As the name suggests, the main characteristic of a nasal consonant is that when it is produced the air escapes through nose.

The air passes through the nose because of a complete closure in the mouth. There are three types of closure: bilabial (lips), alveolar (tongue blade against alveolar ridge), and velar (back of tongue against soft plate).

These three types of closure produce three nasal consonants. They are: m, n, and ŋ. These 3 nasal consonants correspond to the three places of articulation for the pairs of plosives p-b, t-d, and k-g.

The nasal consonants m and n are simple and there is very little to describe. However, the nasal consonant ŋ is the one that creates some problems for learners of English and for that matter it deserves a separate post.

Glottalization is the production of sounds with completely closed glottis. This type of articulation is often found in English pronunciation. Voiceless consonants are articulated with open glottis in most cases and always in the case of fricatives where airflow is very important for successful production.

In glottalised pronunciation a glottal stop occurs just before p, t, k, or tʃ. It is only found in certain contexts and the rules are considered by the foreign learners of English too difficult to learn (at least from the practical point of view). However, I do not encourage any learner of English as a foreign language to spend too much time on this topic (unless the purpose of learning English is other than simple communication). Keeping to the more conservative pronunciation and not using glottalization is simpler.

Many learners, including some of my intermediate students have noticed the occurrence of this glottal stop sound and of course they wanted to know what is that they are hearing.

The glottal stop sound is represented by ʔ. It looks very similar with a question mark. The most widespread glottalization is that of tʃ at the end of a stressed syllable.

Similar glottalization can be found in the case of p, t, and k but this is not found so regularly. It normally happens when the plosive is followed by another consonant or a pause.

Foreign learners do not usually learn this kind of pronunciation but many acquire it through speaking to English people. Knowing what is going on in the case of glottalized pronunciation is a good idea but again, without insisting too much on this matter.

Although I do not recommend teaching learners to produce glottalization of p, t, k, and tʃ, I have seen advance learners who were able to produce it and one of the reasons of the increase in naturalness in their accent seemed to be the effect of the usage of glottalization.

tʃ and dʒ are the only two affricate phonemes in English language. Exactly like in the case of plosives and most of the fricatives, the affricate phonemes tʃ and dʒ come in fortis/lenis pair. The voicing characteristics are the same as for other consonants.

tʃ is slightly aspirated in the positions where p, t, and k are aspirated. However, personally I do not consider this a reason for learners of ESL to pay much attention to it. The place of articulation is plato-alveolar, exactly the same as for ʃ and ʒ. In other words, the t part of tʃ has a place of articulation further back in the mouth than the plosive t usually has.

As other fortis consonants, when tʃ is final in the syllable, it is shortening the preceding vowel. Another important thing to mention is that tʃ and dʒ often have rounded lips.

Examples: head, ahead, playhouse etc.
The place of articulation of the consonant h is glottal. The narrowing that produces the friction noise is placed between the vocal folds.
When we produce h in speaking, different things happen in different contexts and situations.

For instance, let take a look at the word hat. The h has to be followed by the sound æ. When you produce æ sound, the tongue and lips (but not only) position is changed. This change happens simultaneously with the production of h sound so the glottal fricative h has an æ quality.

The glottal fricative h always has the quality of the vowel it precedes. That being said, we can draw the conclusion that phonetically h is a voiceless vowel with the quality of the voiced vowel that follows it.

Phonologically, h is a consonant. It is usually found before vowels or in initial position or in median position. One thing that I think should be mentioned is that when h occurs between voiced sounds (ahead, greenhouse, etc) it is pronounced with voicing. This voicing is not a normal one but it is a weak and fricative sound called breathy voice.

Many people are very sensitive about this consonant. If the h is missing from one’s pronunciation then they tend to judge it as being a sub-standard pronunciation. But, the truth is that most of the English speakers omit h in unstressed pronunciation of the words her, he, him, his etc. Only few of them realize that they do this.

In English language each place of articulation has a pair of phonemes (one fortis and one lenis). However, there is one exception, the glottal h.

In the table below you can see the system of fricatives phonemes of English.

Fricatives according to their place of articulation

The fricatives f and v
Examples: fan, van, safer, saver, half, halve etc.
These fricatives are labio-dental because the lower lip is in contact with the upper teeth. The fricative noise is not strong especially in the case of v.

The fricatives θ and ð
Examples: thumb, thus, ether, father, breath, breathe etc.
In the case of dental fricatives θ and ð the tongue is placed inside the teeth with the blade touching the inside of upper teeth. It is not placed between teeth as many teachers teach their students. The fricative noise is also weak as in case of the fricatives f and v.

The fricatives s and z
Examples: sip, zip, facing, phasing, rice, rise etc.
The alveolar fricatives s and z have the same place of articulation as the plosives t and d. There is formed a small passage along the center of the tongue which allows the air to escape producing a sound comparatively intense.

The fricatives ʃ and ʒ
Examples: ship, Russia, measure, Irish, garage, etc.
The palato-alveolar fricatives ʃ and ʒ take their name (palato-alveolar) from the fact that they are party palatal and partly alveolar. The tongue is in contact with the area slightly further back than in case for s and z. You can see this very clear if you try to produce s then ʃ.
Notice that ʃ is a commonly used phoneme but ʒ is not. Very few English words begin with ʒ and they are words borrowed from French language. Usually, the phoneme ʒ is found in median position as in the words measure or usual.

The glottal h is presented in a separate article since there are many things to be discussed related to it.

Learning vocabulary is the first step in learning a foreign language and it is (or it should be) a process that takes place daily and most of the time not at school but at home. Here are my seven tips that will help you be more effective when learning vocabulary. All of the tips are based on my own experience as a learner of English.

You can read more about my learning English experience at http://eslvietnamzone.com/experience-beginner-teacher-18-months/.

Organize your learning material
It is well known that organized material is much easier to memorize than unorganized one. Organize your vocabulary items in categories such as: at the airport, my house, school subjects, my favorite food, daily routine etc.

Use the new vocabulary item in more than one context
The new word you have just learned can be used in more than one context and many times it can have many meanings. It is difficult to remember a new word just based on its translation in your first language although this method provides a rapid learning way. So, using the new vocabulary item in more than one context increases your chances to remember it over time.

Learn details about the targeted vocabulary
Learning details about the new vocabulary item(s) you decided to learn today is of a real help. Learn its spelling (so, you will not miss any consonant sound when pronounce it), pronunciation, grammatical rules that might accompany the new word etc. I remember an American friend who told me that whenever I use the word “sure” it must be accompanied by the word “for”, so I should say “yes, for sure …” Write down as many examples as possible (in as many contexts as possible) since this is a great method to remember vocabulary.

You need to meet the word before using it
I don’t know others but according to my experience as a learner of English, I have to meet a word many times before using it. That is especially true when you already know another word that can be use instead of the word you have just learned. Personally, I have to meet the new word before I feel comfortable using it and usually I meet these “new words” when I am reading (mostly on-line). But meet the new words in text format is not enough for me. I must hear the word coming out from someone’s mouth otherwise I will not use it in speaking. How many times you have to meet a word before using it? That depends! If I meet a word in text format once then I will use it immediately. To use it in speaking, I need to meet the word at least five times. But hey, this is just me.

First time it is difficult, second time it is not that difficult, and third time it is not difficult at all
Yes, it is difficult to use the new word you have just learned for the first time. There is a certain amount of incertitude and you are inclined to use the word you already know, a synonym word or maybe a simple short description. But, using it means learning it and using it second time will not be as difficult as first time was.

What is your learning style?
I learn by visual means. You tell me a new word, I repeat it ten times, and then ten seconds later I forget it. Write the word down and I will not forget it. Write its phonemic transcription and I will not forget how to pronounce it. Again, this is me and this is my learning style. Others are auditory or kinesthetic learners. Find out what kind of learning style is more appropriate for you and plan your learning process accordingly. You might want to try this learning style questionnaire http://eslvietnamzone.com/learning-style-questionnaire/.

What is your first language?
I learn English faster than you because my first language is Romanian and your first language is Vietnamese. It is true? Yes, it is. Since Romanian is a language more similar to English than Vietnamese is, for me, as a Romanian, learning English is a faster process. It is the same for a French, Spanish, or another speaker of a Latin-based European language … but not only. In my case, translation is a great method of learning English. It might not be true for you if you are Vietnamese for example. Vietnamese language is a monosyllabic language so long English words are difficult to remember for a Vietnamese learner of English. My Vietnamese students find the word “refrigerator” very difficult to memorize since there are five syllables. On the other hand I find difficult to remember Vietnamese words that consist of more than a word … and there are many of them in Vietnamese language.

Fricatives are consonants that when they are produced the air escapes through a small passage and makes a hissing sound. There are fricatives in all languages and they are considered continuant consonants. That means someone can make them continuously as long as there is air in the lungs (plosives are not continuant).

As a quick example, make a long, hissing s sound and gradually lower your tongue so that it is no longer close to the roof of the mouth. The hissing sound will stop as the air passage gets larger.

Affricates are complex consonants. They begins as plosives and end as fricatives. A simple example is the affricate sound heard at the end of the word search (/sɜrtʃ/). It begins with an articulation practically the same as the closure and hold presses of t, but instead of rapid release with plosion and aspiration, as we can find at the end of the word sort (/sɔrt/), the tongue moves to the position for the fricative ʃ as we can find in the word shop (/ʃɒp/). The result: the plosive is followed immediately by a fricative noise. Since this sound is composed of t and ʃ it is represented as tʃ.

However, not all plosive plus fricative sequences are classified as affricates. For example the plosive k followed by the fricative f (as in the middle of the word breakfast /ˈbrɛk fəst/) is not considered affricate since it is not made with the same articulators; which means they are not homorganic. But t and ʃ are both made with the tongue blade against the alveolar ridge so they are homorganic.

When we speak, we produce a continuous stream of sounds. This stream of sounds is then divided into small pieces that are called segments. For a better understanding let’s take the word man. It is made up of three segments: the first segment /m/, the second segment /æ/, and the third segment /n/.

Everything looks very easy but actually it is not. Deciding on the number of segments is not easy and in the past it was always a controversial topic. Let’s take another word, for example the word mine. The first and the last segment are identical to the first and last segments in the word man; but what about the segment(s) in between them? Is /aɪ/, in the middle, one segment or two?

As I have just said, we can divide speech up into segments, and we can find a great variety in the way these segments are made. So, there is an abstract set of units as the basis of our speech. These units are called phonemes and the complete set of these units is called phonemic system of the language. The phonemes themselves are abstract, but there are many different ways we make the sounds that represent these phonemes.

There are cases where it makes little difference which of two possible ways we choose to pronounce a sound. Let’s take as example the word bad. The /b/ at the beginning of the word bad is normally pronounced with no voicing. Sometimes the speaker produces this /b/ with full voicing (maybe in speaking very emphatically). However, the sound is still identified by the listener as being /b/ although we can hear that it is different in some way. So, in this example, we have two different ways of making a phoneme; one can be substitute for another without changing the meaning of the word. In this example, we have two different realizations of the phoneme b, one can be substitute for the other one without changing the meaning. The two realizations are said to be in free variation.

We also can find cases in speech where one phoneme can occur where the other one can not. Let’s take as an example the word tea. The /t/ in the word tea is aspirated exactly as are all voiceless plosives when they occur before stressed vowels at the beginning of a syllable. In the word eat, the realization of /t/ is un-aspirated exactly as are all voiceless plosives when they occur at the end of a syllable and are not followed by a vowel. When two realizations can only occur in a particular place (as is shown above) we say that the realizations are in complementary distribution. Definitely, the aspirated and the un-aspirated /t/ will both be identified by the listener as /t/ but the aspirated realization will never be found in the place where the un-aspirated realization is appropriate (or vice-versa).

Sometimes, these different realizations of phonemes are called allophones. So, we have taken a look at the aspirated and un-aspirated allophones of the phoneme t. When symbols (that represent sounds) are written, usually the allophones are not indicated.

This activity for ESL students is very similar to this activity. The only difference is that it is presented in a different way. The first I have done this activity was a real success so I decided to do it again, this time presented in different way to avoid monotony. I strongly recommend it since it captured students’ attention every time I played it.

As you can see in the picture, the questions are quite difficult but the whole idea is not to get the right answer but to understand the question.

Divide the class into two teams (for example boys and girls). Start with the girls (ladies first, right?) and ask them to pick up a number from the pyramid. Read the question that corresponds to the chosen number. In case of correct answer erase the number from the board and write a G letter (G for girls). Continue with the boys then girls and so on until all the questions are covered.

Note: Do not allow students to answer short questions.

Let’s take the first question: How many countries are there in the world? Personally, I did not know the answer but I searched for it on the Internet. Ask the question and let students guess. According to my experience, most of the 14 years old Vietnamese learners of English will answer with a number very close to 120. The teacher says “more than …” or “fewer than …” until they get the right number. It is a great example for practicing numbers; and Vietnamese learners do need to practice numbers.

There are some questions that require a direct answer and finding it is quite difficult. Let students guess several times then you can play a Hangman game. Let’s take as example the 5th question: What is the most violent country in the world? Students come up with different answers but not the right one. So, a Hangman game is appropriate in this situation. You can even offer them multiple choices to they can pick up one, as I did with question number 10.

The activity can be modified in so many ways to cover many other topics and can be used to practice different vocabulary items and/or target language.

The most frequently occurring vowel in English is schwa (ə) and it is always associated with weak syllables. In quality it is mid (half-way between close and open) and central (half way between front and back). Most specialists describe the schwa sound as lax, not articulated with much energy. The quality of this vowel is not always the same, but in my opinion, the variation is not important.

Many, but not all, weak syllables contain schwa sound. Learners of English need to know where using schwa (ə) is appropriate and where it is not. For this we have to consider spelling (although, phonemic theory will consider it irrelevant).

If the speaker were to pronounce a particular weak syllable as strong instead, which vowel would it be most likely to have, according to the usual rules of English spelling? Knowing this will give us a rough guide to the correct pronunciation of weak syllables.

Examples:
The phonemic transcription in examples below is taken from http://dictionary.com

Spelled with a
Attend /əˈtɛnd/
Barrack /ˈbær ək/

Spelled with o
Tomorrow /təˈmɔr oʊ/
Carrot /ˈkær ət/

Spelled with e
Settlement /ˈsɛt l mənt/
Postmen /ˈpoʊst mən/

Spelled with u
Autumn /ˈɔ təm/
Support /səˈpɔrt/

Spelled with ous
Gracious /ˈgreɪ ʃəs/
Marvelous /ˈmɑr və ləs/

Content:
The article presents five situations when inversion of subject and verb with adverbs may occur.

Situation 1
In a sentence that contains so as an adverb that is qualifying either an adjective or another adverb:

Example:
The housekeeper finished her work so quickly that she was given a bonus.
So quickly did the housekeeper finish her work that she was given a bonus.

Situation 2
Usually, for emphasis, an adverb or adverb phrase which does not normally have a front position in sentence may have it:

Example:
Twice within my grandfather’s lifetime have world wars taken place.

Situation 3
Inversion of subject and verb must occur with negative adverbs in front position (or adverb equivalents):

Example:
Nowhere else in the world will you find so many motorcycles.

Situation 4
When only is in front position and it is qualifying a verb then inversion must occur:

Example:
Only by hard work are you able to pass English examinations.

Situation 5
The inversion of subject and verb occur in exclamatory sentences introduced by there or here if the subject of the sentence is a noun:

Example:
Here comes the bus!

Content:
The article presents the commonest positions of adverbs in sentence in certain cases.

There are three common positions for adverbs in a sentence: front position, mid position, and end position.

Adverbs that modify adjectives or other adverbs usually come before them (examples: very tired, quite quickly, etc)

Adverbs that qualify a whole sentence usually come at the beginning but they can have a mid position or end position (examples: Still, I don’t think it is true).

Adverbs that qualify verbs are used in a great variety of positions. However, I will present the commonest positions in certain cases.

Situation 1

Adverbs of manner, place, and time are commonly used at the end of a sentence following the order shown in the example.

Example: The principal spoke well at the ceremony yesterday morning.

Well – adverb of manner (1)
At the ceremony – adverb of place (2)
Yesterday morning – adverb of time (3)

The situation is a little bit different when the sentence contains a verb of movement. In this situation the adverb of place comes immediately after the verb.

Example: They got here easily today.
Here – adverb of place

Situation 2

Adverbs of frequency usually come before the main part of a verb (the verb “be” in present and past simple tenses creates an exception).

Example 1: I have always lived in this house.
Example 2: I am never bad-tempered.

As an observation … an adverb is not usually put between the verb and its direct object. Other positions are usually preferred.

The student reads the lesson quickly.
Quickly the student reads the lesson.
The student quickly reads the lesson.

I have written an article about dos and don’ts as an ESL teacher in the class where I covered 18 main points, but very briefly. In this article I am talking about only three of them but a little bit more detailed.

The first reason I chose these 3 points is because I think that doing one of them (or all of them) can ruin your lesson completely. The second reason is because I see teachers doing these things all the time. They are not in a particularly order.

Don’t do useless things in the class

You might ask what useless things are. In my opinion, a useless thing is any kind of stupid grammar exercise such as fill in the blanks. Not all fill in the blanks exercises are useless, but those where the ESL learners have to put the verbs from the brackets in Past Tense for example. They have the verbs, they have the list of irregular verbs and all they have to do is to copy the past tense form of the verb from the list and write it in the blank. This activity is such a time consumption and so unproductive.

If you really want to do a fill in the blanks activity then you can ask students to choose the appropriate verb from a list of verbs. At least in this kind of activity they have to understand the meaning of the verbs and the meaning of the sentence they put the verb in.

Another completely useless thing is to do nothing. It happened to me many times to finish the lesson earlier than I planned and have extra 5-10 minutes. I believe this is a precious time to review something or play a game.

Many tasks that required individual work or different extra reading activities are completed in the class. They should be done at home as homework.

Don’t use vocabulary that is above your students’ level

It’s your duty as a teacher to know your students level and use appropriate vocabulary when speaking to them. You might think that they will learn new vocabulary if you use it, but is not like that.

The truth is that your students won’t understand so they will get bored. If they get bored they start making noise. If they make noise then your lesson is ruined. New vocabulary items should be used when teaching them or when there is no other alternative (but there always is a simple way of saying things).

A couple of weeks ago I told my students a story and I was drawing the story on the board. I used new vocabulary but they got the meaning from the drawings. I used that listening activity for teaching new vocabulary with the help of drawings. So, if you use unfamiliar vocabulary then make sure your students understand it.

Laughing at students’ mistakes

Learning a foreign language is difficult and learners are usually shy. Laughing at their mistakes doesn’t do anything but to aggravate the situation.

Sometimes their mistakes are so hilarious and it is very hard not to laugh. This is very embarrassing for students.

Today I had to test my students. The first topic was “directions” and the second one was “tell me a short story”. One of my students surprised me. For the first topic I asked: “How to go from … to …?” (The answer should be something like “go straight ahead then turn left/right …). He answered: “Go out then …” Then I asked him to tell me a short story (students have a 5 row story in the notebooks as an example that starts with “A man and a woman were celebrating their …”). The student answered: “A man and a woman go out …” Of course, the whole class started laughing at him; definitely, not a very pleasant situation for him.

There are so many other things a teacher shouldn’t do in the class but these 3 are things that are usually done in the class and most of times unintentionally.

I am not sure if there is one best way of learning English since I heard many opinions. One method works better for some learners while other works better for others. However, watching English videos/movies and reading English subtitles at the same time is, in my opinion, the best way of learning English. Below are the reasons why I think this is the best way of learning English.

• You can hear good examples of spoken English.
• You don’t understand a word … no problem, press the pause button and check a dictionary (since you have the written version of the spoken language) then replay that part of the video.
• Play, pause, and replay a certain part of the video as many times as you wish until you are able to copy the pronunciation, intonation, and other features of English language.
• You practice listening, reading, and speaking (if you repeat).
• Watching videos is not boring (at least not for me … probably there are books that can be listened but I am not sure if the transcript is also provided).
• Some of the video players (if not all) can disable and then enable English subtitles / closed captions as the user wish. Play the video with the captions turned off then with the captions on. Can do the same with the sound as well. Turn off the English subtitles / captions and learners will understand just a little. Turn them on and they will understand almost everything.

Here are some interesting videos I found on the internet:

• Bookbox YouTube Channel offers English stories in HD for children with closed captions (English language subtitles). They are short and very interesting (even I like them). An interesting feature is that the English subtitles are highlighted in karaoke style. They also have stories spoken and subtitled in other languages.
• ManyThings.org offers videos with English subtitles / closed captions covering a great number of topics for adult learners (ex: aircraft anatomy, threats to coral reef, a new generation of Buddhism in America, the basics of tsunami, and many other interesting topics).

Probably there are many other places where this kind of videos can be found but I am not aware of. If you know any please provide a link.

Content:
Formation of adverbs: A brief description of formation of adverbs very clear exemplified
Adverbs | Par 1 can be read here.

(1)
The basic form of forming adverbs is to add the suffix –ly to an adjective (adjective + ly = adverb). Unfortunately, the rule above doesn’t apply in all situations.

(2)
What happen if an adjective ends in –ly, such as lovely and friendly, to name just two very common adjectives? Well, in this situation the suffix –ly is not usually added, instead, forming the adverbial phrase is preferred: in a lovely way and with a friendly attitude.
Example:
She looked at me in a lovely way.

There are adjectives and adverbs with the same form. I will divide them into two categories: adjectives concerning time and others that are both adjectives and adverbs.

(3)
The first category is adjectives concerning time (early, monthly etc)
Examples:
Early
(Adjective) – Let’s buy a ticket for the early bus.
(Adverb) – We must wake up early.
Monthly
(Adjective) – This is a monthly magazine.
(Adverb) – The school pays me monthly.

(4)
The second category contains words that are both adjectives and adverbs (straight, clean etc).
Examples:
Straight
(Adjective) – Drawing a straight line is difficult.
(Adverb) – Go straight on the street.
Clean
(Adjective) – There is a clean glass on the shelf.
(Adverb) – He just got clean from alcohol.

(5)
There is another situation when the adjective form and the adjective + ly form are used as adverbs (sometimes with different meaning). The best example here is using the word cheap (Example: The pants were cheap | I bought them cheap/cheaply).

(6)
There are adverbs that have the same form as the adjectives and add –ly in a different meaning. These are: hard, high, late, and pretty. Probably there are few others.
Examples:
He worked hard / He hardly worked.
The house is high / He is highly appreciated.

(7)
Adverbs can be form with the help of the following suffixes: -way, -wards, and –wise.
Examples:
(-Way) – I have to walk sideways on this street.
(-Wards) – I went backwards.
(-Wise) – He sat with his legs crosswise.

(8)
There some adverbs formed with the prefix a-. Such adverbs are: ashore, aloft and abroad (and probably there are some others).
Examples:
We swam ashore.
It was raised aloft.
I should go abroad this vacation.

This is a great activity for learners of English to practice listening and speaking skills. The greatest part is that it can be easily played with large ESL classes. Here is the game:

The teacher chooses several topics that are interesting and level appropriate for his students (I chose: countries, animals, colors, food, and English grammar). Choose five questions (or more, according to the length of the lesson) for each topic. The questions must have a different level of difficulty so the easiest question has one point value and the most difficult one has a five point value.

Write on the board the topics and numbers from 1 to 5 (which represent the questions of the topic) for each topic. Divide the class into 2 or more teams. Although I was criticized for dividing students into “girls team” vs. “boys team”, I still do it because the students like it. I tried different other ways of dividing them but they were not receptive.

Start with girls’ team first and tell them to choose a topic and a number (which represents the number of points value of the question). For example: countries 3 (the 3 point question of the topic “countries). If they answer correct they will get 3 points. If they don’t answer correct the boys’ team can answer. The game continues until all of the questions are answered. The team that earned more points is the winner.

Two weeks later I will use this activity to teach them a new lesson. If it works I will get back with details.

Content:

1. Kinds of adverbs with examples
2. Use of adverbs with examples
3. Comparison

Adverbs | Part 2 | Formation can be read here.
 

This is the first part of a four part series of articles about adverbs. There are so many details that can be said related to adverbs but the points I am going to focus on are, in my opinion, just enough for most of the learners of English as a Second/Foreign Language.

Kinds of adverbs – There are eight kinds of adverbs in English language:

• Adverbs of manner (examples: quickly, fast, carelessly, well etc.)
• Adverbs of place (examples: here, there, nowhere, inside, out etc.)
• Adverbs of time (examples: now, yesterday, immediately, then etc.)
• Adverbs of frequency (examples: often, never, always, frequently etc.)
• Adverbs of degree (examples: very, too, fairly, quite, almost etc.)
• Affirmation and negations (examples: yes, no, not etc.)
• Interrogations (examples: when?, how?, why?, etc.)
• Relation (examples: when, where, why, how etc.)

Use of adverbs – An adverb can modify the following parts of a sentence:

• A verb (example: I washed the dishes today.)
• An adjective (example: Washing dishes was very quick work.)
• An adverb (example: I washed dishes very quickly.)
• A noun or noun equivalent (example: The very thing I wanted, the up train.)
• A preposition or a prepositional phrase (example 1: I am almost through my work; example 2: I live nearly on top of the hill.)
• A whole sentence (example: Fortunately, I remembered his face.)

Comparison – Adverbs that can be compared have the same degree of comparison as adjectives.

• Hard, harder, the hardest.
• Often, oftener, the oftenest.
• More often, the most often.

The lesson focuses at the beginning on listening and at the end on speaking. The simple past is reviewed in this lesson through the context of vacation. The –ed endings and irregular verbs is the pronunciation main point of the lesson.

The text
Lam lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and there is always hot. Last winter vacation he and his wife decided to go to a 10 day vacation in Korea to escape the heat and enjoy the cold weather and snow in Gangwon-do Province in Korea. They flew there with Vietnam Airlines and they stayed at a very nice hotel. When they got to the ski resort there was a heat wave and all the snow was melted. What can you do in a ski resort without snow? They just sat in cafes and argued for 9 days. In the 10th day, before coming back home, it started snowing again and the temperature dropped below freezing point. Everybody was so excited but not them; they were coming back to Vietnam’s heat.

Step 1 – Warm-up (with books closed)

The teacher writes on the board “my last vacation” and then tells students to ask him as many questions as possible about his vacation in order to get as many details as possible.

Step 2 – Listening

The teacher reads the text twice (or three times) and ask students questions (see the step 4 – speaking).

Step 3 – Grammar (-ed endings and irregular verbs)

Note: The purpose of this step is to have students pronouncing correctly the –ed endings of verbs in past tense. An article about pronouncing –ed endings can be seen here: Pronouncing –ed endings

The teacher reads the text again then asks students to write the verbs in past tense in two different columns (one column for regular verbs and one column for irregular verbs. Give students more examples of regular verbs in past tense and go through pronunciation with them. Vietnamese learners of English have hard time pronouncing the past tense of verbs.

Step 4 – Speaking

Tell students to think about answers of the following questions about their vacation:

Where did you go?
When did you go?
Who did you go with?
How did you get there?
Where did you stay?
How long were you there?
Did you have good weather?
What did you do during the day?
Did you have good time?
Did you have any problems?

In pairs, ask and answer the question. First student A ask and student B answer then change roles.

The diagram presented below shows how since, for, and ago should be used and what they represent. The diagram is followed by short grammar notes that might be useful for learners of English.

Note 1:
Since + Perfect Tenses
For + Perfect Tenses or Past Tense
Ago + Past Tense only

Note 2:
Since last year.
For the last year.

This is a very simple table that exemplifies basic tenses in English language and their formation. The examples are provided for all three possible verb forms in both active and passive voice.

The purpose of this activity is to have students reviewing vocabulary already learned and use it in a sentence. The task is designed to have all of the students involved.

Finding a suitable activity for ESL class that involves all of the students is a difficult task especially if you deal with a big number of students per class. I searched on-line for this kind of activities and luckily I found one that can be adapted for my needs.

For this activity the teacher has to prepare flash cards with words (I just wrote the words on small pieces of paper). Every member of each team receives one flash card (in my case a piece of paper with a word written on it). Each flash card has to be duplicated. One member of team A will have the same flash card (word) as another member of the team B. These students who have the same words on the paper are direct competitors.

Step 1
Divide students into two teams and give to each of them a flash card. My classes have 40 students so I will make 20 flash cards. I will duplicate them and I will give one set of 20 flash cards to a team and another set of 20 flash cards to the other team. Make sure there are good students in both teams.

Step 2
The teacher calls out one word that is written on the flash cards. The students who have the word written on their flash cards have to come to the board and write a sentence using the word. The student who writes faster and better sentence gets points. You can give a different number of points for speed and a different number of points for accuracy.

The words I use for this activity are: remember, envelop, police station, early, ride a bike, often, soccer, geography, expensive, farmer, pictures, boring, second, how far, flu, longer, borrow, toothache, brush, and opposite.

The topic: A funny story
Skills practiced: Listening, speaking
Size of the class: 40 students.
Age: 14 years old; grade 8.
Level: Elementary.
Class length: 45 minutes

Step 1 – Reading the text

Depending on the purpose of the lesson, the text can be read by the teacher to have students practicing listening skills or it can be displayed and students read the text by themselves. Personally, I will read it for my students. The purpose of the lesson is to have students listening and understand the story then telling the story with their own words.

Note: Read the text until students understand it very well.

The text
A man and a woman had been married for 35 years and they were celebrating their 60th birthdays (they were born on the same day).
They celebrated their birthdays by having a nice dinner together. Suddenly, a fairy appeared and she said that she will make one of their wishes to come true.
The woman wanted to travel around the world so the fairy gave her two tickets around the world. The woman was very happy!
The man wanted to have a woman who is 30 years younger than him. The fairy carried out his wish. She made him 90 years old. The man wasn’t happy at all!

Step 2 – Unlock the vocabulary

I designed a multiple choice task for teaching vocabulary which I think is the most appropriate for this lesson. It can be done using pictures as well.

Note: Go through all vocabulary items that might be unknown for students.

Vocabulary
Celebrating, fairy, wish

Celebrate

1. to be a famous person
2. to have many friends
3. to have a party

Fairy

1. An animal
2. A person with magical powers
3. To be fair

Wish

1. to want
2. to fly by airplane
3. to go abroad

Step 3 – Check if students understood the story

Asking simple questions ensure that students understood the story and are ready to go ahead.

Questions

• How old are the woman and the man?
• How did they celebrate their birthday?
• What will the fairy do for them?
• What did the woman want? Was she happy?
• What did the man want? Was he happy?
• What wish would you like a fairy make it come true?

Step 4 – Speaking task

As a speaking task students have to retell the story with their own words. It might be a challenging task for students at elementary level so teacher help is definitely a must. Some students might be able to tell a similar story.

Speaking task
Retell the story to your partner in your own words.
Can you say a similar story?

These two concepts of time and tense are not always kept apart, although they should be. Keeping them apart avoids confusions.

The first concept, time, is very common for everybody and is well understood despite the language. It is not a grammatical structure.

The second concept, tense, is a very important linguistic tool expressing time relations. Tenses, in most cases, correspond to time. However, there is a big variation between languages. In English, tenses don’t always correspond to time because they show us not only when the action takes place but also if the action is completed or not.

Example 1
I teach English.
Present tense – Past time, Present time, Future time

Example 2
I wrote an article yesterday.
Past tense – Past time

Example 3
If I sent the letter now, he would receive it tomorrow.
Past tense – Present time

Example 4
If I sent the letter tomorrow, he would receive it the day after tomorrow.
Past tense – Future time

Example 5
He learned English yesterday (complete).

Example 6
He has been learning English (incomplete).

Content:
A brief analysis of two cultural factors that have to be taken in consideration when teaching English for Vietnamese learners.

It is well known that Asian learners of English have many difficulties learning ESL, particularly Vietnamese learners. Although I have not taught English in another Asian country except Vietnam, according to vast majority of blogs/websites I have read, that is a true statement. There are many reasons why English is such a difficult language to be learned for Vietnamese but now I would like to bring up the cultural factors that act against English learning process.

Vietnamese language itself seems to be one of the main reasons for their difficulties in learning English and although it is part of Vietnamese culture I am not going to talk about it since there are plenty of articles on http://eslvietnamzone.com that analyze this matter.

The other two cultural factors that have a great impact on learning English abilities of Vietnamese are: Vietnamese do not want to make mistakes and the education system which is based on Confucian philosophy.

Vietnamese do not want to make mistakes
If I raise my hand, I answer, and I make a mistake what will others think about me? Many times students whisper the answer to other classmates but definitely nobody will raise the hand. Many times teachers face a strange situation when they ask the question and they give the answer. Many will say that Vietnamese students are shy. Alright! They might be shy … but why aren’t they shy outside the classroom? Why are they brave enough to shake hand with me and do other friendly things when we are not in the class? My conclusion is that they are not shy, they are just afraid of making mistakes because others will think bad about them. I strongly believe that making mistakes is beneficial and inevitable when learning a foreign language.

The education system which is based on Confucian philosophy
Basically, students copy teacher … this is it and nothing more. Nobody wants to have their opinions and each student is rewarded according to how well he/she is able to copy the teacher. This method might work for some subjects but it doesn’t work when learning English. There are many ways of saying the same thing and everybody tries to remember the way the teacher said it.

Example:

Teacher: Where do you live?
Student: Provide the address

Teacher: Where is your house (located)?
Student: Complete silence …

Both questions contain well known words. They are able to answer the first question because this is what I have written on the board and they have written in their notebooks. They hear the second question for the first time so they are not able to answer.

Vietnamese society promote agreement and harmony in any kind of group interaction, not standing out of the crowd, not being innovative or exceptional in comparison with others. Definitely, you can not be better than your teacher or have a different opinion.

At the exam (written exam, because there is no English speaking exam in Vietnamese public schools) the teacher expects a very accurate reproduction of teacher’s words.

I might be wrong here but I believe these cultural factors have a huge impact on Vietnamese abilities to learn English (or any other foreign language). Please do not take this short article as a criticism, it is just a fact that should be taken in consideration when teaching English for Vietnamese.

Content: The article presents the four usual positions of the vocal folds with brief explanation and graphical representation for each of these positions.

Glottis refers to the opening between the vocal folds as you can see in the image below. If the vocal folds are apart then the glottis is open. If the vocal folds are pressed together then the glottis is closed.

Note: The images below show the inside of the larynx (which is in the neck) from above.

The changes produced by vocal folds are often important in speech. There are four usual positions of the vocal folds that influence our speech.

Vocal folds are wide apart
For normal breathing the vocal folds are wide apart as is shown in the image below. Usually, producing voiceless consonants like p, f, and s requires vocal folds to be wide apart.

Vocal folds create a narrow glottis
The fricative sound h requires a narrow glottis. The h sound produced this way is quite similar with a whispered vowel. This sound is called voiceless glottal fricative.

Vocal fold vibration
The vibration of the vocal folds is caused when they are touching (or nearly touching). The air that passes through the glottis causes this vibration. It comes from the lungs and it is under pressure. This pushes the vocal folds apart and allows a small quantity of air to escape. The air escapes fast through the glottis causing the vocal folds to come close together again. This open-close of vocal folds happens quickly and regularly causing the vibration. It is said that this vibration happens about 300 times in a woman voice and just 150 times in a man voice on average.

Vocal folds are tightly closed
The vocal folds can be completely closed so the air can not pass through. In speech this is called a glottal stop (glottal plosive as I like to call it). The symbol use for a glottal plosive looks similar with a question mark symbol “?”. The symbol is ʔ

I have just completed an on-line course. It was not related to English language or ESL (although it was taught in English), it was about accountancy. Since I am an accountant I have decided to update my knowledge related to International Accounting System. I was skeptical at the beginning (it is my first on-line course) but at the end I realized that on-line learning has a bright future. Here are my top 5 reasons why I was skeptical about taking an on-line course.

On-line learning has no group interaction
Well, there is a lot of interaction. There are forums, private social networking sites, chat rooms, video conferences, etc; all of them specially design just for the group interaction. Every on-line course has those interactive tools (at least the course I have taken). The student who studies on-line just needs to want to interact with others.

On-line learning’s curriculum is not that good
No, that is not true! It is the same curriculum, there is no difference. The only one difference is the way the curriculum is presented to the students.

On-line learning degree is not a serious one
On-line learning has evolved. Long time ago, on-line courses where poor designed and an on-line qualification was not really appreciated by employers. Well, things have changed. On-line courses are very well designed and more and more employers appreciate an on-line qualification. More and more qualifications are offered by top universities … which is nothing but one more prove that on-line qualifications are taken more seriously.

On-line learning is for those who are not smart enough to enter a traditional college
Let me tell you something … a traditional college is expensive, the traditional college I like is in America/England (I am in Vietnam), I can’t go there in the morning (I have to work and support my family), etc. I think these are just enough reasons to make someone understand that the people who choose on-line learning are not lazy or stupid.

On-line learning is boring
On-line learning is not boring at all. Students can raise their hands and answer questions, they can chat with other students and the tutor, find on-line resources etc. Personally, I find it much easier to interact on-line than in a real class.

If there is anyone who can give details about how an on-line ESL course is designed I will be glad to hear. Since speaking is an important component of such on-line course I would like to know how speaking is practiced and how effective the method is.

My conclusion:
On-line learning is fun. There is a lot of interaction/communication with others and despite of on-line medium you can build a lot of relations. The quality is very similar to traditional courses and it offers a huge advantage over the traditional courses … flexibility, which for me is the most important factor.

This is not really what it looks to be. Personally, I don’t recommend anyone to use the material presented in this article for education purposes. So, here are the commands presented with the help of a remote control.

If anyone wants the source file please mail me (using the contact form). I will reply with the Illustrator file in attachment.

Living in Vietnam is an interesting experience. Vietnam is a country fulfilled with history and its people are friendly. However, it is not really easy to get use with Vietnamese style. There are many things that I can not get used with, although I have been living here since 2005. Here are top 5 tings that annoy me in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Note: These 5 things that annoy me in Ho Chi Minh City don’t mean I hate Vietnam or I don’t recommend you to visit Vietnam. Vietnam is my home now, my wife is Vietnamese, and my daughter studies in a Vietnamese school.

Noise
Most of shops (especially big ones) draw attention of possible customers by playing music. The music is so loud that many times you can not hear the TV inside of your house. Of course, you can not complain anywhere. Everybody will tell you “this is Vietnam, get use with it”. There is noise everywhere because of the high density of population … and everybody uses scooters which results in high noise pollution.

Traffic
There is no way to avoid the traffic. Whenever you go out of the house you have to face the Saigon’s traffic. Millions of motorbikes running all over the street from all directions is the picture of Ho Chi Minh City’s traffic. In my opinion the traffic is the one that makes Saigon so dangerous … nothing else can compare with it. At least once a week I can see a live accident (usually often).

Walking
The sidewalk is supposed to be use for walking. Well, if you are pedestrian then you should reconsider the way you travel. There are sidewalks but they are fulfilled with: motorbike parking lots, ambulant restaurants where people have a cheap meal and owners do their dishes, hammocks where important shop’ guards take a rest, extensions of shops that present their latest products, etc.

Buses horns
Only Turkish truck drivers in Europe can compare with bus drivers in Vietnam (and other big vehicles). Bus drivers in Vietnam benefit from the latest technology in horning … these horns are specially designed to blow up your brain and ear sense exactly as the ultrasounds do with kidney stones. They do use the horns in any circumstances which happen every 3 seconds. It seems that nobody does anything about it.

Wedding parties
In Vietnam wedding parties last for 2 hours. They can take place during the lunch time or dinner time from Monday to Sunday. If the invitation card says 5.30 pm then you are expected to come somewhere between 6.30 pm and 7 pm. Foods come one after another and there is no cold beer. Instead of cold beer you will get a big chunk of ice that will cool down your beer. You will get drunk harder as well because you end up drinking 50% water – 50% beer. I have no clue about other countries but in Romania wedding parties start in the evening and finish in the morning and there is music and people dance.

Note: The facts presented above might not be true for another person (Romanian or not). Something may look bad in someone’s eyes but good in another one’s eyes. It probably depends on where you come from.

The content:

1. Characteristics of plosives
2. Presentation of plosives
3. Phases in plosives production
4. Occurrence of plosives

Characteristics of plosives
A plosive is a consonant articulation that has the following characteristics:

1. One articulator is moved against another. The stricture formed in this way doesn’t allow the air to escape from the vocal tract.
2. The air is compressed behind this stricture and then it is allowed to escape. When the plosive is released, the air under pressure behind the stricture escapes producing noise that is heard

Presentation of plosives
English has six plosive consonants. They are: p, t, k, d, b, and g; there is one more glottal plosive that occurs frequently but it is considered of a less importance because it is just an alternative pronunciation of p, t or k.

The plosives p and b – the plosives p and b are bilabial which means that the lips are press together. The plosive p is always voiceless. The plosive b can be fully voiced, partly voiced or voiceless.

The plosives t and d – The plosives t and d are alveolar which means that the tongue blade touches the alveolar ridge during production of these plosives. However, the tongue shouldn’t touch the front teeth as it does in the dental plosives so common in many European languages. The plosive t is always voiceless. The plosive d can be fully voiced, partly voiced or voiceless.

The plosives k and g – The plosives k and g are velar which means that the tongue is pressed against the area where the hard plate ends and the soft plate begins. The plosive k is always voiceless. The plosive g can be fully voiced, partly voiced or voiceless.

Phases in plosives production
For a complete presentation/description of plosive consonants we should take a look at the phases of plosives production. There are four phases presented below:

1. At the first phase the articulator(s) form the stricture of the plosive. This is the closure phase.
2. At the second phase the air is stopped from escaping. This is the hold phase.
3. At the third phase the air escapes. This is called the release phase.
4. There is a forth phase called post-release phase.

Occurrence of plosives
All of the six English plosives can occur at the beginning of a word, between other sounds, and at the end of the word.

These are top five myths about learning English that I hear everyday. There are many more but these five are well cemented in learners of English’ mind (at least here in Vietnam).

You have to live in an English speaking country in order to be fluent in English – This is the biggest stupidity I have ever heard. Definitely, it will help your English if you live in an English speaking country but it is not a necessary condition. There are millions of people who have never visited such country but they are fluent in English. Do you know why? They practice English everyday.

I have to learn grammar in order to speak good English – Grammar is important but you will be able to communicate in English if you don’t know grammar. As a matter of fact, I believe focusing on grammar after you are fluent is more effective and helps you to understand how to apply grammar in speaking much better. I learned grammar rules after I was fluent in English and I learned how to apply them in speaking by listening to others how they use the language. For me, watching movies is a great way to see how others pronounce and use grammar. You can do that only if you are fluent. One more thing … does not matter how many grammar rules you know, you will always make mistakes.

Learning English is funny – Let’s see … what can be funny in learning English!? Personally I don’t find anything funny. Learning English requires devotion, hard working, a lot of practice, time spent at school, time spent at home for self-studying, and practice again etc. If you are lucky enough then you can do all these things in a “relaxing” environment. If you are even luckier then you will have many opportunities to practice the language you have learned. Stop promoting “learning English is funny” because learners of English understand by “funny” something that make you laughing all the time. Soon, if you do not have Mr. Bean in the class you will not have any learner/client. I have around me thousands of learners of English who have a lot of fun in every English class but they are not able to speak English (they have been studying English for 10 years now). There are two tasks: in first task learners have to do something funny and in the second task they have to remember the target language used in the first task. The first task is funny but the second one is not.

You can not learn English by your own – Well, you can! Do not get me wrong … learning English all by yourself does not mean there is no interaction with other speakers of English (natives or not). You can learn English at home in many different ways at your own peace but then you have to use the language you have learned by interacting with others (chatting, Facebook, blogging etc are few ways that you can interact and practice with other speakers of English).

You make mistakes because you don’t know grammar – Nobody can think about grammar when speaking. The speech, and the grammar used come naturally. If someone gives you a written sentence you can say what grammar rules apply to that sentence and why otherwise you are condemned at making mistakes. You make mistakes because you did not practice enough. Listening to others is a good practice.

English is a difficult language to learn … if you want to believe that. You can find many reasons to sustain this affirmation and if the idea of English being a difficult language to learn is well cemented in your brain then probably you will never be able to learn and master it as you would like. Below you can see why I think English is difficult to learn.

1. I hate irregular verbs – Although I am very used with irregular verb (my mother tongue is a Latin language and uses them heavily.) I still hate them. Luckily, I just use about 30 of them and I have learned them … by heart.
2. There are no pronunciation rules – There are zero ways avoiding pronunciation mistakes since each word follows zero pronunciation rules. The letter “i” from the word “hide” is pronounced /ai/ but the letter “i” from the word “hidden” is pronounced /ɪ/. When you are very familiar with the language, you can make different connections regarding to pronunciation and everything will be easier.
3. English questions – Although forming questions in English is not that difficult, every single learner hates it … me too. I am not aware of any other language that changes the order of the words to form a question (there might be some …)
4. Prepositions – There is no way to match the usage of prepositions in English with the usage of prepositions in other languages. This is not only my opinion but others opinion as well.

English is an easy language to learn … if you want to believe that. If you think English is easy then it is easy. Personally, I believe English is easy to learn and below you can see my arguments.

1. English is everywhere – It is very important when you start learning a foreign language to have contact with it as much as possible. Well, you can in the case of English. Here I will exemplify just movies, music, and the internet.
2. English is useful – What’s the point to learn a foreign language if you don’t use it. Sooner or later you will need English and I can say sooner or later you will learn English. I use English for everything means reading (information/knowledge) since the amount of information written in English is enormous in comparison with the amount of information written in my mother tongue. I make my living speaking English since I am an English teacher. Whatever job you will have, bear in mind that a good job requires English.
3. English grammar is easy – It might sound crazy or contradictory to the 4 reasons mentioned above but English grammar is easy. If you compare English grammar with other languages’ grammar then you will realize that English grammar can be mastered with much less effort than other language. You just need about 20 percent of the grammar in order to speak English well (this doesn’t mean you speak English correct or perfect). However, everybody improve their English abilities according to their needs.

There are many other reasons that prove English is easy or difficult to learn. The reasons presented here apply in my case and are true for me.

Few days ago, browsing the net, I came across something interesting … a text reader (or as it is also known, a text-to-speech program). I have never heard about something like that so I checked it out. I typed “text reader” in the Google’s search box and visited the first website shown on the page (http://www.naturalreaders.com/).

Basically, software like this will read for you any text. This is interesting! It also has ability to convert any text in an audio file. I installed it in my computer and I tried it (it can be installed in a Windows or Mac computer).

There are 5 versions of this particularly software but only one is free. The free version doesn’t speak with a natural voice; you will know immediately that it is a robot who is speaking. However, I found the robot voice more than acceptable, with great pronunciation, and acceptable intonation. The most advance version has up to 8 natural voices to choose from. The free version can not convert text files into audio files; all other versions can. Other interesting features are the ability to adjust the speed of speech and each word that is pronounced is highlighted.

Here are few ways o use this kind of software to improve your pronunciation/listening skills (or English in general):

1. There are many auditory learners who can learn much better by listening. This is a great tool for them since it can read for you any given text.
2. It can help people with vision problems
3. You can learn how to pronounce any word or a group of words or a whole sentence/paragraph.
4. It allows you to adjust the speed of speech so you can listen at the speed you feel comfortable (it is like having a native speaker speaking slowly … that is great)
5. Besides improving your pronunciation you can work on your accent as well. The software gives you possibility to choose from American and British accents.
6. There are on-line text to speech programs so you can use one of your choice everywhere as long there is an internet connection

Probably there are many other useful things that you can do to improve your English skills with such software. Have you ever used a text-to-speech program? Have you ever used it in an ESL class? How? Are there other ways that this kind of program can improve teaching quality and help learners of ESL to acquire the language faster and easier?

Some people have difficult time learning English. They learn hard but something doesn’t allow them to get fluent in English and they don’t know what that is. I have been learning Vietnamese for pretty long time and I am still not fluent but I know why. There are many reasons to fail at getting fluent in English but I stopped at four of them that are always invoked by learners of English.

Here you have 4 reasons why people fail at getting fluent in English.

1. I’m shy to speak English – If you are shy, if you don’t speak then you will never be fluent in English. If you don’t practice you forget. There are lots of opportunities to speak … you can speak even alone at home, it is better than not speaking at all.
2. I don’t have time – Many people complain about the time (including me) but there are so many free windows in your daily activity that you can use to practice English or learn new vocabulary. There are free podcasts and youtube videos that you can listen while you are doing housework for example.
3. I tried but I’m not good at English – that might be true, some people are better at learning a language than others. They are better because they want it more, they have a purpose, they take responsibility, they have imagination, and one of the most important reason, they have a good plan/method.
4. Adults can not learn English well – Definitely, a child will learn faster but if you don’t give enough credit to yourself of course you will not succeed. Personally, I see many advantages being an adult learner of English and the most important ones are: you know what you want, you have a strong reason for learning English, and you can make your own plan according to your needs.

Have you ever tried to get fluent in a foreign language? Have you succeeded? Why?

I teach kindergarten kids every Friday morning for 2 hours (4 classes, 30 minutes/class) and I have difficult time finding suitable games and activities for them. There are around 70-80 kids in my class (3 classes are mixed up … to save money I suppose) sitting on the floor in a big classroom. I did a lot of research online and all of the activities for this age involve the use of scissors or colored books. There is no way I can use these in my class. I do have a board (on the wheels, it can be moved), CD-DVD player and TV connected to it.

Here is the 30 minute lesson I did yesterday with my kindergarten kids. My lesson always starts with a song and instruction review (sit down, stand up, be quiet etc.). Since they are very beginners, vocabulary was my main focus. I have chosen six cards from 3 categories (dress, shorts, car, motorcycle, rhino, and rabbit). You can choose more cards if you do review or fewer cards for 3 year old kids. Repetition is the key in memorizing vocabulary at this age but the way teacher do it is far more important. Kids get bored fast doing a lot of repetition so it has to be done in different ways.

• Taking out the cards one by one from your bag raises their curiosity (what’s the next card?!). Note: using real objects is more effective than using cards!
• Go through the cards only with boys while the girls just listen
• Arrange cards on groups (example: red fruits in a group and yellow fruits in another group then boys have to remember yellow fruits and girls red fruits)

The introduction and presenting vocabulary took me about 15 minutes.

With the cards on the board I tried miming. I put my hands above my ears miming rabbit’s long ears. The kids got it from the first moment and everybody said “rabbit”. I used miming for all other cards and they were so excited. I used good, very good, and excellent to mark their miming performance (Note: be a little bit more excited when pronouncing “very good” and very excited when pronouncing “excellent” … In this way the kids understand that “excellent” is better than “very good”). It took them just a couple of minutes to understand the miming and the meaning of “good”, “very good”, and “excellent”.

I asked one kid to come in front of the class to mime. The other kids have to say what word is mimed and mark the kid based on the quality of miming with “good”, “very good” or “excellent”. Everybody was raising their hands to come in front of the class and mime. We did a lot of vocabulary repetition with this game and the mission was accomplished.

The most complex English sounds are the triphthongs. They are not only difficult to pronounce but also difficult to recognize. Consider a triphthong a glide from a vowel to another vowel then continue the glide to a third vowel. The best example is the word hour. It starts with a sound similar to /a/, continues with a sound similar to the sound produced by the double o from the word book and finishes with a schwa sound (according to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hour?s=t).

There are five triphthongs in English made up from five diphthongs with a schwa added at the end.

eɪ + ə = eɪə
aɪ + ə = aɪə
ɔɪ + ə = ɔɪə
əʊ + ə = əʊə
aʊ + ə = aʊə

Personally I find triphtongs very difficult to distinguish from some of the vowels. Very often the middle part of the triphthong is not pronounced or because there is so much variation in the amount of vowel movement according to how slow and careful the pronunciation is.
Here are some common words containing a triphthong sound:

eɪə – layer, player
aɪə – liar, fire
ɔɪə – loyal, royal
əʊə – lower, slower
aʊə – power, flower

I have been teaching English in Ho Chi Minh City since 2008 and during this time I met a lot of people (mostly Vietnamese). Some of them speak good English, some others not very good, and many of them don’t speak English at all. Whoever they are and their language ability is, they always want to talk about learning English and how to do it better.

Based on their interest in learning English language and their results, I created my own classification of learners of English. This classification might be true for other learners of English (other than Vietnamese) as well.

Failed learner
This kind of learner has studied English for several years or more and he is not able to speak English. He finds English too difficult, almost impossible to be learned. He doesn’t understand that being in an English class is not enough and learning English process has to be extended outside the class. He wants to learn English but he wants it effortless. Math and other subjects were more important and received more attention. His teacher did a lot of grammar in the class and he is amazed of how many grammar rules he brakes speaking English. He realized that learning English is not funny. He gave up.

Beginners
Most of the Vietnamese are beginners. The have taken an English class and they are able to speak some simple sentences. They have never have much interest in learning English but they tried just like everybody else. They stopped learning English because they are busy (family, job, etc.), lazy, consider it useless etc. At some point in the future they will need to study English again and probably they will be successful learners of English.

Scared learner
He studied English in school for 7 years or more. He learns English like he learns math memorizing all the rules. He is able in most cases to write quite well about various topics and complete complex grammar tasks. He knows five synonyms for the word pseudonymous. The written English exam’ result is perfect. He cares only about the exam results. However, he can’t speak English or he speaks but nobody understands. His English teacher spent all the time explaining grammar points in Vietnamese and hasn’t provided any spoken English model. He is shy to speak English because he never did it. He doesn’t know how to apply in speaking all those grammar rules he has learned. He probably has had a bad experience speaking English that ruined his confidence and now he is a scared learner.

Smart learners
These learners speak English whenever they have a chance. Here I have to mention two of my neighbors (two brothers) and few of my students (maybe four out of one thousand). These learners create their own English environment. They speak English at home with their family members, listen and sing English songs, karaoke (in English), they knock at your door just to speak some English with you, watch English movies repeating every single phrase, and they can be seen in all English speaking clubs around the city. They don’t know grammar rules and they don’t care about them but they understand movies and are able to speak English in any circumstances.

Learner v1.1 beta
He spends 10 hours a day in front of his ultra-thin laptop playing games, surfing the web, trying out some Photoshop techniques or designing a website. Internet is the second world for him and he knows all the terminology necessary to be a successful net-geek. He learned a lot by reading and he often communicates with others with the same interests. He has desktop shortcuts to several online dictionaries and he is a very confident user of English.

The professor
This learner is fluent in English. He achieved his fluency through hard work and dedication. He is not perfect but he uses the language at a high level. He is a business man or has a high position in a company. He always has to deal with foreigners in his work and first impression matters for him. He works hard to improve his pronunciation and accent.

Diphthongs are sounds which consist of a movement from one vowel sound to another. Basically there are two vowel sounds pronounced together. Diphthongs are of a great importance because they are responsible for the “foreign” accent. Usually, learners of English produce a pure vowel where a diphthong is required. Using a vowel instead of a diphthong is a common mistake for Vietnamese learners of English. As an example, the word “cake” is pronounced /kek/ instead of /keɪk/.

There are eight diphthong is English language. I classified them into three categories, in order to remember them easier, according to their ending.

Diphthongs that end in ə

• ɪə (as in the word “dear”)
• eə (as in the word “hair”)
• ʊə (as in the word “newer”)

Diphthongs that end in ɪ

• eɪ (as in the word “day”)
• aɪ (as in the word “guy”)
• ɔɪ (as is the word “noise”)

Diphthongs that end in ʊ

• əʊ (as in the word “home”)
• aʊ (as in the word “mouse”)

The diphthong ɪə
The starting point of this diphthong is closer than the sound ɪ in the words “bin” or “bit”
Examples: dear, beard, beer, fierce

The diphthong eə
This diphthong starts with the /e/ sound (the found from the words “get”, “men” etc) and ends with a schwa sound.
Examples: scare, hair, pear, bear

The diphthong ʊə
This diphthong has the starting point very close to the sound ʊ from the words “put” or “pull”.
Examples: tour, newer, moored

These first three diphthongs end with a glide towards a closer vowel so they are called closing diphthongs.

The diphthong eɪ
This diphthong has as starting point the vowel e as in the word “get” or the word “men”.
Examples: day, paid, face

The diphthong aɪ
The starting point of this diphthong is very similar to the sound ʌ (as in the word “cut”) which is an open vowel between front and back.
Examples: guy, nice, time

The diphthong ɔɪ
The first part of this diphthong has the same sound as ɔ in the word “born”.
Examples: noise, soy, coin, boil

The following two diphthongs glide towards ʊ sound (as in the word “book”) which requires a rounding movement of the lips. However, since the second part of the diphthong is weak, the rounding movement of the lips is not very large.

The diphthong əʊ
This diphthong has a beginning sound very similar to schwa sound (as in the word “about”). The lips are slightly rounded just because of the ending sound ʊ of this diphthong.
Examples: home, load, most

The diphthong aʊ
This diphthong begins with a vowel similar to ɑ (as in the word “car”).
Examples: mouse, house, loud, pound

Five tables that make any learner of English to understand how dates are used in English language (with phonemic transcription). Since there is more than one way to express dates in English, it is not a surprise that this topic creates confusion among learners of English.

Days of the week

Months of the year

Dates

Years

Expressing the date

Note:

• If the date contains the day then the preposition on is used (Example: My birthday is on June 16).
• If there is no day in the date then preposition in is required (Example: I was born in 1977).

The focus of the lesson: Introduction to relative clauses
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A2
Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

“Relative clauses” is not something very difficult to learn but (according to most of my Vietnamese students) the name “relative clauses” sounds very academic and unfriendly. This lesson is just an introduction in relative clauses.

Step 1
Teacher asks students to say and asks them why:

A famous singer who you like a lot
……………. is a famous singer who …………………

A thing that you often lose
…………….. is something that I often lose.

A place where you would like to go
…………….. is a place where I would like to go.

Step 2
Look at the definition below. What do you think the missing word is?

……………… is someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early. (Answer: a boss)

Step 3
In pairs or small groups ask students to think of a definition of the following words and write them in the notebooks: a mosquito, a secret, the brain, an American, and an office.

Step 4
Match the words with their definitions (cynical definitions).

An American is a person who speaks only one language, English.
An office is a place where you can relax after a difficult weekend at home.
A mosquito is a small animal that makes you like flies better.
A secret is something that you only tell one person.
The brain is something that starts working when you get up in the morning and stops working when you get to work or school.

Step 5
Complete the definitions for the following words:

• A tourist is somebody …………………………………………………………….
• A kitchen is a place ………………………………………………………………..
• A phone is something …..…………………………………………………………

Why is it necessary to learn phonetics and phonology? There are many specialists who think studying phonetics and phonology is necessary and many others who think it is not necessary. Personally, I think it is necessary. The theoretical knowledge of phonetics and phonology is necessary for anyone in order to understand the principles regulating the use of sounds in spoken English.

Have you ever heard “English is not systematic”? What about “English words don’t follow rules”? And, my favorite one: “studying phonetics and phonology is not important”. All of these statements are FALSE.

Here are some reasons why the studying of phonetics is necessary:

-          First of all, the theoretical background of phonetics and phonology gives you confidence, that confidence that is absolutely necessary for any learner of English.
-          Teachers must help learners of English to develop different strategies to help students pronounce words even when their teacher is not available. Learning a foreign language involves a lot of self studying time. Practicing alone, at home, requires a theoretical background to follow. Let’s consider the following scenario: I am reading something and there is a word that I don’t know. I am opening a dictionary and I am checking the meaning and the phonemic transcription (to see how I should pronounce the word). There are sounds and I have to produce them as accurately as possible. There is no teacher to ask for help. This has happened to me a thousand times.
-          Phonetics and Phonology provides a new way of dissecting and analyzing English language. It helped me to improve my pronunciation and definitely it helped others as well.
-          Remembering new words is easier when they are discussed and analyzed. Analyzing the meaning and the sound of a word at the same time helps learners of English to remember the vocabulary items easier.

Learning phonetics and phonology is definitely a difficult thing. Many learners of English avoid it and find it useless. Those who are hard-working and took this step into the study of phonology find it very useful. Being difficult doesn’t mean it has to be eliminated or it is not effective. Eliminating all difficult things from learning English process (in order to make our students happy) ends up in doing just a simple communication class and limit learners’ progress.

Learners of English should study a program that is well balanced including phonics studies that are linked to speaking, listening, phonological awareness, writing, and reading programs.

The focus of the lesson: Animal body parts and present simple third person singular
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 11-12 years old / grade 6
Level: Elementary
Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

Once a year the school I teach for holds a demonstrative lesson for the Parents Committee, School’s teachers, and other guests. I was assigned for this lesson on a Saturday morning and I was asked to design a 30-45 minutes lesson.

I wanted a topic that has nothing in common with the topics from the school’s English course book. The animal body parts topic come through my mind in one evening when I was reading a story for my 5 year old daughter. The lesson is a comparison between human body parts and animal body parts.

The lesson starts with a simple crossword. The students have to find and circle some of the human body parts. The task’s purpose is to review the human body parts.

As usually, I have projected the picture on the board and I asked students to come to the board and solve the word search. Once the words were found I worked on pronunciation very briefly then I moved on to the body parts comparison.

Humans vs. Animals

Explain to students that humans and animals have things in common. The first two slides of my presentation (the presentation file can be downloaded at the end of this lesson plan) explain that. The teacher can assign a student to read the text from the presentation’s slide.

Next two slides point out that an animal doesn’t have teeth, hands etc.

The next two slides of the presentation present animals body parts:

• A bird doesn’t have a mouth. A bird has a beak /bik/ .
• A bird doesn’t have hands. A bird has wings /wɪŋs/.
• A bird doesn’t have hair. A bird has feathers /ˈfɛðərs/.
• A tiger doesn’t have teeth. A tiger has fangs /fæŋs/.
• A tiger doesn’t have hair. A tiger has fur /fɜr/.
• A tiger doesn’t have feet. A tiger has paws /pɔs/.

As a grammar point, the third person singular present simple is introduced at this point. In my case the Vietnamese English teacher explained the grammar point but there are many other ways of doing that.

The next task for my students was a riddle. The riddle contains missing words that have to be completed in order to find the solution.

The riddle

Complete the missing words using 4 of the following words: hands, beak, fur, mouth, fangs, teeth, feet, paws, lion, parrot, and tiger.

The productive task (individual, pairs or small groups)

Students write a description of an animal using vocabulary learned in this lesson, the present simple tense, and the model provided (see the riddle).

Download the power point file here:Animal Body Parts Presentation (63)

There are many vowel sounds in English language but here I am talking about the short vowels. The short vowels are: ɪ, e, æ, ʌ, ɒ, and ʊ. However, these vowels can have different length depending on the context. Each of the short vowels is graphical represented in relation with the cardinal vowels. I am using the same trapezoid shape as I have used in Cardinal Vowels article.

There is another short vowel called schwa but it is different than the vowels mentioned above from many points of view. Because it is different and the most commonly used sound in English it deserves an article only about it. The schwa sound will not be discussed here.

The vowel /ɪ/ – The vowel /ɪ/ is in the close front area and it is very similar with the cardinal vowel /i/. However, it is more open and the lips are a little bit spread when producing the vowel sound /ɪ/. It can be seen in words like fish, ship, bit etc.

Short vowel /ɪ/

The vowel /e/ – Lips are slightly spread when producing the vowel /e/. On the graphical representation it is placed just above the cardinal vowel /ɜ/. It can be seen in words like: men, yes etc.

Short vowel /e/

Short vowel /æ/ – This is a front and open vowel. However, it is not as open as the cardinal vowel /a/. The lips are also a little bit spread and the best example of words where the vowel /æ/ can be seen is: cat, gas, bat, bag etc. As the phonetic symbol shows, it produces a sound that sounds like /a/ and /e/ sounds pronounced together at the same time. Some learners of English find this sound extremely difficult to reproduce while for others it is quite easy.

Short vowel /æ/

The vowel /ʌ/ – This is an open vowel and it sounds like many sounds produced by the letter “a” in many European languages and also in Vietnamese language. The position of lips is neutral and learners of English find this sound easy to be reproduced. The vowel /ʌ/ can be seen in words like cup, but, some etc.

Short vowel /ʌ/

The vowel /ɒ/ – This is a vowel that creates many pronunciation problems for learners of English. Some pronounce it as an /o/ sound while others pronounce it as an /a/ sound. The truth is somewhere in between and honestly, even native speakers of English, pronounce this sound differently. The vowel /ɒ/ is not fully back and in tongue height it is between open-mid and open. The lips are a little bit rounded and have a great contribution in producing this sound. “Pot” and “gone” are two common words where the vowel sound /ɒ/ can be seen.

Short vowel /ɒ/

The vowel /ʊ/ – There is a big difference between the vowel /ʊ/ and the nearest cardinal vowel /u/. However, in speech, I hardly ever heard a non native English speaker producing this sound. Everybody will use the cardinal vowel /u/ instead of /ʊ/. The vowel /ʊ/ is more open and nearer to central than the cardinal vowel /u/. The lips are rounded when producing the vowel sound /ʊ/. The words “put”, “book”, and “push” are commonly used words containing the vowel /ʊ/.

Short vowel /ʊ/

The focus of the lesson: Phrasal verbs formed with the verb “break”
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A2
Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

Phrasal verbs are definitely a big challenge for any learner of English. Some learners find mastering the usage of phrasal verbs a very important thing because, according to them, using them correctly makes your English to sound better.

For this lesson I have chosen the verb “break” since it is a very commonly used one. It has many more meanings than are presented in the lesson but because the lesson lasts for 45 minutes I decided to pick up just five meanings.

First I show to students five pictures and I will ask them what they represent. Below are the pictures:

Break something down

Break in

Break out

Break up

Break down

The teacher will write on the board the following words the students have to focus on:

Break / Broke / Broken
Broken down, break something down, broke in, broke up, and broke out

Students have to match the pictures with the words as is shown below. I don’t expect them to do it right from the first moment but with a little help the task will be successfully completed.

Phrasal Verbs – Match words with pictures

All of the pictures above are projected on the board. Below is the power point file I used for this presentation: Phrasal Verbs - ESL lesson plan (43)

The next task will be a little bit more challenging for them. I am going to project on the board the following picture:

Phrasal verbs – Forming sentences with phrasal verbs

Students have to form sentences with the given words by matching the words from the first rectangle with the matching phrasal verbs from the second rectangle. Finally, they have to complete the sentence by writing in the blanks (in the third rectangle) the words from the bottom of the picture. The teacher provides an example.

Below is the board plan:

Phrasal verbs – board plan

Break down
My motorbike is broken down. I need a garage.
Break down = stop functioning (any kind of machine, vehicle, computer etc.)

Break something down
I don’t usually break the lesson down into two parts.
Break something down = divide something into two or more pieces/parts

Break in
A thief broke in and stole our money.
Break in = enter someone’s house by force

Break up
We broke up before Lunar New Year.
Break up = the end of a relationship.

Break out
He broke out of prison because the guard wasn’t watching him.
Break out = to emerge or escape

As a productive task, in pairs (or small groups), student make three more sentences using the phrasal verbs learned in this lesson.

The focus of the lesson: Passive voice in past simple
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A2
Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

The lesson focuses on passive voice in past simple in English language. An example is provided at the beginning of the lesson. Based on the example the students have to complete different tasks. Successful completion of a task is rewarded.

Below is the example I am going to provide at the beginning of the lesson:

I ask a student to come in front of the class, I ask him “what is your name?” then he has to write the answer on the board.

Write / Wrote / Written
My name is Lam.
Lam wrote this English sentence.
This English sentence was written by Lam.

Once the example is provided and explained (In the first example we care about Lam and in the second example our focus is the English sentence written on the board) we can go ahead and ask students to complete the following task based on the example already provided.

I am going to project on the board the picture that is shown below. Students have to match parts of the sentence in order to form a complete sentence as it is shown in the example. The task might be a little bit challenging but I am pretty confident because my students (usually all Vietnamese students) are very good at solving this kind of tasks.

Below are the sentences that have to be formed by the students by matching parts of the sentence.

Eat
The ice cream was eaten by the dog. (Passive voice)
The dog ate the ice cream. (Active voice)

Give
The most difficult test this year was given by my English teacher.
My English teacher gave us the most difficult test.

Write
This book was written by John Smith.
John Smith wrote this book.

Bite
The child was bitten by a snake.
A snake bit the child.

Choose
The computer was chosen by my daughter.
My daughter chose the computer.

Do
The homework was done by his brother.
His brother did the homework.

Drive
The car was driven by a monkey.
A monkey drove the car.

The student who match correctly a sentence has to write it on the board in a table.

I am going to use funny videos as a reward. My students love funny videos and there are plenty of them on YouTube. The student who completes a sentence (active voice + passive voice) can pick up a video to be watched with the whole class. There will be six videos on the screen (one for each sentence) but only three of them will be real videos (between one and two minutes). The other three will be fake videos that last just a few seconds.

As a productive task the teacher asks students to make three sentences in active voice and three sentences in passive voice using the verbs below:

Hide Hid Hidden
Draw Drew Drawn
Take Took Taken

Two weeks ago, somebody invited me to teach ESP, English for Accountancy to be more exact. Since I am an accountant I accepted the challenge although I have no experience in teaching English for Accountancy. But, everything has a beginning.

I was thinking that the class will be pretty much similar to a normal ESL class. Actually, it isn’t  it is quite different. Below are five challenges that I have to deal with in my ESP class and I believe most of the English teachers face the same problems.

1. Different level of language ability
2. Different motivation
3. Different experience in work
4. Different needs and interests
5. Hierarchies within the class

Teachers need to find and use proper strategies to manage these areas. Some of the challenges listed above are very common in many ESL classes and are relatively easy to manage. However, one key point is to make sure the material and activities used in the class are relevant, interesting, and motivating.

Although the students in an ESP class are united by a common specialty and have the same end goal, the difference between them is often greater than in other classes. It is very important for the teacher to be aware of these differences. These differences manifest themselves in classroom activities and tasks. They are relatively easy to spot. Once the differences are identified, the teacher can take action to manage them and if that is possible, to use them to the benefit of all the class.

Here are some ideas for action related to pair work and vocabulary. These ideas can be applied in any ESL classroom.

1. Pairs check answers first
2. Teacher pairs weak with strong students for peer support
3. Teacher pairs weak with weak students for easier monitoring and help
4. Teacher might want to pair strong with strong students and give them an extra task
5. The teacher creates and gives students wordlists to research and learn
6. Dictionary use should be allowed
7. One or two weaker students are responsible for recording new vocabulary and making display sheets for the whole class

Teachers shouldn’t forget that ESP learners are real people and it is very important to know what they are interested in and how they communicate in their real lives.

Cardinal vowels are a standard reference system and those people who want to learn phonetics have to learn to make them accurately and of course recognize them correctly. Learning these cardinal vowels is a very useful way of describing, classifying, comparing and understanding vowels.

Cardinal vowels are: /i/, /a/, /ɑ/, /u/, /e/, /ɜ/, /ɔ/, and /o/. Traditionally, cardinal vowels are represented graphically using a quadrilateral shape. I am using here the shape recommended by International Phonetic Association that looks like a kind of trapezoid. The figure can be seen below.

Primary Cardinal Vowels

In order to understand the graphical representation of the Primary Cardinal Vowels we have to understand what front, back, close, and open mean.

Let’s consider the English word “see”. Making the /i:/ vowel sound (that is produced by the “ee” from the word “see”) we are able to see (maybe in a mirror if we  tilt the head back) that the tongue is held up very close to the roof of the mouth. Now let’s compare this sound with the sound /æ/ made by word “bag” for example. When we make the /æ/ sound, the surface of the tongue is not close to the roof of the mouth. So, we can say that the /i:/ sound is a close vowel sound and the /æ/ vowel sound is a relatively open sound (see the graphical representation of open and close sounds below).

Close open sounds

In making the /i:/ and /æ/ vowels, the front part of the tongue that is raised. A vowel that is produced by raising the back part of the tongue it is called a back vowel. The vowel /ɑː/ from the word “car” is produced by raising the back part of the tongue. The vowel /u:/ from the word “boot” is also a back vowel but compared with vowel /ɑː/ it is closed.

These 8 vowels represented here are called primary cardinal vowels and they are the most familiar to the speakers of English as a second language (especially for speakers of most European languages). There are other cardinal vowels called Secondary cardinal vowels that sound less familiar.

Cardinal vowel no. 1 has the symbol [i]. This vowel is as close and as front as it is possible to make a vowel without obstructing the flow of air to produce a friction noise (the kind of sound that can be heard in consonants sounds like /s/ or /f/). Cardinal vowel no. 5 has the symbol [ɑ] and is the most open and back vowel that can be made. Cardinal vowel no. 4 has the symbol [a] and it is fully open and front. Cardinal vowel no. 8 has the symbol [u] and it is fully close and back.

These are extreme points as it can be seen in the first image above. After establishing them it is easier to add intermediate points (see vowels no. 2, 3, 6, and 7).

As we have already seen, we can classify vowels according to how close the tongue is to the roof of the mouth and what part of the tongue (front or back) we raise in order to produce the sound. There is another way to classify the vowels and that is the lip-rounding. Human lips are very flexible and they can take so many different shapes and positions but three of them are the most common.

Rounded lips – the corners of the lips are brought towards each other and the lips are pushed forward a little bit. This shape of the lips can be clearly observed making the vowel sound /u;/

Spread lips – the corners of the lips move away from each other. Making the sound /i/ exemplifies the spread lips shape.

Neutral lips – the lips are not noticeable rounded or spread. The schwa sound is a good example of neutral lips shape.

Have you ever asked yourself why some sounds are called vowels and others are called consonants? These two words, vowels and consonants, are very familiar for any learner of English but most of them don’t know what they mean.

Specialists consider vowels, sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air from the larynx to the lips. The others (where there is obstruction to the flow of air) are called consonants.

Looking at the back of patience’ mouth a doctor asks the patience to make the sound “ah”. In this way there will be an unobstructed view for the doctor. But, if we make a sound like /s/ or /d/ we make it impossible for the air to pass through the mouth. These kinds of sounds (such as /s/ and /d/) are considered consonants.

However, if we say that the difference between vowels and consonants is a difference in the way that they are produced, there will be some cases of disagreement. This is something that can not be avoided.

It is possible to look at vowels and consonants in a different way. The most important difference is not the way they are made but their different distribution. Let’s consider the sound /h/ at the beginning of an English word. What sound can follow this /h/? All the sounds that can follow /h/ sound are considered vowels (such as /e/ sound in the word “hen”). I can’t think of any consonant sound that can follow the beginning sound /h/. Let’s consider the beginning sounds /bi/. Most of the sounds that can follow /bi/ are consonants (as in the words “bill”, “bid”, “big” etc.). I can’t think of any cases where a vowel sound can follow /bi/. However, looking at vowels and consonants this way creates many other interesting theoretical problems and everything will be more difficult and confuse.

Some of the stages presented here are very similar with the stages I have presented in http://eslvietnamzone.com/stages-situationaldialogue-presentation-ppp-lesson/ and I will not insist on them.

Before the presentation – There are 2 stages before the presentation itself. They can be seen listed below and I will not talk more about them since they were detailed in Stages of a situational/dialogue presentation for a PPP lesson

1. Engage the students’ attention
2. Pre-teach essential vocabulary

The presentation 

Stimulate interest in the text – The teacher personalizes the topic of the text the students are going to read/listen, to try to re-create in classroom the personal interest that might lead us to listen to or to read something. A short discussion or a brainstorming activity drawing on students’ opinion, ideas or reminiscences might be a good idea.

Set a global task (or it might be a global question) – Before presenting them with the text, the teacher provides the students with a reason to read/listen for understanding of the gist or main points of the text. This could take the form of a simple question or a task such as making predictions about the subject matter of the text, which the students can then check by listening or reading.

Students read/listen and complete the global task

Teacher gives feedback on the global task – The teacher provides confirmation of the correct answers to questions, the correct grammatical form required by an activity etc. or listens and responds to students’ conclusions etc. This can be done by calling on individual students verbally; by getting students to write answers/conclusions etc. on the board; by enabling students to check against a correct version, etc.

Elicit marker sentence from the text (either from gap-fill activity for listening text or asking questions e.g. What was the sentence about … ? from a reading text.) – The teacher tries to draw on and to consolidate students’ existing knowledge and to encourage a collaborative classroom atmosphere by finding out if any student already knows the piece of language (lexis or grammatical structure) which the teacher wants to focus on. In order to do this, the teacher must show the meaning of the piece of language clearly or put the students in a position where they can see clearly what someone would need to say.

Model once – Please check Stages of a situational/dialogue presentation for a PPP lesson

Highlight the spoken form – The teacher draws the students’ attention to the component parts of a spoken structure and any pronunciation difficulties it presents. For more details see stage 7 in Stages of a situational/dialogue presentation for a PPP lesson

Check the concept

Model again

Drill chorally, then in groups, then individually

Repeat the process above for each marker sentence

Provide a written record (with students’ involvement)

Highlight the written form

Check the concept

Students look again at the reading text (or at the tape-script of a listening text) and underline other examples of the target language (or students listen again and note other examples of the target language they hear.)

The sounds we make when speaking are produced through muscles contractions. Humans have a very large and complex set of muscles that can produce and modify the air flow coming from lungs, transforming it in different sounds of speech. In order to understand how this air flow is transformed is sounds of speech it is necessary to understand what parts of the vocal tract influence the way we produce the sounds of speech.

Below is a graphical representation of these vocal tract parts (often called articulators) and a short description of them. It represents the human head (section seen from the side) and it should be familiar for those who were involved in the study of these articulators.

Production of speech sounds – articulators

The soft plate
The soft plate it is also called velum and it is placed in a key position that allows the air to go through your mouth and through your nose. In speech, the soft plate (velum) is often in a raised position that doesn’t allow the air to go through your nose. The soft plate (velum) can be touched by the tongue. For example when we make the sounds /k/ and /g/ the tongue touches the soft plate (velum) and the sounds produced in these conditions are called velar sounds.

The lips
The lips are very important in speech. They produce a large number of sounds. In rounded shape the lips produce vowels like /u:/. In contact with the teeth the lips produce sounds like /f/ or /v/ (these sounds are called labiodental sounds). Pressed together the lips produce sounds like /p/ or /b/ (these sounds are called bilabial sounds).

The pharynx
If you look in the mirror with your mouth open then you can see the back of your larynx. It is just a tube which begins just above the larynx. It is about 8 cm long.

The alveolar ridge
The alveolar ridge is placed just behind the top front teeth as it is shown in the image above. Sounds produced here (the tongue touching the alveolar ridge) are called alveolar sounds. For example the sounds /t/ and /d/ are produced by the alveolar ridge.

The teeth
The tongue is in contact to the teeth (especially the upper side teeth) for many speech sounds. These sounds are called dental sounds.

The tongue
The tongue is a very important articulator and it can be moved in so many different places and it can take many different shapes.

The focus of the lesson: Developing functional literacy
Size of the class: 20 students
Age: 18 – 36 years old
Level: Intermediate / B1
Length of the lesson: 1.5 hours

Lead-in
Since the lesson is all about complaints a good lead-in will be asking students a few questions related to this topic. People like to complain, sometimes without a real reason.

Reading
Below is a letter sent by one friend of mine who rented a flat in Ho Chi Minh City. The letter is modified to meet the lesson requirements.

Task 1
Skim the letter to get an idea of the topic and write in the notebook what the letter is about.

Vocabulary
The teacher asks students to underline all the vocabulary words are unknown then check the meaning of unknown words in your dictionary or ask the teacher. Read the letter again

Matching parts of the letter with their correspondent functions
Below is a list of functions. Read the list of functions then write a number next to the parts of the letter which match these functions.

1. Closing
2. Writer’s signature
3. Justification of complaint
4. Writer’s address
5. Date
6. Request for action
7. Greetings
8. Identification of complaint

Answering questions
Read the letter again and answer the following questions in written form:

1. What is Dennis complaining about?
2. What justification does Dennis give for his complaint?
3. What action does Dennis want Madam Hang to take?

Making notes before writing a letter of complaint
Before writing your own letter, make notes on a piece of paper.

1. Which authority you will need to send your letter to
2. Find out the name of the person you will need to sent your letter to
3. Subject of the letter
4. Content of the letter (main ideas very brief)
5. Problem
6. Details
7. Action requested
8. Closing phrases
9. Yours

Writing a draft of the letter
Once the notes are written on a piece of paper students can start working on the first draft of the letter. Below is a list of words and expressions your students might find helpful in completing the task.

Writing the final draft
Once the first draft is completed students discuss it in small groups, with whole class or with the teacher then write the final draft.

I have been dealing with teaching ESL for children since 2009 and I have to say that it is a big challenge. Creating the right environment for children to learn is by far the most difficult part. The teacher has to work systematically in order to establish clear parameters for behavior. Usually this requires great amount of patience but it is the best way to create a relaxed, happy and child-centered learning environment.

Four important points you can apply in your children class are detailed below.

Treat children as individuals – Sometimes you have a very large class and probably it is quite impossible to remember their names or anything else about them. However, it is absolutely vital that children feel you know them as individuals not as a big group of students that has to be controlled. It is a good idea to find out a few personal things about them and use it in specific strategies like start-of-class routine where you can ask different children questions about personal things you know about them.

Value children’s work – Listen to what children have to say, respond to the content they have to say (not necessary to the language) and decorate the class with examples of their good work are just three ways the teacher can influence their motivation, level of achievement and their willingness to make an effort in the class.

Catch them being good – It is very important to praise children for good behavior. They have to know that they can get your attention through good behavior and you value this good behavior.

Keep expectations high – Your expectation of children’s behavior and their potential to achieve are usually up to you. You should keep your expectations high (but not very high) and for sure children will inevitably live up to this expectations.

Learners of English are very often aware and self critical of the way they speak English. All of them try and wish to speak “like a native speaker”. More than that, they find it difficult to understand English speakers when heard at peace. One of the main reasons is connected speech.

Showing students what happen in rapid speech and designing tasks where they can identify different features of connected speech can help them developing their understanding. This can be done from very low levels.

A very simple sentence such as “How old are you?” can provide examples of intrusive /w/, catenation, and a weak form. Vietnamese learners of English often hear “How are you?” instead of “How old are you?” and vice versa.

/haʊwɒldəju:/

Catenation – In rapid speech, a final consonant sound moves over to join an initial vowel sound. Even fluent speakers of English often mishear.

Examples:
An apple, get up, full on, beat it etc.

Elision – In rapid speech final /t/ and /d/ sounds often disappear. This is called elision.

Examples:
Next day, last chance, must try, cold lunch etc.

Weak forms – Take a look at the phonetic transcription of the underlined words. They are pronounced differently in different situations.

Examples:

Am /æm; unstressed əm, m/

1. What am I doing? /əm/
2. Yes, I am. /æm/

Are /ɑr; unstressed ər/

1. These cats are lovely. /ə/
2. Yes, they are. /ɑ:/

At / æt; unstressed ət, ɪt/

1. I’ll meet you at the school. /ət/
2. What are you looking at? /æt/

Can /kæn; unstressed kən/

1. I can speak English. /kən/
2. I know you can. /kæn/

Assimilation – It happens across word boundaries in rapid speech making the transition between sounds easier for the speaker.

Examples:
It’s in that box.
Can you ask that man?

The most common learner styles are: individual, group, visual, kinesthetic, auditory, impulsive, and reflective. Below are 11 activities and what learner styles they are suitable for.

 
Reflective
A reflective learner likes to read a text slowly and carefully before answering questions.

 
Auditory
This kind of learner learns the best by listening to stories. According to my experience this activity is suitable for the vast majority of young learners (particularly at kindergarten level) and less suitable for adults.

 
Auditory + Reflective
One activity that I often do with my adult learners is discussing a topic related to a task that has just been completed. For example: discussing how to improve pronunciation after a speaking task; or discussing grammar after a reading text.

 
Visual
Watching a video is the best way to satisfy this kind of learner.

 
Visual + Kinesthetic
A classic, simple, and great activity is matching pictures to vocabulary. Since all learners are visual + kinesthetic (some more than others) this activity usually works very well.

 
Group
Many of my students feel more comfortable writing in group. Make groups of four and have one student writing down. All members of the group come up with ideas but only one writes down.

 
Group + Kinesthetic
-        Playing a team running game in groups usually works especially if the first part of the game takes place inside the group and the second part of the game is between groups.
-        Matching word cards to definition cards in groups is a good idea especially if the activity has a high level of difficulty.

 
Individual
For this learner style I will enumerate just two activities:
-        Writing a composition alone
-        Writing new vocabulary words in a notebook

 
Impulsive
These kinds of learners raise their hand in the class all the time. They want to speak English and they don’t have patience for other “boring” activities. I always spend a couple of minutes at the end of the lesson to talk to them. A speaking fluency activity is always a pleasure for them.

Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with a friend (also English teacher) about reading and listening skills. We don’t talk very often about teaching because it seems that we have quite different opinions. He might be right since I heard the same statements from other teachers as well.

Statements related to reading and listening that I DISAGREE

1. It is important to have students read/listen in a lesson as early as possible. For that each introductory stage (that is done before reading/listening) must be short, clear and to the point.
2. True/False questions should be avoided because they are too simple.
3. All vocabulary items should be taught after reading/listening
4. Readingaloud can help developing reading skills
5. When going over the questions with the whole class, the teacher should ask the strongest student for the answer first and then repeat the correct answer so the other students can write it down.

Statement related to reading and listening that he DISAGREES

1. Students should try to answer any questions before they read or listen
2. I find it a good idea to have students read quickly the text or listen once to the whole before answering any set of questions.
3. Arrange questions in the same order as the answers appear in the text.
4. Students should always compare answers in pairs after they read/listen.
5. Reading and listening activities should be followed by a speaking activity (or writing).

Below are the typical stages of a situational (or dialogue) presentation for a PPP lesson. The stages where corrections can take place are marked “corrections take place at this stage” although in my opinion corrections can take place throughout the presentation.
 

Stage 1 – Lead in
Everybody knows the importance of a Lead in stage and it can be done in several ways but its purpose is only one … to create interest in the topic of the lesson.
 

Stage 2 – Pre-teach essential lexis
If there are vocabulary items that need to be known by the students in order to complete the lesson’ tasks then it should be taught at this stage.
 

Stage 3 – Set the scene (build up the situation)
The teacher creates an imaginary situation which basically will be the context for the piece of language to be focused on. The teacher should involve the students in creating this imaginary situation. It can be done using visual aids, gestures or simple narrative.
 

Stage 4 – Elicit
The teacher shows clearly the meaning of the piece of language. The students need to see clearly what someone will need to say. In this way the teacher tries to draw on and tries to consolidate existing knowledge of students. Also the teacher creates a collaborative classroom atmosphere by finding if there is any student who already knows the piece of language he wants to focus on.
 

Stage 5 – Model
It is very difficult for a learner of English to hear English sounds for the first time. That’s why it is very important the teacher to provide a very clear model of pronunciation two or three times for students to listen to.
 

Stage 6 – Check the concept
In order to see if students understood the meaning of the piece of language the teacher asks simple closed questions.
 

Stage 7 – Highlight the spoken form
The teacher can check what the parts of speech are, check if students know which auxiliary verb is represented by a contraction, check if students can recognize weak form etc. In this way the teacher draws the attention of students to the component part of a spoken structure and pronunciation difficulties that it might present.
 

Stage 8 – Model again
Stage 5 can be repeated if that is necessary. According to my experience it is always necessary.
 

Stage 9 – Drill chorally (corrections take place at this stage)
Repeating the piece of language two or three times with the whole class encourages the students to try out the pronunciation of the new piece of language. Drilling chorally creates a non-threatening environment and students feel comfortable doing this pronunciation task.
 

Stage 10 – Drill in groups (corrections take place at this stage)
In order to hear if there are any common pronunciation problems, the teacher gets small groups of students to repeat the piece of language.
 

Stage 11 – Drill individually (corrections take place at this stage)
To build confidence and fix any individual pronunciation problems, the teacher gets individual students to repeat the piece of language. Those who are better at English will be drilled first individually before the weaker once.
 

Stage 12 – Practice (corrections take place at this stage)
-          Open pair (or group) practice of the whole dialogue (or part of it)
-          Closed pair practice of the whole dialogue (or part of it)
 

Stage 13 – Provide a written record (corrections take place at this stage)
After clarifying and practicing the spoken form of a piece of language, the teacher puts the written form of the language on the board as a record. Students are encouraged to pay attention by getting them to dictate, spell, answer questions about stress etc.
 

Stage 14 – Highlight the written form
Once the piece of language is written on the board, the teacher asks students to identify the component part of the structure (for example identifying the subject, auxiliary verb, base form, past participle etc.) and provide written information about pronunciation (maybe a phonemic transcription of some words). Students can consider this a record and it can be taken away.

This lesson is a game from the beginning to the end. It is not the most orthodox approach and it is not something I have tested before (we have played games before but not this one and not for this purpose) but the whole lesson is based on two well know teaching principles:

1. Have fun learning English through games
2. Students need a reason for any task the teacher ask them to complete

The focus of the lesson: Using “will” for instant decisions
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A2
Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

Below is the blackboard plan:

The word-search part with the words that have to be found is just an image projected on the board (it can be downloaded below). The target and the boys vs. girls table score are drawn by the teacher. The list of sentences between the target and the table score will be created by the students.

Normally, the rules of using “will” should be well known by the students since they have studied the grammar part of the lesson before. All they have to do is to use “will” in a sentence and if I’m lucky enough they will use the sentence in a short scenario. All they have to know is:

1. “Will” is used for instant decisions
2. “Will” is followed by a verb in base form

Stage 1
Set up the board (as is shown in the first image and explained at the beginning of the lesson plan).

Stage 2
Divide the students into two or more groups (boys and girls in my case).

Stage 3
Explain the rules of the game:

1. Identify a word in the word-search, circle it and cross it out in the list (as is shown in the example on the board plan) – 1 point
2. Use the found word in a sentence expressing future simple with “will” (as is shown in the example on the board plan). The sentence has to be spoken first then written on the board. – 3 points
3. Use the sentence in a short scenario (Example: Do you want to eat chicken or beef? Today I will eat chicken.) – 5 points
4. From  given distance throw the classroom wipe to the target drawn on the board – maximum points that can be obtained is 5 (according to each student accuracy)
5. The points are added and the total is written in the table score.
6. Each student can be helped by any other student from his/her group
7. The group that accumulates more points is the winner

Writing is also called “the forgotten skill”. For most learners of English writing in the least important and it is considered in many cases useless. Everybody says a language is mostly listened and spoken. Personally I totally disagree since I have learned English through writing. It is hard for me to remember any vocabulary item if I don’t know how to write it. It is even more difficult to pronounce it if I don’t know how to spell it. Maybe this is only my case but this is the reason I consider writing very important. Below are six great writing activities suitable for young learners but not only.

Activity 1 – The teacher gives out a handout on which there are pictures of known vocabulary. Around pictures there are letters to form the written form of the picture. Below the picture there is an empty space for the form to be written.
 
Activity 2 – There are letters of the alphabet on a piece of paper. The letters are in the form of a series of dots and the learners must join the dots to form the letter.
 
Activity 3 -The learners are given a sentence. Under the sentence is an empty space for the students to write their own sentence with the first word given. The sentence learners have to write has to be similar to the given sentence (Example: Given sentence is “Dan is fromRomania”; the learners have to write a similar sentence “I ……………………………..”)
 
Activity 4 -The teacher gives out a series of pictures that represent simple sentences. The learners must write the sentences.
 
Activity 5 -The teacher writes words on a piece of paper and gives one to each learner. The learners place another piece of paper over the given one then trace the word on their piece of paper.
 
Activity 6 -The teacher selects 10 words every week and teaches learners the written form. Every day the learners must read the words then cover them and try to write them down correctly.

Learner characteristics refer to differences between learners, differences that have an influence over their attitude to learning a language and the way they learn it. Different teachers have different teaching styles and use different approaches in the classroom. Different learners have different characteristics and they respond differently to these different teaching styles and approaches. The most important differences in my opinion are: learner’s motivation, personality, the past learning language experience, age, language level, learning strategies, learning style, family’s educational background etc. I am going to develop only four of these differences that I consider more relevant according to my experience as a teacher.

Motivation

Can you learn a foreign language without a strong motivation? Personally, I can not. According to my experience motivation is strongly related to the family’s educational background. An adult learn English because he/she needs it for getting a better job or just because he/she has to use it for work. Other reasons might be: studying abroad, traveling etc. Children (at least my 3-5 year olds) do their best to speak English because they think is cool and funny. They just speak and laugh; there is no fear of making mistakes. Teenagers are usually forced by their parents to learn English. There are very few learners who truly love English and learn by heart. There is a significant number of learners who learn English just because they need to get a good mark.

Personality

Personalities, believes and attitudes differ among individuals. There are many kinds of personalities and affective variables that have a big influence over foreign language learning but I will mention only two (that are true in my and my learners’ case) of them:

1. People who are more sociable and outgoing seem to have better qualities for language learning.
2. Tolerance of ambiguity tends to be a hallmark of a good language learner. Levels of tolerance of ambiguity are strong related to level of creativity which is another important factor in language acquisition.

Past learning experience

Adults and teenagers may have learned English before. Most of these learners are used to learn in a particularly way and know what learning style is the best for them. We, as teachers have to be aware of how our learners have learned before and how they would like to learn now. Teachers may need to explain their methods to those learners who are unhappy with new teaching methods.

Learning styles

Our learning style influences how we like to learn and how we learn effective. Below are some commonly mentioned learning styles with a short description for each of them.

Teachers must remember that learners might not fall exactly into one specific category. Different cultures use some learning styles more than others. Learners learn with different teachers who have different teaching styles which may change or develop learners’ learning styles.

Conclusion

1. Learners are not all the same and they don’t learn in the same way
2. We can find what our learners’ characteristics are by asking them, observing them or even giving them questionnaires to complete.
3. A learner may learn better in a particular way but for sure he/she can learn in more than one way.
4. Learners can be trained to use different learning strategies.
5. In a big class is hard for a teacher to meet the learner characteristics of each learner all the time. The teacher can vary their teaching methods so they can match the learner’s characteristics of a range of learners.

Vietnamese learners of English have some problems in using adverbial expressions correctly. A short comparison between how these adverbial expressions are used in Vietnamese and English can be seen below.

Adverbial expressions of place: There is/are

In most cases adverbial expressions of place in Vietnamese parallel the English word order. The following Vietnamese sentence Ông chờ trong phòng khách will be translated in English as: (lit. He-wait-in-room-guests) He is waiting in the sitting room.
However, the problem appears in sentences with There is/are. In There is/are sentences the word order changes to adverb of place + have + object as is shown in the example below.

Example:
Vn: Trong phòng có nhiều cô gái
En lit.: Inside – room – have – many – girls
En: There are many girls in the room.

These mistakes that occur in There is/are sentences are very hard to fix and they usually persist.

Adverbial expressions of time

In English adverbial expressions of time are usually placed at the end of the sentence. In Vietnamese language adverbial expressions are placed at the beginning of the sentence as you can see in the example below:

Example:
Vn: Ngày mai tôi đi nghỉ mát.
En lit.: Day – morrow – I – go – rest – cool.
En: I go on my holiday tomorrow.

The focus of the lesson: To be able to talk about and describe past events using prepositions of time
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 15 years old / grade 9
Level: Beginner / A2
Length of the lesson: 2 hours

Vocabulary to learn and remember

1. Bus, Motorbike, Plane, Car, Bicycle
2. Plant rice, plant vegetables, raise cattle, work in factories, work on farms, and work in offices
3. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Conversation questions

What did you do last weekend?

Focus

To be able to talk about and describe past events using prepositions of time.

Conversation questions

1. What is the name of your home village?
2. How long does it take to get to the city?
3. How can you get there?
4. What do people do for a living in your village?

Focus

1. To be able to talk about and describe past events using prepositions of time
2. To be able to talk and discuss about their home village
3. To be able to ask for and give information.

Stage 1

Go through prepositions of time with the students, draw on the board:

 

Time

Time

Examples:
At 8 o’clock …
At 10.30 a.m. …
At midnight …

 

Dates

Dates

Examples:
On Sunday(s)/ Monday(s)….
On 25 April, 7 June…
On New years Day…

 

Months/Years

Months/Years

Examples:
In January/February…
In 2008/2012…
In Morning/Afternoon …

Write some examples on the board, for example ‘On 6 June’ ‘At 5:30’ ‘On Sunday morning’… Go around the class and ask students for similar examples.
Note: A short review of the past tense with the students might be necessary.

 

Stage 2

• Help the students to make sentences using the past tense and prepositions of time by writing down vocabulary on the board.
• Ask the students to work in pairs and think of some simple sentences. Get some students to read their examples out loud to the class.
• Write ‘What did you do last weekend’ on the board. Ask the students to write five sentences in their book to answer the question, so that they can discuss about what they did in the past, using prepositions of time.
• Go around the class and ask every student the question.
• Play a game

 

Stage 3

• Ask students to describe their weekend, giving at least three or four sentences.

 

Stage 4

• Do the listening task with the students.
• Write the conversation questions on the board; go through the questions and write the Vietnamese translation next to them.
• On one side of the board write down some vocabulary to help the students answer the questions.
• Give the students five minutes to answer the questions.
• Call up some students to answer the question and to make sure that they have the work in their notebook and to check their skills for giving information.

The activities are divided into 3 categories according to when they should be done: before listening / reading, during listening / reading, and after listening / reading. Some of the activities are suitable for more than one stage but I have chosen the stage that is the most suitable (in my opinion).

Before listening / reading

• Replace words with relevant drawings. Students have to identify the missing words before reading or listening to the text.
• Students discuss or describe photographs related to the topic.
• Students brainstorm ideas about the topic.
• Jumble the words of the title of the text for the students to reconstruct (for more advance learners letters can be jumbled).
• Students predict the content of the text by reading its title.
• Pre-teach necessary vocabulary to help students understand the text.
• Students brainstorm the vocabulary which might be associated to the topic.
• Students predict possible vocabulary items which may appear in the text.
• Students select or write songs to produce a class song book.

During listening / reading

• Students read or listen to the text in order to identify stress, rhythm, intonation patterns etc.
• Students answer multiple choice questions.
• Design activities on the text that are similar to examination questions.
• Students complete / create charts or diagrams about the text.
• Omit words to produce a gapped text. Students have to reconstruct the text by choosing the correct words from a list. The activity can be more difficult if there are more words than students need.
• Cut up and mix the sentences (or just the lines) of a text. Students have to order the sentences / lines.
• Students listen to the song and take dictation.
• Students read or listen to the text to confirm what was predicted in the “pre” stage.
• Students identify deliberate mistakes (grammar, vocabulary, word order, punctuation etc.)
• Students read a gapped text and fill in the blanks.
• Students invent a title for each paragraph and a title for the whole text. This can be easily adapted for a song (title for each verse and title for the song).
• Students read or listen to the text to extract information to write a summary.
• Students read or listen to the text and put pictures in the correct order.
• Students read the text and delete words to create a gap-fill task for other students.

After listening / reading

• Students create their own multiple choice questions for others.
• Students sing a song and record it. Play it again and improve on pronunciation.
• Students write a dialogue between the characters.
• Students write first and then speak about the topic.
• Students write a letter to one of the characters in the text.
• After the song / text is finished students predict what happened next.
• Students write their own lyrics to the tune of the song.
• Students invent essay titles related to the topic of the text and write one of the essays.
• Students interview one of the characters.
• Students write a summary of the text.
• Use the text as a springboard to initiate discussions to develop student’s ideas about the topic.
• Students perform the song.
• Students identify the meaning of words as used in the text.
• Students role-play the situation as describe in the text.
• Students design posters related to the topic (or to promote the song) which are then displayed.
• Students write a reply to the author / singer.
• Students re-write the text from another character point of view.

The focus of the lesson: Talking about school subjects and school schedule
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 13 years old / grade 7
Level: Beginner / A1
Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

Warm up – Play word Bingo with the students. Write the different subjects on the board and read them aloud for the students to cross out.

Show the students an example of a school schedule. Go through it with them to make sure they understand.

Write on the board the following question: When do you have HISTORY? Ask the students to read it and ask a volunteer to write it in Vietnamese. Under the question write down the answer, making sure the students can understand how to answer. Give the students a couple more examples and ask them to answer the questions.

Write on the board question 2: What classes do you have on THURSDAY AFTERNOON? Go through the same process as above but provide more examples to show the students that they can ask many questions with this sentence.

Pair work – ask the students to work in pairs to practice asking and answering the questions.

Put the students into groups of 4, and give them a small piece of paper with six sentences written on it (as below). Give the students 3-4 minutes to write down which subject goes with each sentence. Go through the answers.

1. You might need a calculator for this subject.
2. Running, swimming, badminton, football and volleyball make this subject fun.
3. We can learn about plants and animals in this subject.
4. In this class, you might sing or play a musical instrument.
5. Paint, pens, pencils are used to draw and paint in this subject.
6. You will learn a new language in this subject.

Finish the lesson with a game, divide the class into two groups and play lucky number.

Unlike English, Vietnamese adjectives follow nouns or pronouns. This leads to mistakes in most cases. An even bigger problem is the use of the followed by an adjective, as in the rich, the poor, the old, etc.

Examples:
Big house = (Vn.) nhà lớn (lit. house – big)
Beautiful car = (Vn.) xe hơi đẹp (lit. car – beautiful)
Old person = (Vn.) người già (lit. person – old)

In the –er than / more than type of comparison, Vietnamese word order is: Subject + Adjective + More Than +Object of Comparison.

Example:
My wife is older than me = (Vn) Vợ tôi già hơn tôi (lit. Wife – me – old – more – than – I)

In the not as … as type of comparison Vietnamese word order can take two forms:

1. Subject + not + Adjective + equal to + object of comparison
2. Subject + Adjective + not + equal to + object of comparison

Examples:

1. He is not as old as I am = (Vn.) Anh không già bằng tôi (lit. Old brother – not – old – equal to – I)
2. He is not as old as I am = (Vn.) Anh già không bằng tôi (lit. Old brother – old – not – equal to – I)

Three things I have learned during my time teaching 10-12 year old children:

1. They like to be noisy and they learn English in this way
2. They love deals … something like: I will do this thing but then you have to do this thing
3. They need reasons … they need a reason for everything the teacher ask them to do (probably this should be the first thing in the list)

This age group can concentrate for longer periods of time than younger learners and they are able to do more various activities, longer tasks, tasks that require more concentration and thinking.

They don’t consider themselves children (although they are still children). They still need to have fun, to enjoy learning. I find it very difficult to choose the right activities for this kind of learners. Too complex activities will fails and too simple activities will be considered babyish (different kinds of puzzle activities work the best for them). Give them some control in the lesson creates a game atmosphere and captures their attention (for example ask a student to choose the next speaker).

They find interesting, materials and activities that are related to other subjects they are studying such as Geography and History. A contest game is the way to go with this age group. They love competition (especially boys vs. girls) and this kind of activity works the best with a noisy class.

10-12 year old learners take learning more seriously and they can work in pairs/groups very well. Besides the opportunities to enjoy learning in a funny way, the teacher can establish rules and routines.

They love talking about themselves, their friends, their families, their homes, travel and school. For some reasons they find these topics easier than others and they are able to use new vocabulary in this context.

What do learners of English want when they start learning English language? Of course they want to be able to communicate with others in English. In other words, they want to speak English fluently. Compelling Conversations – Questions & Quotations for Advance Vietnamese English language learners textbook does just that … helps learners of English to speak English fluently.

Compelling Conversations for Vietnamese English Language learners, as the name suggests, is a book specially created for Vietnamese learners of English to help them to improve their speaking skills. Compelling conversations is a high quality book from all points of view. The book contains 15 conversation topics (organized in 15 chapters) that truly stimulate conversation. As an English teacher in Vietnam, I know how difficult is for Vietnamese learners of English to have a group discussion in English.

Compelling Conversations Vietnam

A month ago (on October 2^nd to be more exact) I had a private class (teenager students). I have downloaded one of the free chapters (chapter 3 – Being home) of Compelling conversations book. Before presenting the material to my students I told them that today we are going to talk about “my home”. I told them to think about questions they would like to ask their partners in order to get as many information as possible about their partners’ house. At the first view the topic seemed to be very easy but actually wasn’t  After several minutes of thinking about questions and trying to formulate correct questions, one student said: “Teacher! I really don’t know what I should ask about her home.” If you teach English in Vietnam then you probably experienced this kind of situation. After I presented the material everything transformed into a smooth and relaxing conversation.

The chapter I have chosen contained 15 predefined questions, accompanied by a list of recommended vocabulary to be used.

Not only this chapter but all chapters of Compelling Conversation contain predefined questions to get students talking from the first moment. Great resources such as reproducible worksheets for students, surveys etc. can be found in every chapter of the book. Throughout the book proverbs related to each topic are given to the students to discuss. This doesn’t do anything else than giving more opportunities to students to talk about the topic and use the recommended vocabulary.

The topics of the book are very accessible and students feel comfortable talking about these topics. Everything in the book encourages speaking and is created with student’s needs in mind.

The book encourages extra speaking practice between students by giving discussing quotations related to the topic. This means more speaking helping students to formulate answers and express thoughts.

Each chapter contains writing exercises that can be used in the classroom. Personally, I used these writing exercises at the beginning of the lesson since Vietnamese learners feel more comfortable writing first then speaking. Writing exercises from this book help them to formulate their ideas making speaking easier.

Well, these are the main reasons why I think a book like Compelling Conversations is indispensable for any English teacher. Although I have been teaching English in Vietnam since 2008 I am still a learner of English and this article represents my honest thoughts regarding to Compelling Conversations book. More details about Compelling conversations can be found on the book’s website at http://compellingconversations.com/. A more academic written review can be read at http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume16/ej62/ej62r4/.

Reading and listening skills are often neglected by both students and teachers. Almost every lesson starts with reading or listening and for this reason I consider these skills very important. Here are some tips for making the listening or reading activity more effective.

Teacher should help the students to understand the context (who’s speaking, who to, why, where the text is from, who’s the intended reader, etc.). An introductory stage using visual elements or a discussion seems to be a good idea. Giving students context questions while they are listening is also a good idea. Such questions might be: “How many people are talking?”, “Do they know each other?”, “Where are they?” etc.

The related language has to be activated before reading / listening activity. A pair (or small group) activity or discussion can do that. Such an activity before the reading / listening can generate relevant ideas as well.

Student need a reason to read / listen otherwise most of them will do it mechanically (reading and thinking of something else). I usually prepare a task for my students to answer while reading / listening. In this way the students are guided to a correct approach of the text and ensure that they will understand it. Depending on the text’s complexity, the teacher can set a series of tasks (for example: start with some gist questions for first reading / listening and continue with some more detailed questions for a second listening / reading).

Reading / listening questions should check student understanding. Simply taking the answer from the text without understanding what they have read or heard doesn’t really help.

The questions should follow the same order that their answers appear in the text. Our goal is not to confuse the students. Making the student to read/listen the whole text to find the answer is time consumption and students might give up.

According to the text different types of questions can be set. You can set questions that start with a question word (what, who, why, when, where), yes/no questions, true/false questions or multiple choice. The type of question you choose depends on the text itself and the result you want to achieve.

The teacher has three options for dealing with unknown language:

1. Pre-teach unknown language that is needed by students to complete the tasks. This can be done as part of an introduction to the text.
2. The unknown language can be ignored if it is not relevant to the completion of the tasks. It is said that if the students are tolerant to unknown vocabulary then their abilities as second language readers/listeners will be increased.
3. Using a “deduction from context” task can be also used to teach the unknown language.

Maintain the peace and interest level by encouraging students to compare answers in pairs or groups. This will also help students to focus on a specific part of the text.

Follow any receptive skills lesson with a related post-listening/post-reading task. Students will have opportunity to use the language and this will heighten their sense of achievement which is important from all points of view.

All the students should be involved in the feedback of a task before establishing the correct answers.

Reading aloud is not productive. Some may say that my statement is not true and probably they are right. However, I have seen many students reading aloud in the class but they couldn’t understand what they were reading. Reading speed is reduced because we speak slower than we read. If we consider connecting speech then we may say that reading aloud interfere with pronunciation. Some people might say that it can help to deal with pronunciation on a particular word but I think there is no need for reading aloud for this. There are more effective techniques that can be use to deal with that. Personally, as a learner of English, I find reading aloud very stressful.

Teaching 7 to 9 year old children might look easier than teaching 4 to 6 year old kid but it is not true. Because they are bigger and you can communicate with them doesn’t mean teaching them is easier. They have different needs and teaching them requires different approach. Below I compiled few characteristics of teaching 7 to 9 year old kids.

They are starting to think logically and they can see patterns in the language they hear and use. They need to play with the language and experiment as much as possible. For instance, my students love making up their own chants with words that have similar sounds or rhymes.

They are learning a lot of things about the world and they always ask questions. They need answers to things they don’t know and they need to learn more than just the language. The teacher has to choose interesting topics when teaching them. Interesting topics for this kind of learners might be: animals, dinosaurs, Disney characters etc.

Their reading and writing skills in their first language are still not very good. The teacher must help and support them when doing writing and reading activities. Short and easy activities with a lot of support help them to develop these skills and be successful.

Group activities are not always successful because they still have problems sharing. Activities in group and alone should be done with guidance from the teacher.

A typical Test-Teach-Test lesson has 4 stages: the first test stage, the teach stage, the second test stage (which is a controlled one), and the third test stage (which should be a freer one). Finding suitable activities to match the type of lesson is not easy. Here are some ideas of activities suitable for different stages of a Test-Teach-Test lesson (TTT).

Activities for first stage test

1. Students select the correct word or structure to complete a sentence from a choice of several
2. Students fill gaps with a suitable word or structure
3. Students discuss the differences in meaning between two sentences with different words or structures
4. Students find matching responses for sentences from a choice of several

Activities for the teach stage

1. Students arrange words or structures on a cline
2. Students draw their own timelines
3. Students discuss the answers to concept checking questions on a handout

Activities for the second test stage (controlled)

1. Students complete an information gap
2. Students select the correct word or structure to complete a sentence from a choice of several
3. Students fill gaps with a suitable word or structure
4. Students find matching responses for sentences from a choice of several

Activities for the third test stage (freer)

1. Students do a discussion activity
2. Students do a role-play
3. Students conduct a survey

Test-Teach-Test (TTT) approach is a teaching method where learners have to complete a task (or an activity) at the beginning of the lesson. The teacher doesn’t get involved in this first task. Based on the problems faced by students in this task, the teacher presents and teaches the target language. As any other teaching method, Test-Teach-Test approach is not a perfect approach.

Advantages of Test-Teach-Test approach

1. It rises a collaborative atmosphere because it contains elements of discovery and problem solving.
2. It gets straight to the point so it is recommended for those who don’t have much time because it is very economical of time.
3. According to my experience, adult students will love Test-Teach-Test teaching method because they are not intimidated by an analytical approach. The direct and uncompromising grammar focus of TTT is just what most of them need.
4. Learners take responsibility for their own learning which is beneficial.
5. Explaining grammar points to each other requires a great amount of mental work which has a powerful effect on the memory.
6. It offers the possibility for communicative practice in the actual process of learning grammar.

Disadvantages of Test-Teach-Test approach

1. TTT is uneconomical of time if the learners are not able to communicate in English when discussing the grammar points.
2. Learners must have a basic knowledge of grammar terminology.
3. I have seen many cases when some learners don’t believe their colleagues’ explanations and they reacted in a negative way.
4. In the absence of context, sentences used in the task may have no meaning for students which makes further discussion hard to comprehend and very theoretical.
5. Personally, I find this kind of lesson difficult to prepare.
6. Starting with a task may create for some students the impression that the lesson is dry and has no motivation.

102 year old man talking about English language spelling. Funny and true at the same time.

I am not an expert in teaching young learners but I have been teaching 4-6 year old children since September 2010. Here is why I think teaching 4-6 year old children is a big challenge (not in a particular order).

4 -6 year old children don’t understand why they need to speak English and they only use their first language when communicating with the teacher or with each other. In order to have them using English they need a reason. Using English in games and chants might be a good reason. Not very long time ago my daughter asked me: “Dad, why do I have to speak one language with you, another language with mom, and another language at school?” I had no idea how to explain her.

They love stories and fantasy and are easily bored if things are not interesting. They learn English better through listening to stories, imagining and becoming the characters from the story. This makes them want to use English.

Below is an example (a real dialogue) of how 4-6 year old children think:
Me: Sonia, let’s study English for 10 minutes.
My daughter (5 years old): Oh, no … please, I don’t want … let’s play.
Me: Ok, let’s watch the movie “Home alone”. You are Kevin and I am Kevin’s father. We have to speak like they speak in the movie.
My daughter (5 years old): Yes, yes, yes … I like that!!!!

Children learn by doing, seeing, listening, touching, playing, exploring, discovering. All of these must be included in our teaching. Opportunities to move, sing, play, explore, touch etc. is what they need to learn English.

They have very limited motor skills which make using a pan or scissors a difficult task for them. Activities like copying, coloring or making different thing help them a lot to develop these skills

4 – 6 year old children are in pre-school and they are not used with the classroom environment. They have to be trained in class routines. It is a big challenge to have them sitting in their chairs or listening to the teacher.

They are kids, they can’t understand grammar and they can’t analyze language. They just listen and reproduce chunks of language such as: stories, songs, classroom phrases, etc. Reading and writing in English have to be introduced but first they need more opportunities to practice listening and speaking. Fan activities that help them learning how to read and write should be introduced later (closer to 6 years old).

The focus of the lesson: To be able to identify and recognize different clothing and to be able to describe what someone is wearing using adjectives.
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 15 years old / grade 9
Level: Beginner / A2
Length of the lesson: 2 hours

The purpose of the lesson:

1. To remember items of clothing.
2. To be able to talk about and describe what people are wearing.
3. To be able to discuss and talk about clothes.

Lesson content

Vocabulary
T-Shirt, Shirt, Jeans, Blouse, Jacket, Dress, Skirt, Shorts, Pants (Trousers), Suit, Tie, Shoes, Sandals, Sneakers, Hat.
Adjectives: Striped, Colourful, Sleeveless, Short-Sleeved, Long-sleeved, Denim, Polka dots.
Colours: Red, Blue, White, Yellow, Green, Black, Pink, Orange, Purple, Brown

Conversation Questions
What do you usually wear at the weekend?
What clothes do you wear for special occasions?
Describe your school uniform.
What is your teacher wearing today?

Listening task
Fill in the gaps, clothing, through listening.

Stage 1 – Put the students into groups of 4/5 and ask them to look at the \PowerPoint presentation and ask them to discuss together what they think the item of clothing is.
The presentation can be downloaded here Clothing - Present Continuous (127).

Stage 2 – After the presentation, go through the answers by asking the different groups and ask them to write it on the board with the Vietnamese translations. Always get the students to copy this in their notebook.

Stage 3 – Go through useful adjectives and colors with the students so that they can describe clothing in more detail. Write these words on the board, getting the students to write in their notebooks.

Stage 4 – Help students to make noun phrases to describe clothes e.g. faded jeans, a red hat etc. Do this by writing nouns and adjectives in two columns on the board and showing them some pictures. Ask the students to choose an adjective and a noun from each column to describe the picture. Write down the noun phrase on the board.

Stage 5 – Work with the students to understand the present continuous to enable them to describe what somebody is wearing. Make sure that the students write down and understand how to complete simple sentences for example ‘Today my teacher is wearing…’ He’s wearing… Ms. Daniella is wearing…’ Do this by writing examples on the board and get the students to listen and repeat.

Stage 6 – Write some vocabulary on the board and ask the students to come up with a couple of sentences using the present continuous. Ask some individual students to give their examples.

Stage 7 – Group work: give each group a picture and ask them to describe it. After, they must describe the picture to the class and then ask a student to identify the picture. Once the picture has been identified pass it around the class and get the students to read the description again.

Stage 8 – Go through the conversation questions with the students. Ask them to write them down in their notebooks with the Vietnamese translations. Make sure the students can answer the questions.

Stage 9 – Ask the students to speak together in pairs to ask and answer the questions.

Stage 10 – After practicing ask some pairs to come to the front of the class to demonstrate asking and answering the questions. Here is the PPS file available for download Clothing - Present Continuous (127).

I have been teaching English in Vietnam since 2008 but just few times I have used phonemic chart in classroom. For some reasons, Vietnamese learners find it very difficult to comprehend, unnecessary to be learned, and its use in classroom results in a boring lesson. Here are 15 uses of the phonemic chart:

Phonemic chart used with individual sounds

• Phonemic chart can help students to identify new sounds.
• Phonemic chart can accompany students’ work on the muscular sensations of each sound.
• Phonemic chart can pinpoint areas of difficulty for your students.
• You can use phonemic chart with recognition/discrimination activities such as same or different activity.
• Phonemic chart can be used for highlighting plural endings, past tenses, etc.
• Phonemic chart can be used for prompting students to self-correct by pointing to the chart.
• Phonemic chart can accompany students’ collections of their own words for each sound.

Phonemic chart used with words

• Phonemic chart can be used with words to enable students to record the pronunciation of words accurately and reliably.
• Phonemic chart promotes self-help in using dictionary.

Phonemic chart used with connecting speech

• Phonemic chart can be used to highlight the linking sounds that join words together.
• Phonemic chart can be used to highlight the changes to consonants that happen in assimilation.
• Phonemic chart can be used to draw attention to the effects of weak forms on vowel sounds.

Phonemic chart used in general

• Phonemic chart can be used to change the focus of a lesson.
• Phonemic chart can be used to bring phonology alive visually.
• Phonemic chart can be used to symbolize the fact that the sounds of English are not infinite (many learners think that there are an infinite number of sounds in English language) but can be clearly codified and standardized.

Having a phonemic chart in every classroom will probably help students to get familiar with it. As a teacher, you can highlight the sounds (e.g. color in) that are particularly difficult for your students. You or your students can make posters for individual sounds containing keywords with pictures, mouth diagrams, hints on making the sound, etc.

There are many ways to design a lesson plan for reading and listening skills. The stages presented here represent a general procedure and it should be seen as an example only. The stages are clearly delimited and according to my experience a lesson plan based on these stages works very well in an ESL/EFL classroom.

Stage 1 – Introduction and pre-reading/listening task
Discuss the topic with the whole class or in groups. The teacher can do that by asking students questions. Relate the questions to the students’ personal experience. At this first stage, the teacher can also generate interest in the topic of the lesson and excite comment by showing pictures, headlines etc.

Stage 2 – Vocabulary
The teacher teaches any vocabulary items that are essential for answering comprehension questions.

Stage 3 – Reading/ listening for gist
The teacher sets three or four questions that check general comprehension of the text (gist) or extract relevant information.
Play the recording once (students read the text). Students answer the questions while reading/listening.
Some students may not be able to answer the question at the first try. Replay the relevant part of the recording (reread the relevant part of the text). All students must understand the answers.

Stage 4 – Reading/listening for specific information
Set questions (or a task) aimed at checking more detailed understanding of the text. Replay the recording twice if it is necessary (give students time to reread the text) and answer the questions. Students compare their answers in pairs before the teacher giving the feedback to the whole class.
If it is necessary, repeat the last step from the stage 3 (replay relevant sections of the recording/reread relevant parts of the text).

Stage 5 – Post reading/listening task
Every lesson must end with a productive activity related to the topic. The productive activity can be either spoken or written. A good activity at this final stage can be: discussion, role-play, writing a letter, etc. The activity done in pairs or groups is more effective.

Corrections, if are well done, could be the most helpful thing a teacher can do for his students. There are many ways of doing oral error corrections, but I DO believe that the 10 tips I presented here are (not in a particular order) the best of all. However, you should consider your own oral correction policy.

Tip no. 1 – Making mistakes is a necessary and positive part of learning process
Errors should be welcome. Only these students who learn make mistakes. It means that errors provide evidence of students’ learning and needs.
Everybody (students and teachers) should consider errors as natural part of learning. When that happens, very few learners will feel ashamed of their mistakes. For this reason, when the teacher listens should focus on both, what is wrong and what is correct as well. In the end, correction is what students do to themselves. It really doesn’t matter how much modeling and drilling the teacher does, the learner is the one who must make the changes to produce the language correctly. In conclusion, errors lead to better learning if the teacher’s feedback is constructive and learners do their part of the correction.

Tip no. 2 – Discuss options with your classes
For example, negotiate correction with students by allowing them to experience different options and then allow students to choose what they found most useful.

Tip no. 3 – Collect and share mistakes
Collect and share errors with students. A poster on the wall containing an open list of frequently make mistakes (where everybody can add more mistakes) might be a good idea. The poster’s purpose is to share and learn from these mistakes.

Tip no. 4 – Use pre-emptive correction
Usually, teachers repair errors after they are made. Errors correction can be more effective if it is done more proactively (In mono-lingual classes the teacher can easily anticipate the types of errors students will make).

Tip no. 5 – Visual correction
This is the most powerful way of correcting errors. Unfortunately, it can not be applied in all of the situations. Some errors lead to a funny image or can be demonstrated very effectively using a cartoon or a stick drawing.

Tip no. 6 – Work out the why and the whether to before correcting
When to correct, what to correct and how to correct? These decisions are taken by the teacher at subconscious level because there are so many things going on in a lesson. It is very important to understand why learners are making mistakes and whether to correct them or not. Don’t just correct them automatically.
- What kind of error it is? (Grammar, vocabulary, L1 interference, etc.)
- The teacher must decide instantly if the correction of the error will be effective or not (leading to improvement or not). In order to find out is the error correction will be effective or not, you might want to ask yourself the following questions: Is meaning getting across as is? Does the error impair communication? Is it a reoccurring or sporadic mistake? Is the mistake important in the context we are talking about? Can the learner learn from this correction? How much time do I need to make the correction?
- When does the error happen and when should we give feedback? If errors happen during an accuracy activity then it is important to give corrective feedback (especially when the mistakes affect the language being practiced). If errors occur during a fluency activity then the teacher should correct only those mistakes that affect communication. However, avoid diverting too much attention from the communicative task by giving as unobtrusive as possible corrective feedback.

Tip no. 7 – Prioritize
Choose and correct only those mistakes that are appropriate at that stage of their learning. Can the teacher expect a perfect third conditional sentence from beginner learners? Definitely, no!

Tip no. 8 – Don’t try to correct too much at once
Correcting every single mistake can lead to inhibition so we need to choose carefully which errors to correct, when to correct, and how to correct them. If a sentence contains several mistakes then the teacher should choose the key error (or errors) to correct.

Tip no. 9 – Correct pronunciation physically and visually
When the teacher is teaching sounds, using a model word for each sound seems to be a very good method. Encourage students to notice and collect words with similar sounds, words that rhyme, or words that have similar spelling patterns. Remembering every word in isolation is a very difficult task and very often leads to no result.

Tip no. 10 – Use as many corrective feedback strategies as possible
The greater the variety, the stronger the impact each strategy has on student learning and memory. The purpose of corrective feedback is to help student notice, understand and remember. To achieve this, the students have to be involved in the process, they have to think and figure it out.
My Vietnamese students always say: “Yesterday I go to …” In this situation the teacher could:
- Ask a question such as: When? Today or yesterday?
- Ask student to repeat and then elicit correction non-verbally by gesturing behind you for “the past”
- Echo to elicit correction from the student or from the class: “Yesterday I go?!?!”
- Elicit correction through grammar using simple questions such as: Tense? When? Everyday I go. Yesterday I …?
- Identify the error and elicit: Not “I go” but “I …” or the teacher might say “I go is the preset. In the past it is …”
- Don’t indicate where the mistake is and offer to the student/class for correction: Nearly, anybody? There is one mistake in that sentence. Usually, at least my students can identify and correct the mistake. This is a very interactive way of correction mistakes.
- Give another chance and see if the student self-corrects: Sorry? …
- Repeat up to the error with rising intonation to elicit correction: Yesterday I …?
- Use the board and represent the sentence with lines on the board and highlight where the error is using question marks: _____ _____ ??????? _____ _____ .

Below is a great video on correcting final “s” sound … great technique that can be used to correct any other mistakes

Definitely, learning from corrective feedback is not automatic. It is just a partial process and for sure it is not immediate or complete. In order for the corrective feedback to be helpful for learning process the student has to do his part.

The system of personal pronouns in Vietnamese language is a very complex one. There is not set of general personal pronouns in Vietnamese like is in English (I, you, he, she, they). The personal pronouns in English can be used freely without external non-linguistic connotations. I can say that every time my student use personal pronouns (especially he and she … and also my and your) they make mistakes. I always have to say “It is about your father, your father is a man …. why are you using ‘she’?”.

Vietnamese language uses plural markers and specific personal pronouns to express an exclusive (or inclusive) distinction.

Example:
Chung toi expresses the exclusive we (plural marker + I) – This we includes the speaker and others but excludes the listener.
Chung ta expresses the inclusive we (plural marker + we) – This we includes the speaker, the listener and possible other people.

In Vietnamese, personal pronouns I and you are definitely completely different than what they are in English. Although this difference doesn’t lead to direct mistakes, it leads to indirect mistakes.

Certain pairs of pronouns for I and you indicate the relative social status of the speaker, and listener and there are respectful pronouns used for older people. Words like grandfather, aunt, elder sister etc. are widely used as personal pronouns. To form the plural form for these Vietnamese personal pronouns, Vietnamese makes use of those plural markers.

The use of such personal pronouns will be determined by extra-linguistic factors such as: status, familiarity, age, etc.

Vietnamese also makes use of kinship terms within the extended family to refer to oneself, the listener, or the person spoken about.

Below is an example to exemplify the complex usage of Vietnamese personal pronouns (in this case it is all related to the age and relationship):

Anh = you (for an older man)
Em = you (for younger man or woman)

Me (35 years old), my wife (41 years old), my wife’s sister (37 years old), husband of my wife’s sister (45 years old) …. Although the husband of my wife’s sister is 10 years older than me, I still call him em (em = you ‘for younger man’). That is because my wife is older than her sister (who is his wife).

As you can see, the usage of personal pronouns in Vietnamese is very complex and it depends on many factors.

Not long time ago, a new personal pronoun has been introduced by political development. The pronoun dong chi, which means comrade, has been introduced and the connotation of some existing pronouns have changed.

Most of the learners of English use word by word translation when they are speaking. Vietnamese learners of English can’t do that since their language has such big differences than English. I believe this is one of the factors that leads to speaking mistakes.

Almost every ESL lesson starts with reading. The whole lesson is based on a reading activity done at the beginning of the lesson which makes reading a very important skill to be mastered. Here I have compiled seven great reading activities to be done in ESL classroom.

Reading Bingo (reading at word level)
The teacher gives out bingo cards with known vocabulary on them. He reads out items of vocabulary and the winner is the first person who ticks all the words. It is basically a normal bingo game played with words, not with numbers.

Find and underline (reading at word level)
The teacher gives to students a text about eating habits for example. The learners must underline all the types of food mentioned in the text.

Odd one out (reading at the word level)
The teacher writes words on the board and the students have to say which one is odd one out.

Example: Monday, Friday, June, Sunday

Matching (reading at word level)
The teacher gives out pictures of known vocabulary, and the corresponding words on cards. The learners must match the pictures with the corresponding words from the cards.

Ordering (reading at text level)
The teacher gives out a text but the sentences are in the wrong order. The learners must put the text in the correct order. An example can be seen at http://eslvietnamzone.com/talking-past-events-esl-lesson-plan/ (the text contains 4 paragraphs that are in a wrong order).

Describing pictures (reading at sentence level)
Learners read a series of sentences and choose the correct picture in each case. For example, there are two pictures, one of a lamp on a table, and one of a lamp on a chair. The learners read “The lamp is on the table” and must choose the correct picture.

Next word (reading at sentence level and text level)
The teacher gives out a short text. The teacher begins to read the text to the class, but every now and then stops and asks, “What is the next word?”

This is top 50 funny, interesting and strange things related to English language divided into 7 categories.

Words meaning

Set is the word that can be used in more situations than any other word in English language. The website dictionary.com displays 119 definitions for the word set.

Lemniscate is how the infinite character on the keyboard is called.

Many times you can see on a map a sign that says “you are here”. Well, that sign is called ideo-locator.

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

Women’s underwear is called smalls inEngland. It should be really small.

The dot over the letter i is called a tittle.

The king is dead, this is the meaning of checkmate, word that comes from Persian language.

The word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis means: pneumono (one lung) + ultramicroscopic (very small) + silico (silicon) + volcano (volcano) + coni (dust) + osis (inflammation).

In English language a pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

Vegetarians eat vegetables; if we follow the same pattern means that humanitarians eat humans.

I just love the following sentence: The present is a good time to present the present.

Your house can burn up as it burns down. It is hard to understand why!

You fill in a form by filling it out, an alarm goes off by going on, you ship by truck and send cargo by ship.

We have interesting body parts according to English language: our noses can run and our feet can smell.

Words length

Oxford English Dictionary says that the longest word in English is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis; (what in the world does that word mean?”. Its plural is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses and it has the same amount of letters (45 letters).

The longest word in the Old Testament is Malhershalahashbaz.

The longest non-medical word in English language is floccinaucinihilipilification, which means the act of estimating as worthless.

There are many one syllable words in English but the longest one syllable word in English is screeched.

Typewriter is the longest word that can be made using the letters from one row of the keyboard.

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiw en uaitnatahu, is the longest place-name still in use. It is the name of a hill located in New Zeeland.

Words pronunciation

George Bernard Shaw mentioned that ghoti can be pronounced like the word fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, and the ti from nation.

The combination of the letters ough can be pronounced in nine different ways.

Read can be pronounced in two different ways. Also, the word live can be pronounced in two different ways.

Just try to pronounce sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.

Letters

Q is the only letter that doesn’t appear in the name of any state of theUnited States.

Tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous are the only four words in English language that end in -duos.

The sentence the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog uses every letter in the English language. That’s why this sentence is used to check font’s readability.

There are only three words in English language that contain letters uu. They are: vacuum, residuum, and continuum.

Names of the continents start and end with the same letter.

Abstemious and facetious are the only two words in English language that have all of the five vowels in order.

Indivisibility contains only the vowel i that occurs five times.

Uncopyrightable contains 15 letters, each letter appears only once in the word.

The letters und begin and ends the word underground. There is no other word in English to begin and end with these letters.

The word enough should be spelled enuf.

Questions

Why does a gh make an f sound?

Down and up are opposites. Why knocked down and knocked up aren’t opposites?

Ring, rang, rung … so why not bring, brang, brung?

Why when the stars are out means they are visible but when the lights are out means they are invisible?

Why sit down and sit up have the same result?

Why you’re so cool and you’re not so hot have different meanings?

Why do you have to check it out? Why not check it in?

Plurals

The plural of goose is geese, but the plural of moose is not meese.

The plural of box is boxes but the plural of ox is not oxes (is Oxen).

The plural of mouse is mice but the plural of house is not hice.

Others

Supposing you type on computer’s keyboard with both hands according to typing standards then the word stewardesses is the longest word that is supposed to be typed with only left hand.

Shakespeare invented the word assassination and bump.

The following words: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, here, ere, therein, herein, are all part of a single word. That word is therein.

The masculine pronouns are he, his and him; the feminine pronouns are not shes and shem.

Did you know that the first English word spoken on the Moon was okay?

The word monosyllable contains five syllables. Shouldn’t there be a shorter word for monosyllable?

The purpose of the lesson: describe different rooms using prepositions of place
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 13 years old (grade 7)
Level: Elementary
Class length: 45 minutes

This is the second part of the lesson “My House”. It is designed for grade 7 and it focuses on usage of the prepositions of place.

Stage 1
Review the previous lessons. Ask individual students to answer the conversation questions from previous lessons.
Play a game to help them review previous vocabulary (Pictionary). Although I don’t recommend playing a game at the beginning of the lesson, in this situation playing a game for reviewing vocabulary is a good idea.

Stage 2
Introduce the different prepositions by drawing a small sketch to explain. Ask the students to repeat and write down in their notebooks.

Prepositions of place

Show an example on power point and label the picture to show where the objects are using prepositions.

Prepositions of place

Stage 3
Provide simple sentences to illustrate how to use prepositions to describe one’s house. Ask the students to write 4 sentences to describe a room in their house.

In my living room:
There is a television ON the table
There is a lamp NEXT TO the telephone
There is a sofa NEAR the television.
There is a window BETWEEN the table and the clock.
The bookshelf is BEHIND the sofa.

Examples:
My living room
In my living room there is a clock on the wall and there is a ball under the table.  There are 2 pillows on the sofa and there is a lamp between some flowers and a book.  My cat sits next to my sofa.

Prepositions of place examples

Example 2:
My bedroom

1. In my bedroom my clothes are in the wardrobe and there is a computer on the table.
2. There is a table next to the window and my bag is under the table.
3. The bookshelf is next to the window and there are 4 pictures on the wall.
4. There is a sofa between the wardrobe and the bookshelf.

Preposition of place example

Stage 4
Listening Test- Fill in the missing words

My house is very beautiful. There are (1)______________ in my house.
(2)_______ are one kitchen, (3)______ living room, two (4)__________ and (5)____ _______.
In my (6)_______ there is a sofa, a television, a window, a (7)________, a table and (8)_______.

I really like my bedroom, because it looks really wonderful.
In my bedroom the bed is (9)________ the (10)_________.
There is a (11)_________ on the table and my schoolbag is (12)_________  the table.
There are three pictures (13)_________ the wall and my teddy is next to the (14)___________ on my bed.  There is a lamp (15)_________ a picture and some flowers.

The passive voice is rarely used in Vietnamese language. As I know, the passive voice in Vietnamese is rarer than in most European languages. Use of passive voice in Vietnamese is rare not because Vietnamese speakers avoid the use of passive form nor because teachers teach them that it is desirable. It would seem to be a natural characteristic of Vietnamese expression.

The English passive voice is many times rendered in Vietnamese by use of the word do (which is pronounced something like /io/) and means through the agency of. The Vietnamese word do stands right before the perpetrator of the verb’s action as is exemplified in the example below:

Example:
Quyển sách này do ông Nguyen Van Vinh viết (lit. classifier – book – this – through the agency of – grandfather – Nguyen Van Vinh – write) = This book was written by Mr. Nguyen Van Vinh.

I have met very few Vietnamese who were able to use the passive voice in English. Usually, they avoid the use of passive voice and I found impossible to convince them that English passives entail no special difficulties. Vietnamese learners of English always associate Vietnamese do with the English word by, which they are, in consequence, liable to misuse.

The English definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an) don’t have exact parallels in Vietnamese language. Instead of articles, Vietnamese language uses a type of word called classifier to make similar distinctions in nouns (for more about articles please refer to this post http://eslvietnamzone.com/articles-english-vietnamese/)

Examples:
Cái nhà (lit. classifier + house) = the house
một cái nhà (lit. one + classifier + house) = a house
nhà này (lit. house + this) = this house

This is one of the reasons why using articles in English is so difficult for Vietnamese learners. But, that is not all. Here is the second reason.

Not all Vietnamese words occur with classifiers. More than that, sometimes the absence or presence of a classifier distinguishes between two different but homophonous nouns as you can see in the example below:

Example:
Đường (noun) = sugar
Con Đường (classifier + noun) = the street/road

Vietnamese learners do know that English sometimes uses a definite article, sometimes an indefinite article, and sometimes it doesn’t use any article. However, mistakes still persist and are very difficult to fix because the English system is too different from the Vietnamese one. Hints such as checking whether a noun is countable or uncountable are a real help. Typical errors I have seen during my time inVietnamare:

I would like to be adult, not child.
I am tired so I am going to the bed.
I hope you will hear a good news.
I like to eat in restaurant.

The purpose of the lesson: To be able to learn and pronounce vocabulary related to home
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 13 years old (grade 7)
Level: Elementary
Class length: 45 minutes

Stage 1 – Identifying vocabulary

Ask the students to work in groups of 4/5 and get them to look at the pictures on the board, working in their groups they must work together to try and identify the objects and write them down.

After go through the answers the different groups of students and ask them to come and write the word on the board with the Vietnamese translation.

Once all the answers are on the board, get the students to write it down in their notebooks.

Objects in house

Objects in house

1. Bed
2. Shower
3. Sink
4. Closet
5. Sofa
6. Mirror
7. Television
8. Lamp
9. Window
10. Refrigerator
11. Washing machine
12. Computer
13. Bookshelf
14. Stove
15. Table and chairs
16. Pillow
17. Picture

Stage 2 – Pronunciation

Go through the pronunciation of the words, ask the students to repeat and then choose individual students to read the words (you can go through pronunciation with individual groups, only girls then only boys, etc).

Draw a picture of a house on the board; label the rooms so the students understand the names of rooms in a house. Ask the students to write what furniture would typically be found in each room.

Rooms of a house

Objects in bedroom

Stage 3 – Production

Conversation questions

1. How many rooms are there in your house/ apartment? What are they?
2. What things are there in your bedroom/bathroom/kitchen/living room?
3. (In pairs/groups) e.g. Are there any chairs in your living room? Yes there are/No there aren’t. Is there a TV in your bedroom? Yes there is/ No there isn’t.

Introduce the three conversation questions. Write the Vietnamese translation on the board and get the students to write it down in their notebooks.

Make sure the students understand the questions and ask them to repeat them. Answer the questions with the students and ask them to write an answer to each question in their notebooks.

Get the students to work in pairs and ask and answer the questions. Let them work together to ask what they have in their house (look at conversation question 3).

The biggest difficulty of Vietnamese learners of English in learning English is expressing stress by tone. In Vietnamese, each syllable is pronounced with its characteristic tonal pattern. Without its tone, the syllable is not recognizable. There are six different tones in Vietnamese. Five of them are indicated in the Romanized script by five diacritical marks. The absence of a diacritic indicates the sixth tone. Each syllable contains one of the five diacritic (or no diacritic) and it is pronounced according to the type of diacritic used.
 
In compound words, formed by two or more syllabic units, each syllable retains its own distinctive tone. Because each syllable has its own tone, the Vietnamese learners of English tend to give to every English syllable its own tone (usually full stress over each syllable of the word). Their ears are trained to look for tones and distinguish the word according to its tone. This is the main reason for their terrible listening skills (they can’t find the tones they are looking for).
 
While it is relatively easy for any Vietnamese learner of English to say black bird, they find it almost impossible to say blackbird (with the stress only on the first syllable).
 
Vietnamese learners of English find English intonation patters very difficult to hear and almost impossible to reproduce. One more example that comes through my mind is shown below.
 
Example 1 (high level tone)
Speaker A: “I beg you pardon.”
Speaker B: “Yes?”
 
Example 2: (mid falling tone)
Speaker A: “Are you going to?”
Speaker B: “Yes.”
 
Because none of these is similar with a Vietnamese tone, it is not immediately recognizable. That’s why, in many situations, even a simple question can be very confusing for the Vietnamese learners. The confusion and difficulty becomes even greater when the meaningful pattern of tones and stress extends to group of words that have different meaning in phrases comprising the same English words.

Using it as a subject is another problem that Vietnamese learners have to face. Impersonal it is very often used in English (example: It is raining, it is necessary, etc). There is no equivalent of impersonal it in Vietnamese.

In the example above “it is raining”, Vietnamese language identifies the subject and uses the word trời (which means heaven) as a subject. Basically, literary translated, the sentence will be: heaven is raining.

Another good example which reflects the usage of impersonal it is: it is very easy to speak Vietnamese. This sentence, translated will look like: lit. Speak – Vietnamese – easy – very.

Verb series is another “feature” of Vietnamese language that is not found in English. Most situations require a second verb (that’s why it is called verb series) and by far the most used such verb is cho, which means give. This Vietnamese verb is often translated into English as for.

A very good example will be: I bought him a book. This simple statement, in Vietnamese looks like: lit. I – buy – give – he – one – (classifier) – book. In order to express the exact time, Vietnamese uses additional words such as: yesterday, just, two minutes ago, etc. When such words are used the listener understands the time when action happened. This is one of the most important reasons of misused of Past Tense in English by Vietnamese learners of English.

The purpose of the lesson: Using Present Perfect with since and for
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A1
Length of the lesson: 45 minutes

The main focus of this lesson is on students learning to talk about their lives using the present perfect with since and for. Definitely, this is a difficult lesson for my Vietnamese students (I believe that Present Perfect is a difficult tense to be mastered for all Asian learners). Because I have only 45 minutes for this lesson, I try to make it simple and make sure they understand when and how to use Present Perfect with since and for. The lesson is divided into 3 stages and it follows the PPP template (Present, Practice, and Production).

Note: You might want to elicit the past participle of the verbs that might be used by the students in this lesson (lived, been, had, known, etc.)

Stage 1 – Present
Since Vietnamese language uses Present Simple to express the following situation, using concept checking question to make students understand when and how to use Present Perfect with since and for seems to be a good idea. A graphical representation is always helpful when it comes to verb tenses.

I have lived in Vietnam since 2005.
I have lived in Vietnam for 7 years (now is 2012).
How long have I lived in Vietnam?
When did I come in Vietnam?
Am I still in Vietnam?

I have been an English teacher since 2008.
I have been an English teacher for 4 years (now is 2012).
How long have I been a teacher?
When did I start teaching English?
Am I still an English teacher?

I have had a Yamaha since 2010.
I have had a Yamaha for 2 years (now is 2012).
How long have I had a Yamaha?
When did I buy my Yamaha?
Do I still have the Yamaha?

Stage 2 – Practice
Once the students understand how and when to use Present Perfect with since and for they can move on to practice. Based on the examples provided at stage 1, in pairs, students ask and answer the following questions. The teacher monitors and offers help (pay attention of the pronunciation of since and the correct usage of Present Perfect).

Where do you live?
How long have you lived there?

What do you do?
How long have you been a …?

Do you have a bicycle?
How long have you had the bicycle?

Stage 3 – Production
At this stage I ask students to ask me more questions using Present perfect with since and for. You might want to write on the board something like:

I am married.
My best friend is John.

Possible questions:
How long have you been married?
How long have you known John?

Note: Encourage students to ask as many questions as possible. Exemplify as many situations as possible.

Verb tenses used in English language are extremely difficult to be comprehended by Vietnamese learners. That is because Vietnamese language employs aspect rather than tense. It is possible to express time very precisely in Vietnamese (when that is necessary), although the language doesn’t use complex structure of tenses like other languages (such as English or many other western tongues). In order to express whether the action of the verb is past, future, or present continuous, Vietnamese language uses one of the following three words:

1. sẽ – for future
2. đã – for past
3. đang – for present continuous

Although time is not directly expressed in Vietnamese language, it is understood from the context or because time expressions are used (such as: today, yesterday, tomorrow, next year, etc.).

When it comes to tenses expressed by auxiliary verbs, Vietnamese learners of English find them impossible to master (Ex: En = I’ll be going to school tomorrow; Vn = lit. Tomorrow – I – go – study).

Another persistent mistake made by Vietnamese learners of English is the incorrect use of the infinitive in places where a gerund is required. (Ex: He suggested to go on holiday.). This is a mistake made by many learners of English (not only Vietnamese). Even those who have spoken English fluently for years continue to be confused by this use of the gerund and continue using the infinitive.

Comparing English with Vietnamese, Vietnamese is much simpler than English when it comes to questions. Most of the questions in Vietnamese expect a yes/no answer. A quick example will be:

(lit. Person – this – have – old – or – not)
This person is not old.

The affirmative answer is (co = have/yes) and the negative (khong = no). There is no inversion in Vietnamese language (Is this …?). As you can see in the above example, the commonest question form in Vietnamese, expecting a yes/no answer, offers the choice of an answer by inserting the word (co = have) before the verb or adjective and the word (khong = no) at the end of the question.

The negative word in Vietnamese precedes the verb or adjective as is shown in the following example:

(lit. Person – this – not – old.)
This person is not old.

In most of the cases, Vietnamese speakers of English omit the auxiliary verb (especially the verb “to be”). This problem persists and it is very difficult to fix.

Word order is of a great importance in Vietnamese language. It is a non-inflecting language and it relies on word order and function words to signal function meaning. The verb to be is hardly ever used because Vietnamese adjectives contain their own verbs. As a quick example, take a look at the sentence below:

English: This person is old.
Vietnamese: Person this old.

Vietnamese word order follows the English word order in the following situation. In all other situations the Vietnamese word order differs.

1. Positive statements (Ex: I write articles.)
2. Adverbial expressions of place (Ex: He works in a school.)
3. Indirect objects (Ex: I gave him a pen.)
4. Word-group modifiers of nouns (Ex: The man dressed in black is a teacher.)
5. Relative clauses (Ex: The man who came is an English teacher.)
6. Interrogative: ‘statement + question tag’ (Ex: He is tired, isn’t he?)

Vietnamese word order influences the Vietnamese speaker of English. Understanding why a learner (or a group of learners) make(s) mistakes, helps you as teacher to approach and present the topic in a better manner.

Comma usage is definitely a big problem for all learners of English. Although, comma usage has nothing to do with your English abilities (here I am talking about speaking and listening skills because this is what every English learner cares about), it is of a real help when it comes to writing. Most of the English learners (at least here in Vietnam) use English at work for communication purposes, especially written English (in form of emails, reports etc.) with their business partners or foreigner managers. That being said, let’s get back to the topic … comma usage rules.

1. Use comma in enumerations – here you can consider the words separated by comma as a list of items. There must be at least three words in the list.

Example: I saw a zebra, a crocodile, a snake and a giraffe.

2. Use comma in enumerations before “and” – Using comma before “and” in an enumeration is optional. Using the example above we will have:

Example: I saw a zebra, a crocodile, a snake, and a giraffe.

3. Don’t use comma before “and” if a group of two or more words form a unit – There is a situation in which using comma before “and” is wrong. In the example below “eggs and cheese” represents a dish (a unit) and comma usage is not required.

Example: Today we serve pizza, spaghetti, eggs and cheese, hamburger, and noodle soup.

4. Use comma in compound numbers – Unlike other languages (for example Romanian and Vietnamese ) comma is used in compound numbers (Romanian and Vietnamese use periods in this situation)

Example: $10,455,012
Romanian and Vietnamese: $10.455.012

5. Comma is not used in decimals – Use period to separate numbers and decimals.

Example: $5.95
Romanian and Vietnamese: $5,95

6. Use comma in dates – Many times a date is given in the following format: month/ day/ year. In this situation w have to use comma before the year in the date. However, if only the month and the year is given, then you shouldn’t use comma before the year.

Example: June 16^th, 1977

7. Use comma after a name if you address directly to someone – If there is a group of people and you address to a particularly person, then usage of comma is required.

Example: John, can you come here for a moment?

8. Use comma after salutations – Letters and emails require a salutation at the very beginning (e.g. Dear Sir, Dear Mr. Smith etc). A comma after salutations is always required in this situation. However, according to some grammarians, comma shouldn’t be use after salutations in business letters. In business letters don’t use comma (British English) or use a colon (American English).

Example: Dear Mr. Smith, (in private letters and emails)
Example: Dear Mr. Smith (business letters – British English)
Example: Dear Mr. Smith: (business letters – American English)

9. Use comma after greetings at the end of the letters or emails – Every letter or email finishes with something like “Sincerely” or “Best regards”. Comma in this situation is optional.

Example: Sincerely,
         Sincerely

10. Use comma for separating parts of an address – Parts of an address are always separated by comma

Example: My address is 180 CMT Street, District 3, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.

11. Use comma after coordinating conjunctions – Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet) that separates two independent clauses have to follow a comma.

Example: Today is my day off, so in the evening I am visiting my friend.

12. Don’t use comma between a main clause and a subordinate clause – Here we have two situations.

If the main clause is followed by the subordinate clause – comma is not required between the main clause and the subordinate clause.
Example:  My friend called me while I was eating.

If the main clause follows the subordinate clause – comma is required between the main clause and the subordinate clause.
Example: While I was eating, my friend called me.

13. Use comma after introductory phrases – These introductory phrases can be: nonessential appositive phrases, absolute phrases, long prepositional phrases, infinitive phrases and participle phrases.

Note: Long prepositional phrases are those phrases that consist of at least five words.
Example: Having finished the article about comma usage, I turned off my computer.

14. Use comma after “yes”, “well” and “however” if these words are placed at the beginning of the sentence – Yes, well, and however are considered introductory words, so comma usage is required.

Example: Yes, you should cancel your trip.

15. Use comma before and after a phrase, clause or single word that is not essential to the meaning of the sentence – Of course, that phrase, clause or single word has to be placed in the middle of the sentence

Example: That Monday, which is a legal holiday, I was asked to go to work.

16. Comma usage in relative clauses – Here we have two situations. Don’t use comma to separate essential elements. Use comma to separate non essential elements.

Example: Dan, who is from Romania, is an English Teacher in Vietnam.
         The man who is from Romania is an English Teacher.

17. Use comma before “please” – If “please” is placed at the beginning of the sentence, then there is no comma requirement. If “please is placed at the end of the sentence, then comma has to be used before “please”.

Example: Please come and help me.
                 Come and help me, please.

18. Use comma with “if clauses” – We have two situations here. “If clause” at the beginning of the sentence require to be followed by a comma. “If clause” at the end of the sentence doesn’t require comma usage.

Example: If I go to Romania, I will eat a lot of cheese.
                 I will eat a lot of cheese if I go to Romania.

19. Use comma with opposites – There are some situations when two opposites are used in the sentence and they are separated by “and” or “but”. Comma is required in this situation.

Example: It was a teacher, and not a student, who broke the window.

20. Use comma for enhancing readability – In some situations comma is required, otherwise the readers might be confuse.

Example: Above, the sky was blue …

21. Use comma before question tags – Question tag means that a declarative statement is turned into a question.

Example: I have told you, haven’t I?

22. Use comma in direct speech – Here we have three situations. Direct speech is at the beginning of the sentence – a comma before the ending quotation mark is required. Direct speech is at the end of the sentence – comma before the first quotation mark is required. Direct speech finishes with question mark or exclamation mark – comma usage is not required.

Example: “I should kill you,” she said.
                 She said, “I should kill you”.
                “Should I kill you?” she asked.

23. Use comma after adverbs – The following adverbs have to be followed by a comma: in fact, therefore, however, nevertheless, too, instead and still. These adverbs follow and precede a comma if they are in the middle of a sentence.

Example: In fact, he even doesn’t speak French.
                 The car, however, looks very good.

24. Use comma between two adjectives – Comma has to be used if the adjectives give information of the same importance. To find out if two adjectives give information of the same importance, place an “and” between them. If the sentence sounds right with the “and” between adjectives, then the adjectives give information equally important.

Example: She has long, black hair. (She has long and black hair.)

The purpose of the lesson: Using will / won’t for making promises
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A1
Length of the lesson: 40 minutes

This lesson is designed for beginner / low-intermediate students but of course it can be easily adapted for more advance levels (or for lower levels).

Stage 1
The teacher starts the lesson by writing on the board six promises, promises that later will be used in the lesson.

1. I won’t tell anyone
2. I will always love you
3. I will come back tomorrow
4. I will write
5. I will pay you back tomorrow
6. This won’t hurt

The teacher asks students what these phrases have in common.

Stage 2
Give students time to read the following paragraphs:

• Plumbers, construction workers, electricians etc. always make this promise. Of course they don’t keep it and the truth is very different.
• We always make this promise because we love hearing secrets. Of course, we don’t keep this promise and very soon everybody will know the secret.
• This is the favorite promise of doctors and dentists. Everybody knows it is a big lie.
• Personally, I made this promise to my new friends and I couldn’t keep it. By new friends I mean friends I made during a vacation or a long flight. We exchange e-mail addresses but I always loose it.
• Never borrow or lend money … if that is possible. Money is Satan eyes; good friendships were destroyed because of the money.
• There is a famous song about this promise. People say that there is eternal love but for sure, this is the most difficult to keep promise.

Stage 3
Students match the promise from stage 1 with the paragraphs from stage 2.

Stage 4
Match the underlined words in the paragraphs of stage 2 with the definitions.

__Eternal__ means last forever.

__Secret__ means that only one person (or a very small group of people) knows it.

__Plumber__ is a person who repairs water pipes, toilets etc.

__Destroyed__ Put an end to the existence of (something) by damaging or attacking it

__Exchange__ means Give something and receive something of the same kind in return

Stage 5
Look at the cartoons, what do you think the people are saying?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Possible answers:

(The answers are in order but if students find the task difficult then the possible answers can be shown)

1. I will wear a dress tonight
2. I will take the chicken
3. I will answer it
4. I will go now to buy
5. I will help you
6. I will kill it
7. I won’t be late

In which picture(s) people are making a promise, making a decision, or offering to do something. In which situations we should use “will”?

Accuracy, appropriacy, range and complexity are the areas that have to be evaluated by the teacher in a communicative test. Below, all these areas are detailed based on the student’s level.

Accuracy
Basic level: No confusing errors lexis and punctuation. Grammar may be shaky but what the candidate writes is intelligible and unambiguous. Orthography may be uncertain.
Intermediate level: Grammatical, lexical and orthographical accuracy is generally high, though some errors which don’t destroy communication are acceptable. Handwriting is legible without undue effort.
Advance level: Standards of orthography, punctuation, lexis and grammar are extremely high. Handwriting is easily legible.

Appropriacy
Basic level: Use of language is broadly appropriate. The intension of the writing can be perceived without excessive effort. Layout is generally appropriate.
Intermediate level: Use of language is appropriate to function. Some adaptation of style to the particular context is demonstrated. The overall intension of the writer is always clear. Layout is appropriate.
Advance level: Use of language entirely appropriate to context, function and intention. Layout is consistent and appropriate.

Range
Basic level: Severely limited range of expression. The candidate may have labored to fit what he wanted to say to what he was able to say.
Intermediate level: A fair range of language is available to the candidate. He is able to express himself clearly without distortion.
Advance level: Few limitations on the range of language available to the candidate. No obvious use of avoidance strategies.

Complexity
Basic level: Text may be simple, showing little development. Simple sentences with little attempt at cohesion are acceptable.
Intermediate level: Text will display simple organization with themes and points linked and related.
Advance level: The candidate demonstrates the ability to produce organized, coherent, and cohesive discourse.

There are many things to consider when evaluating academic writing. Of course, different teachers and school will use their own evaluation system; most will include categories similar to those presented below.

Guided discovery is a very student centered teaching method which avoids the use of long explanations by the teacher. Learners take a more active role in their own progress and work at their speed. Basically, learners have to take responsibility for their own learning. Guided discovery encourages peer teaching and sharing ideas. Because the teacher doesn’t lead the class, he/she is free to walk around (through monitoring) and get a good overall picture of how the class is doing.

Another big advantage of Guided Discovery is that it gets the learners to think about language. The effort students put in the learning process, makes it more memorable. The mental work involved in explaining grammar points to each other has a powerful effect on the memory.

It avoids time consumption because Guided Discovery gets straight to the point. Its direct and uncompromising grammar focus is suitable for adult students who are not deterred by an analytical approach. Guided discovery offers the possibility for communicative practice in the actual process of learning about the grammar.

Guided discovery is suitable for intermediate to advance level where the students have already some exposure to English. It is less suitable for lower levels but still can be done with simple language points, as long as the guided discovery questions are carefully written with carefully graded language.

Particularly, Guided Discovery approach is suitable for complex language and language that is more written rather than spoken (such as passive voice). Other good areas where Guided Discovery is good are: verb patterns, phrasal verbs, articles, quantifiers, modals of deduction etc.

Guided Discovery Stages

Lead-In: The teacher does something to get the learners attention and have them engaged in the topic (activate schemata).

Pre-teach essential lexis: The teacher should teach just the vocabulary that he/she thinks is above the learner’s level and that they will need to complete the task. The teacher makes sure that the learners will not block later in the lesson because of the lack of vocabulary.

Gist / global task: Design a question (ore more) which will check the general understanding of the text (reading or listening) and give the learners a reason to read / listen all the way to the end of the text.

Detailed receptive skills work: It’s much easier to work with the language in the text if the learners have understood the main points. A more details comprehension task does just that for the teacher.

Test: The teacher can design a gap-fill activity or multiple choice (or others) to see how much the students already know about the meaning and form of the target language. Initially, the students work alone then the students check in pairs to encourage peer teaching and build confidence. The teacher should monitor this activity.

Pulling out the target language from the text: If the teacher uses a listening text, have a gap-fill activity with the key language in gaps. Avoid giving the tape script at this point. Make sure the students put some effort in the task. The tape script can be given for the feedback or after feedback.

Language focus stage: The teacher designs a series of questions that make the students look back through the text that will encourage the students to notice features of the meaning, form, pronunciation of the target language. Monitoring and help are very important at this stage. To make the task at this stage more fruitful, the students have to discuss the language with there partners, so working in groups or pairs is a great idea. Learners might want to use their own language at this point (which is fine, as long they put the right answers on the paper).

Regrouping: Some groups do better than other, so re-arranging students in new groups and have them checking again is a good idea.

Feedback: If there are many questions on the worksheet written by the teacher then going orally through them orally. Cover the problem areas with the class and hand out an answer sheet is the best way to go.

Practice activities: These can be some activities that practice the language points in questions. I usually do these activities in the following lesson but it can be done in the same lesson if the time permits.

Here are nine great feedback activities that you can do in the classroom with your students. These activities can be adapted for a particular situation to fit your and your students needs.

Tic Tac Toe
For gap-fills / comprehension questions
Ten or more questions
Two teams, which must agree on their answers

Discussion groups
For any questions
As students finish an exercise they move to a section of the room and check their answers, there can be two

“What did you get for number …?”
For any questions
Whole class checking answers
Students ask each other “What did you get for …?”

Half and half
For gap-fills / comprehension questions
Any number of questions
Put students in pairs, give student A half the answer and student B the other half. They check their own answers and then get the rest from their partner

Jumbled answers
For gap-fills /comprehension questions
Any number of questions
Give them the answers in a different order for them to match them up

5, 10, 20
For gap-fills / Comprehension questions
Any number of questions
Three teams must agree on their answers
Teams get 5, 10 or 20 points for getting the correct answer

Grammar gamble
For error correction
Two or three groups
Students gamble on whether they can correct the error

How many wrong?
For true / false questions
Based or a reading or listening text
Teacher tells students how many are wrong but not which ones are wrong

Cross the floor
For true / false questions
Based on a reading or listening text
Students stand one side of the room (true side or false side) and try to persuade the other side to join them by justifying their answer

The purpose of the lesson: Talk about past events
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A1
Length of the lesson: 40 minutes

1. Reading

They left Ho Chi Minh City in the morning at six o’clock and got to Dalat at two o’clock in the afternoon. They went to Dalat by bus. It took them eight hours to get to there.

Last year Nguyen went on vacation with his parents and his sister to Dalat. They chose Dalat because they wanted to escape from the heat of Ho Chi Minh City.

Ten days later Nguyen and his family came back to Ho Chi Minh City. This time they traveled by bus in the night. It took them just four hours to get to Ho Chi Minh City.

They stayed at a very nice hotel, they visited amazing places and the weather was great.

Below is the vocabulary that might be helpful for my Vietnamese students to understand the paragraphs and the instructions.

Choose = chọn
Escape = thoát
Heat = nhiệt
Travel = du lịch
Visit = thăm
Paragraph = đoạn
Order = thứ tự
Logical = hợp lý

Task 1
Read the paragraphs A-D and order them 1-4 in a logical order (example provided).

Task 2
Answer the questions

1. Where did Nguyen go to vacation last year?
2. Who did he go with?
3. How did he go there?
4. Why did he choose Dalat?
5. Where did he stay?
6. How long did he stay in Dalat?

2. Speaking

Task 1
Think about your answers to these questions. Write in the notebook the questions and your answers. Work in pairs. Student A asks, student B answers.

1. Where / go? When?
2. Who / go with?
3. How / get there?
4. Where / stay?
5. How long / he / there?
6. / have good weather?
7. What / visit?

The purpose of the lesson: Talk about future arrangements using going to and present continuous
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A1
Length of the lesson: 40 minutes

The text
Thao and Ngoc are from Hanoi. They are in the airplane and are going to (1) Ho Chi Minh City.

Thao: What are you going to (2) do inHo Chi Minh City?
Ngoc: I am going to (3) visit my grandparents. They are waiting (4) for me. What about you Thao? What are you going to  (5) do in Ho Chi Minh City?
Thao: I am going to (6) look for a job, maybe as an accountant (vn = kế toán). And I want to improve (vn = cải thiện) my English too, so I can get a better job in the future.
Ngoc: Where are you going to (7) stay?
Thao: I have a friend who is working (8) here. I am going to (9) stay with her, she has a big house. We are going to (10) have a big party there tonight.

Task 1 (understanding the text)
Read the text again and write T (Thao) and N (Ngoc).

1. ____ is going to visit her grandparents.
2. ____ has a friend who’s working inHo Chi Minh City.
3. ____ is going to have a big party.
4. ____ ‘s family is waiting for her.
5. ____ wants to improve her English.

Task 2 (understanding the usage of going to and present continuous for expressing future arrangements)

Look at the underlined words (verbs) in the text. Do they refer to the present of the future?

Note: The present continuous is especially common with the expressions tonight, tomorrow, this weekend etc. and with these verbs: go, come, meet, see, leave, and arrive.

Task 3 (speaking)
Where are you going on vacation?
Individually, choose one vacation and answer to the questions below (Write down the questions and your answers). Ask your partner about his/her future vacation.

Where are you going?
I am going toHueCity/NhaTrangCity.
How are you getting there?
I am flying Pacific Airlines/ Vietnam Airlines.
When are you leaving?
I am living on September 1^st/ September 2^nd.
Where are you staying?
I am staying at Century Riverside Hotel/ Blue Lagoon Hotel
When are you coming back?
I am coming back on September 15^th/ 16^th.

This is an overview of the Task Based Learning / Lesson method.
This learning method contains three main stages: pre-task, task cycle and language focus. Each of these stages are also divided in two or more steps.

Pre-task

The teacher
-          Introduces and defines the topic
-          Uses activities to recall/learn useful words and phrases
-          Makes sure the students understand the task instructions
-          May play a recording of others doing the same or a similar task
The students
-          Note down useful words and phases that are used to complete the task
-          Students are given few minutes to prepare the task

Task cycle

1.     Task

The students
-          Do the task based on a reading or listening text, in pairs or groups
The teacher
-          Monitors and encourage students

2.     Planning

The students
-          Prepare to report to the class how they did the task and what they discovered or decided
-          Rehearse what they will say or draft a written version for the class to read
The teacher
-          Ensures the purpose of the report is clear
-          Acts as language adviser
-          Helps students rehearse oral reports or organize written ones

3.     Report

The students
-          Present their spoken report to the class or display their written reports
The teacher
-          Acts as chairperson, selecting who will speak next, or ensuring all students read most of the written reports
-          May give brief feedback on content and form
-          May play a recording of others doing the same or a similar task

Language focus

1.     Analysis

The students
-          Do consciousness-raising activities to identify and process specific language features from the task text and/or transcript
-          May ask about other features they have noticed
The teacher
-          Reviews each analysis activity with the class
-          Bring other useful words, phrases and patterns to student’s attention
-          May pick up on language items from the report stage

2.     Practice

The teacher
-          Conducts practice activities after analysis activities where necessary, to build confidence
The students
-          Practice words, phrases and patterns from the analysis activities
-          Practice other features occurring in the task text or report stage
-          Enter useful language items in their language notebooks

Corrections are very important but when to make these corrections is even more important. Here are few tips for delayed corrections.

It’s important to monitor – Walk around the classroom while the students are doing an activity, listen carefully to the students and make notes of student error as you monitor.

Keep a low profile – If it is possible don’t do any kind of corrections during the monitoring, corrections distract learners from the task. Be “invisible” during monitoring.

Classify mistakes into different categories – It is a good idea to classify the mistakes, for example: grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes, spelling mistakes, pronunciation mistakes etc, according to the purpose of the task.

Use different parts of the board for different error types – Write on the top right the grammar errors and in the top left the pronunciation errors. This technique helps both, the teacher and the students.

Use colors – Use different colors for different kind of errors. This might be combined with the no. 4 tip for a greater result.

The purpose of the lesson: Describe your bedroom
Size of the class: 40 students
Age: 14 years old / grade 8
Level: Beginner / A1
Length of the lesson: 40 minutes

This is an easy lesson; a very similar lesson using preposition of position I did with my students last year when they were on grade 7. This year, instead of using in, on, under, above, next to they have to use on the right, on the left, on the other side, beneath. Except the above words, all other vocabulary used in this lesson should be known already.

Stage 1

For this lesson I am going to use a picture downloaded from the internet. Having the picture projected on the board, students come to the board and tag the known items.

Stage 2

Once the items are all tagged, the teacher provides the example. Listening and watching the teacher gestures should unlock the vocabulary written at the bottom of the board.

Example:

In the right corner of the room there is a table and a chair. There is a computer (monitor) on the table. Next to the table is a pink wardrobe. Beneath the table is a white box. There is a big pink bed and the bookshelf is opposite to the bed. Next to the bed is a small table. On the other side of the bed there is a big lamp. There are six hearts drawn above the bed. In the middle of the room there is a ball.

When the teacher presents the description verbally, the words that are at the bottom of the board should be emphasized for the students to get the meaning. Personally, I write the description on the board and I ask students to read it aloud (for pronunciation purpose).

If there is still confusion among the students, a graphic as the one presented below should make things clearer.

To make things even clearer I am going to describe my own bedroom and make a simple drawing on the board.

Example:

In the left side corner there is a TV and the fan is on the wall above the TV. In front of the TV there is a bed. Next to the bed is a lamp and on the other side there is a window. The ball is beneath the table.

Stage 3

The students draw their own bedrooms and write the description. Having the bedroom drawn makes correction easier for the teacher (seeing the drawing, the teacher knows what should be written in the description).

Different speaking activities can be done once the description is completed. I suggest to have students reading their description to each other.