Our Class Blog

I don't know how much you use technological tools in or out of your classroom, but I am determined to use such tools as much as possible. As my students are learning English to pass our proficiency exam, their time is limited and they generally tend to write purely Academic English.

Thus, I wanted to urge them search the internet as usual, but in English websites and share what they find inspirational, interesting, or enjoyable on a blog so that they may be exposed to English more. I do not correct their grammar not to discourage them, but I do give feedback on their common mistakes during our writing sessions. They seem to enjoy the process.

Here is our class blog and you can't imagine how interesting their posts are!
http://preinta.blogspot.com.tr/

By the way, you are more than welcomed to share any comment :)

Best,
Ayca

How To Make Your Students Speak

Teaching English is not a piece of cake, but what challenges teachers most is speaking, I believe.

We teach grammar.
We teach reading.
We teach listening.
We teach writing.

...but when we ask our students speak, they are either shy or half of their speech is errr, uhmmm, wellll, one word and again errr, uhmmm..

Thus, today I'd like to share a nice activity, which challenged my students and helped them in an enjoyable way. In this one, all you need is some piece of paper, a pen, and some creativity. I prepared my cards with some words that my students can talk about including computers, football, movies.

The rules are simple. One student starts voluntarily or you may know how to choose him/her :) Then, the one chooses one card among a group of cards, one word on each. The student has 30 seconds to think and then s/he is supposed to talk about the word on the card for a minute without saying errr, uhmmm, oh, welll.

I know this is not easy, but it is fun and when students accept the challenge, you can see them controling their speech and producing more accurate and fluent sentences. If you believe that your students will be frustrated, you can change the time interval - 30 seconds maybe or you can simple give your students 3 mistake chance and they will have a better opportunity to speak.

Have fun!
Ayca