This week’s Spotlight lesson, Haul Video, features a fun reading that uses the simple present, simple past, and simple future tenses in context. Your students will hear “be going to” used naturally as they listen to Daisy make a video about her recent shopping trip. (more…)
English spelling and pronunciation can cause a lot of difficulties for English language learners! That’s because English spelling often doesn’t match the pronunciation. English has gone through many sound changes over time, and we’ve kept some of the older spellings that don’t reflect the current sounds. Did you know that while many languages only have 5 vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u), English has 26 vowel sounds? No wonder it’s tough to learn how to spell and pronounce English words correctly!
Two tricky sounds are those spelled with “ph” and “wh”. “Ph” is pronounced as an /f/ sound, and “wh” is pronounced as a /w/ sound, and neither include the /h/ sound! This week’s Spotlight lesson was on
“ph” & “wh” Words, so I decided to record the words from this lesson on the blog this week. (more…)
The English spelling system is one of the most difficult of all the world’s languages. Our spelling of a word often doesn’t match the sound of the word. Two such sounds are “ph” words and “wh” words, such as “phone” and “whale”. Luckily, we’ve got a lesson devoted entirely to the spelling and sound of “ph” and “wh” words! Your students will be writing and pronouncing these words correctly in no time.
This 16-page phonics lesson can be broken up and done over several days so that your learners get as much practice as they need. It starts off with writing/spelling and speaking exercises and moves on to other grammar points such as Prepositions and Wh Questions about time and place. The colorful images and variety of activities mean your students won’t get bored! (more…)
For many learners of another language, speaking is the scariest skill. After all, speaking is when you have to produce language in the least amount of time, and the listeners are there to form instant opinions of your ability—at least, that’s what it feels like to many! But never fear, practice makes perfect! As teachers, we can also help our students feel more confident about their speaking ability by teaching them pronunciation and intonation rules. What better place to start than with question intonation?
Most languages have only one type of question intonation: rising. English, on the other hand, has two types of question intonation: rising and falling. Fortunately, the question intonation patterns of English follow set rules—it depends if the question is a yes/no question (rising) or wh-question (falling). 
The easiest way for students to pick up the intonation of a language is by modelling fluent speakers. Play the audio clips below for both types of questions, or read the questions out loud yourself, and have your students repeat the questions back.
I. YES/NO QUESTIONS:
In English, yes/no questions start with an auxiliary verb (do, be, have, or a modal such as can, should, will, etc.).
Intonation for Yes/No questions is rising. This means your voice will go up at the end of the question.
Our Lesson of the Week is Where Do They Live? from the Where section in the Grammar School. This lesson features both world maps and city maps so that students can practice talking about where they live. This is a great lesson to do during the first few weeks of school when kids are getting to know each other. Our head writer, Tara Benwell, also wrote a blog post called Things to Do with a Map that is full of great activities that you could do before, after, or during the lesson. Our Library section has additional colorful maps available for subscribers in the Lists, Tests, Charts, and Maps category. For higher-level students, you could adapt the “directions” exercise in this lesson to include going from A to B with a review of prepositions of place. There is a prepositions chart on the second page of Grammar Chart A in the Lists, Tests, Charts, and Maps category. This week’s lesson could also lead to an interesting discussion about different cultures! (more…)
