The Cure - Friday I'm in Love
-Fill in the gaps with the days of the week.
-How does he feel every day? And you?On Monday he _____. I _____.
11/25/2009
11/24/2009
The black sheep or the third person singular
This is the way I teach the Present Simple - or at least I try - to my fresh(wo)men. 'The Black Sheep' is a mnemonic device. This is a digital board screenshot.
11/16/2009
Will I?
Last Wednesday they started learning how to use 'can' correctly. Even on Friday they saw 'could' in a conversation, 'Ordering Coffee', and it turned out they used it quite well too.
The thing is that next Wednesday's topic is Present Simple, and I can foresee that once we see it they will produce sentences such as 'He can sings'. It is always the same. I know that giving them lots of controlled practice of the new grammar point will help, but I will not be able to avoid their confusion or... will I?! (with flat o falling intonation)
11/15/2009
Possible misunderstandings
Consciously or subconsciously we, teachers, tend to play down the importance of making mistakes that do not convey a lot of information, that is, our students can make that mistake and still be understood, still communicate. Thus we move on from the Present Simple to giving them the vocabulary they will need to reach the unit's goals and so on.
When doing this, though, we are missing one thing which could be important in error correction: possible misunderstandings. For instance, "what do you do?" vs. "what are you doing?" or "sheet" vs. "shit", etc.
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