The Present Perfect Tense - Simplified

In this blog post I have created an infographic to simplify the Present Perfect tense, my objective is to make this tense less intimidating for students. 

Students arrive with a built in aversion to the Present Perfect tense and generally speaking they find it illogical and confusing. I have experimented with a number of different ways of teaching the Present Perfect tense: I've tried combining it with the Present Perfect Continuous, contrasting it with the Past Simple and teaching just one use of the tense at a time. I have found that the most successful method is to start by focusing on four common uses of the Present Perfect tense.  I provide my students with lots of practical examples and situations, focusing on the use rather than the meaning of the tense.  Once they have become more confident, I then move on to comparing and contrasting with other tenses. 

In addition to the infographic, I have given some examples of ways to practise the four uses in class and a list of web exercises with answers that could be given to students for self study.

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/1482813-the-present-perfect-tense

Bridging the gap to Africa - Intermediate video lesson

A video lesson about a young girl named Tippi and her special relationship with Africa. 

Tippi in Namibia courtesy of You Tube

Mobile Learning

As winner of the British Council's Teaching English blog award last month, I was invited to write a post for their blog 'Voices'.  My post looks at different ways to motivate students to self-study, using their mobile phones:

Mobile learning: How students can improve their English anytime, anywhere

Mobile Learning - Voices

If you have any ideas or tips regarding this topic, please comment;  Google+ members please comment below.  If you're on Facebook please message me there and of course you can always send me an email: emma_segev@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks and I hope you found this post helpful :-)

My Valentine - A fun lesson for Valentine's day

Photo by Talk2Me English

I discovered the song 'My Valentine' by Paul McCartney this week and thought it would be perfect for a Valentine's day lesson.  The song is so romantic ♥  My lesson ended up being rather funny and very lively, I hope your students will enjoy it as much as mine did :-)  



Level: 
Intermediate


Lesson activities: 
Talking about Valentine's day, using sign language to learn vocabulary, listening practice and fill the blanks exercise.


Warm up questions: 

1. What do you know about Valentine's day?
2. Which shape symbolises Valentine's day?
3. What are common gifts that people give on Valentine's day?
4. Does your country celebrate Valentine's day?
5. What does 'My Valentine' mean?
6. What's the most romantic song that you know?
7. What is sign language? 
8. How do you think you sign the word Valentine in sign language?

My Valentine - Paul McCartney

Introductions - "Pleased to meet you"

I have a new group starting this week and we'll be working on 'Introductions' in order to get to know each other.  Due to the popularity of my last few blog posts I have come to the conclusion that students LOVE infographics; consequently, I decided to update my materials and use some of the amazing applications that I have discovered online (see my blog post on the topic) to prepare for my lesson:


Warm up:
I may play The Rolling Stones Sympathy for the devil as a 'warm up' exercise or use it as a 'guess the topic of the lesson' activity. Of course the focus needs to be on the intro and chorus:
0.20 "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste".
- Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm  ___________ (a student/20 years old)
0.59 "Pleased to meet you , hope you guess my name".
- Pleased to meet you, _____________ (my name is Emma)

Vocabulary:
I've created a new printable infographic using Piktochart to present the vocabulary and expressions:

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