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The Perfect Way to Celebrate Friendship in the ELT Classroom

A sign of friendship and teamwork - three fists bumping together

International friendship day is a holiday established by the United Nations in 2011 to celebrate friendship worldwide. The UN celebration is on 30th July. (This choice of date originated in Paraguay in 1958.) Some countries celebrate friendship on different days: In Spain, Argentina and Brazil it’s 20th July. In India and the United Arab Emirates, it’s the first Sunday in August. Regardless of the date, friendship is important for people everywhere.

How can you celebrate with your students?

One way you can explore this theme of friendship with your students is by using thematic quote cards to prompt class discussion. First, put learners into small groups. Then give each group a cut-up set of Friendship Quote Cards (download below) to look through. Allow learners to use a dictionary to check the meaning of unknown words. Go around monitoring to make sure learners stay on task. Once they are ready, write these sentence stems on the board and drill the correct pronunciation:

My favourite quote about friends is….
I really like it because…
My least favourite quote about friends is….
I don’t like it because…

Then ask the learners to choose their favourite and least favourite friendship quote. (There are as many different ‘correct’ answers as the number of students in your class. Everyone is different!) Once learners have done this, encourage them to compare their ideas with the ideas of other learners in their group, using the stem sentences to guide them.

What next?

If your students seem motivated by the topic of friendship, you can open this out into a whole-class discussion. However, if time is short, you may want to keep to small group discussions which you monitor as you walk around the classroom. If you want to express your personal preferences regarding your favourite/least favourite quote, do this at the end of the discussion so learners are not put off sharing their thoughts by you taking part too early in the discussion.

If we want our learners to read a classic story that describes a group of friends, we couldn’t do better than recommend ‘The Three Musketeers’ by the French writer Alexandre Dumas. The three Musketeer friends – Porthos, Athos and Aramis – have a slogan: ‘All for one and one for all!’ This describes their readiness to collectively help one of their number in need (‘all for one’) as well as each man being ready to work for the greater good of the group as a whole (‘one for all’)

As well as the Three Musketeers of the title, there is also the character of D’Artagnan. He arrives in Paris from the country and ends up, after many adventures, befriending the three Musketeers and himself becoming a Musketeer by the close of the story.

If you want to explore the differences between the four close friends in this story, give learners the Three Musketeers Grid (download below) and ask them to complete it with details about the different characters as they read.

Possible answers (Based on the Oxford Dominoes retelling):

  • Athos: tall, good-looking (page 1, lines 19-20), likes sleeping (page 11, lines 4-5), disappointed in love (page 22, lines 7-14), likes eating and drinking (page 33, lines 8-10)
  • Aramis: gets gifts from women, very private (page 2, lines 6-12), writes well (page 36, lines 18-25), likes pretty women (page 53, line 11)
  • Porthos: expensively dressed, quick to get angry (page 2, lines 1-3); likes a good sword (page 10, line 7), strong (page11, lines 1-2), likes adventures (page 53, lines 12-13)
  • D’Artagnan: wild, young (page 1, lines 17-18) brave (page 3, lines 2-3), loving (page 4, lines 13-15), loyal, helpful (page 9, 17-19), foolish (page 23, lines 1-4), innocent (page 34, lines 3-4)

To make this grid-filling easier, write on the board the information above in jumbled order. Students can check the meaning of unfamiliar words and match the phrases with the four main story characters, later reading the story to double-check their predictions.

A final (freer) speaking activity could involve learners matching the friendship quotes we mentioned earlier with key moments in the story, with learners explaining why they made these connections. (For example, ‘The W.B. Yeats quote matches the story opening because the three strangers D’Artagnan bumps into in chapter 1 become his friends later.’)

These resources are available via the Oxford Teacher’s Club.

Not a member? Registering is quick and easy to do, and it gives you access to a wealth of teaching resources.

Found these resources useful? How did they work for you? Share your experiences with our teaching community by leaving a comment below, or by tweeting us using the handle @oupeltglobal!

Bill Bowler is a founder series editor, with his wife, Sue Parminter, of Dominoes Graded Readers (OUP). He has authored many readers himself. He has also visited many countries as a teacher trainer, sharing ideas about Extensive Reading. Bill has contributed to the book Bringing Extensive Reading into the Classroom (OUP).  Two of his Dominoes adaptations (The Little Match Girl and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) were Language Learner Literature Award Finalists. Born in London, he now lives in Spain.


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Teaching resources for English Language Day!

English Language Day

April 23rd is an important day in the UK.

First, it is St George’s Day. St George is the Patron Saint of England, most famous in this country for killing a dragon to protect a princess. Second, it is William Shakespeare’s birthday. He was too busy writing plays and poetry to bother with dragons. Finally, it is also English Language Day, a chance for us all to celebrate this global language.

So, below you will find a downloadable quiz you can use with your students to mark the day. It looks at a variety of different aspects of the language – favourite bits of English, hated bits of English, metaphors for English grammar, facts, tongue twisters, strange features of pronunciation etc. It’s a cornucopia (one of our favourite words!) of fun… a smorgasbord (another favourite) of delight!

Many of the questions have no right or wrong answers, but rather they encourage the students to give their opinions or use their imaginations. For this reason, it’s probably best to use this quiz as a group work activity, to allow students to discuss their ideas and share their opinions. You could also ask students to do it as homework, and then to discuss their answers when they return to class.

Some of the questions ask the students to give their opinions on the English language. This can give you very interesting information on what motivates your students, but it’s true that not all teachers – or indeed all students – will feel comfortable with these being shared in the classroom. So decide if you feel they are relevant first. It’s in word format so you can alter it to suit your class. You’ll also find a suggested answer sheet too.

Have fun, and Happy English Language Day!

English Language Day Quiz & Answer sheet

Martyn Clarke has worked in ELT classrooms as a teacher and trainer for over twenty years and in more than fifteen countries. He has taught English at all levels and in many contexts from one-to-one in financial institutions to rural schools with classes of eighty students.


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4 Christmas ELT Activities For Your Classroom

4 Christmas ELT Activities For Your ClassroomThe festive season is officially upon us!

To help you celebrate, we thought we’d share some Christmas ELT activities to get you and your class in the spirit of Christmas.

Our teacher trainer Stacey Hughes from the Professional Development team here in Oxford has prepared some multi-level Christmas ELT activities for you to use in your classroom. Enjoy a round-robin writing activity, practice some seasonal vocabulary revision, and plenty more. The perfect antidote for any Scrooge!

ROUND-ROBIN LETTER (Writing)

Level: pre-intermediate to advanced
Any age group

ADVENT CALENDAR (Vocabulary)

Level: any
Young Learners

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS or 12 DAYS OF WINTER (Vocabulary revision)

Level: any
Young learners, teens, adults

CRAZY GAPPED TEXT (Grammar, collocation, text cohesion)

Level: pre-intermediate and above
Teens, adults

Looking for more festive ELT resources?

Try our festive activities for all levels, or click here for even more classroom resources!

 

Stacey Hughes is a teacher trainer for Oxford University Press. She has written a number of articles for the OUP blog and Teaching Adult Newsletter. Stacey gives talks and workshops around the world – both face-to-face and via webinar. 


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Classroom resources for Easter

shutterstock_177323042Easter is nearly upon us, so we thought we’d share some classroom resources to help you and your class celebrate as the holidays approach.

We’ve put together some activities from our materials within Oxford Teacher’s Club for young learners to help bring Easter into the language learning classroom. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Easter Songs and Chants

The Easter Egg Song

The Easter Egg Karaoke

Easter Card

An Easter Card for colouring & creative writing

Easter Crossword

Easter Crossword for primary level – vocabulary & colouring exercise

 


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How do you use OUP digital resources in your EFL or ESL classes?

Hands holding an iPadProfessional Development Services teacher trainer, Stacey Hughes, invites you to share your ideas.

In our recent travels, we’ve seen some amazing and creative uses of digital technologies in the classroom.  As e-course books and educational apps become more common and as teachers begin to see the potential of online practice, they are finding innovative ways to use these tools to help motivate students and help them learn.  We have started asking teachers, “How do you improve language skills with e-books, apps, iTools, iTutor and online practice?” Here are some of the responses we’ve had so far.

iTools:

I love working with iTools because it allows me to make new practice activities that used to take me ages to make before the digital age. One of my favourite features is the thick white pen I can use to erase the words of a text.  For example, I erase the words of a picture story, children look at the pictures only and in pairs/small groups they have to come up with a dialogue that matches the messages of the images. This can entirely the same as the original or they could add to it depending on their language level. Once they have their dialogues, they practise them in pairs and finally act it out in front of the class. As children are the ones who choose the language to be used, it motivates them immensely and it helps develop their speaking skills.

– Erika Osváth, Hungary

iTutor:

I like to get my students to prepare tasks for each other when they watch the video clips on their Headway iTutor. I ask students to choose one clip from the unit, watch the clip at home and prepare some simple questions/true or false statements/etc. about it. They then find a partner who has prepared a different clip to them and exchange tasks. They watch the clip at home and do the tasks. Some students like to give their partner feedback on the tasks e.g. language accuracy. This activity not only helps students to develop their listening skills but also allows them to create tasks that are the right level for their peers.

– Jules Schoenmann, UK.

A phrase a day app:

At the end of the lesson, we (teacher and students) decide on the words/phrases to learn, aka ‘words of the lesson’.  For homework, students have to find a phrase based on one of the words of the lesson in their ‘phrase a day‘ app .  We don’t know which phrase each student has chosen. The only thing students have to do is write it down in their notebook. Their task in the next lesson is to use the phrase naturally in the course of the lesson at any time.  So, you need to make sure you offer some opportunities for speaking.

You can do it the ‘competitive way’: the student who uses their phrase first wins. You may do it the ‘responsible way’: Each student is responsible for making sure they use it during the lesson. You nod approvingly when they do so – don’t worry, students will look at you the moment they’ve used it or even let you know loudly!

You can do it the ‘hilarious way’ as an activity in itself: pick students in pairs across the table/room, or students next to each other. The situation is this for each pair: They are travelling on a train to a distant destination (tell them where). They are complete strangers and bored to tears. There is nobody else in the compartment.   So they decide to start chatting. The thing is that they have to use their phrase naturally in the course of the chat. So they have to steer the conversation.   Students are given no time to prepare and each pair improvises their chat in front of the class in turns.  It can be slow, fast, awkward at times but always surreal and hilarious, but never embarrassing for students. Just let them improvise and allow ‘silences’.  You’ll all have a jolly good laugh!

– Anna Parisi, Greece.

Let’s create a teacher’s resource!

How do you use OUP digital resources? We are interested in your ideas! Please comment below how you use OUP ebooks, apps, iTools, iTutor, iWriter, and Online Practice. Let’s use each other as a resource and see how many new ideas we can share on this blog.