-assessment checklist Yes Maybe No
I wrote in a friendly way
I wrote about where I am
I wrote about the weather
I wrote about what I do every day
I wrote how long I am staying
I used present tenses

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 Feedback: self-assessment
• Keep criteria simple
• Make sure criteria relate specifically to the
task
• Explain and show students what success
looks like (ie provide a model)
• Allow time for students to learn how
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 Feedback
• Nominate a scribe to write key points in
a shared doc (eg a Google Doc)
• Ask students to correct sample
sentences at home
• Use Kahoot to review examples of
student language
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 Processing
Noticing Practice

Context Feedback

Input Recycling

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 Session summary
• Make the most of the resources in
your context
• Include the ingredients of good
language teaching
• Be kind to yourself!
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•Find out more
cambridge.org/inuse
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 Email: mellman@Cambridge.org
Twitter: @MatthewEllman

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