Some TV commercials for video games have good vocabulary and stories. But do my ESL English students really listen? Or do they just get excited by the video images?

Let’s find out. Here is a TV commercial for God of War 3. The English vocabulary is great. The story is mythical.

God of War 3 (UK) from Cutting Edge Commercial on Vimeo.

God of War 3

Vocabulary

betray, start, revenge

Comprehension

1. In the story, what did the God’s do to you?
2. What three things can you start to do?
3. What game company makes this game?

This 15-minute listening exercise has great conversational English for ESL students. Ikea, for those in Korea who do not know, is a furniture store from Sweden.

Ikea: Kitchen Squad from Cutting Edge Commercial on Vimeo.

Ikea Kitchen Squad

Vocabulary

squad, arty, funky, heart of the home, destroyed

Comprehension

Part 1

1. What is Colleen’s job?
2. Why did Ikea squad put her kitchen in the forest?

Part 2

1. Does the mother cook with her daughter?
2. What’s wrong with the old oven?
3. What does the man offer the woman at the end?

Part 3

1. Where was the new kitchen built?
2. What adjectives did she use to describe the new kitchen?
3. Why are the people wearing yellow toques?

Dear ESL English students,

I am so happy you decided to read this message. Your final exam is coming soon. Quiz number 2 even sooner.

To help you learn the English material we studied in English class, I prepared a study worksheet. The worksheet is here: esl-english-quiz-review.

After studying the question on the ESL worksheet, you might think, Teacher, this too much work. This is not fair.

I agree.

But here is the most important lesson for you.

Life is not fair.

Good luck.

Here are some lessons, activities, exercises and worksheets for my ESL English students.

Kitchen Odyssey

This TV commercial is food for thought for my students. The listening vocabulary is small but the opportunity to add words and phrases is big.

Did into the video here: esl-lesson-kitchen-odyssey.

 The Road

This ESL English listening exercise uses advanced level words. My students will need to listen extra hard to hear the words and understand the story in this video lesson.

Watch and listen to the video lesson here: esl-listening-exercises-road.

Friends The Final Show

Here is the worksheet for part 1 of Friends The Final Show: ESL-English-Friends-part-1.

Ikea Kitchen Squad

This looks like a three-part TV commercial from England. It’s about a family that gets a kitchen makeover.

Here is the video and listening exercise: ESL-English-Ikea-squad.

God of War 3

Here is a TV commercial about a video game with a simple but powerful story: esl-listening-exercises-god-of-war.

ESL Listening Exercise: The Road Video Lesson

This ESL English listening exercise uses many advanced level words. My students will need to listen extra hard to hear the words and understand the story in this video lesson.

Vocabulary

intelligence, disrepair, distractions, ill-equipped, debris, driver’s exam, make sense

 Comprehension

1. How many miles of roads and bridges are in disrepair?
2. How many ill-equipped vehicles are there?
3. How much garbage is on the road?
4. How many drivers couldn’t pass the driver’s exam today?
5. How many decisions does the car make every second?
6. How does the new Audio change the road?

The Road from DTan on Vimeo.

This short video lesson helps ESL English students hear and use words and phrases related to the kitchen and cooking.

Kitchen Odyssey

Vocabulary

post-work, fridge, bon appetite

Comprehension

1. When is the man looking inside the fridge?
2. What food is calling the man?
3. What does he ask himself?
4. What does he make?
5. Name seven steps to cook that food.
6. Name three cooking tools you see the man using.
7. This is a commercial for what?

Kitchen Odyssey from DTan on Vimeo.

Thank You Mom from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

Here is a short video about Mother’s day. It’s a video to say thanks.

For my ESL English students. Watch and listen to the video. Make a list of 10 reasons why people said thanks to their Moms.

Murder Mystery

This is a 15-minute group work fluency exercise. Each person is one character. Read the information about your character. Move around the class and talk to the other characters. Your objective is to find out who killed the English teacher.

Game Background

During a high school reunion, the guests heard a loud scream at 8.45 pm. Five minutes later, Miss Greenspoon, the school’s oldest English teacher was found dead. Someone had hit her on the head with a statue. Many items were found beside her body including a book, a handkerchief, a picture of another teacher.

Game Play

Your job is to talk to the other characters and ask:

• who they are
• what they remember about Miss Greenspoon
• what they were doing when they heard Miss Greenspoon scream as she was killed
• collect clues and use your brain power to find out the name of the murder

The character roles are here: esl-murder-mystery-game.

It’s week 12 of the semester for my English students. The semester is quickly coming to a close so my students need to work to concentrate on the English exercises and learn the ESL lesson material.

ESL English pair work exercise: Speak for 60 Seconds.

This pair work worksheet is a list of topics. One partner chooses a topic. The other student says a list of things related to topic. Each person gets 60 second to speak. Keep a total of the answers. The winner is the person with the most answers.

Get the worksheet here: esl-speaking-topics.

Phrasal Verbs Maze

This pair work exercise starts with a maze. Students move through the maze by matching two parts of a phrasal verb. Students can also complete the fill in the blank worksheet. Finally, each pair of students must make a short dialogue with the matched pairs of phrasal verbs.

Get the phrasal verb worksheet from this page:

Murder Mystery

This is a 15-minute group work exercise. Each person is one character. Read the information about your character. Move around the class and talk to the other characters. Your objective is to find out who killed the English teacher.

Go to the ESL Murder Mystery Game here: ESL-murder-mystery-game.

This TV commercial and ESL lesson teaches my English students slang, bar talk, tattoos and bets. Not the kind of lesson you might find in a traditional ESL textbook, but someone has to teach English students in Korea about these useful things.

The Eyebrows

The Eyebrows (Betsafe.com 1) from DTan on Vimeo.

Vocabulary

what’s up, check these bad boys out, handsome, bet, you owe me

Comprehension

1. What did the man do to his eyebrows?
2. Why did he do that?
3. What did the second guy say?
4. Where are they?
5. This a TV commercial for what?

This ESL video exercise helps English students learn words and phrases about travel, tea and everyday activities.

Video Lesson: Twinings Tea

Twinings Tea from Cutting Edge Commercial on Vimeo.

Vocabulary

discover, put the kettle on

 Comprehension

1. Where did they go on holiday?
2. What happened when they got home?
3. What did the woman’s mother do?
4. Did they go for another trip to that country?
5. What happened after they drank that tea?

Here are two ESL exercises and videos to help my ESL students improve their English listening. These English activities use two TV commercial.

Video: Tea Cup Bags

Click here for the ESL video: esl-lesson-video-bag.

Comprehension

1. What did the woman say to the man?
2. For how long?
3. What things did the man do to remember his wife?
4. This is a TV commercial for what product?

Video: Tale of Young Richard Branson

Click here for the video: esl-exercise-video-Branson.

Vocabulary

airline, spaceship, envision, mobile, mad, mental

Comprehension

1. What things did he create?
2. Why did people think he was mad as a young man?
3. How much does the phone service cost?
4. What are the benefits of this package?
   

This English exercise is a listening lesson about an inventor. He is the guy who invented the first video game. So, all the video games which students enjoy today are based on the work of this man.

Video Game Inventor

Vocabulary

inventor, video console, license, a challenge, retire

Comprehension Questions

1. How many years did it take to find a company that would buy his game?
2. What game did people play with the first video game console?
3. How many games of Odyssey were sold in the first year?
4. How many sold in total?
5. How long has he been making toys and games?
6. What did he get from the US president?
7. When did he build his house?
8. What does he need in his life?
9. Why does he think he is an artist?
10. Does he want to retire?

Click here to watch the video: ESL-exercise-video-inventor-lesson.

The school semester is coming soon. It’s time for my English students to try extra hard and ignore the warm day outside the classroom window. Think about the ESL listening lesson, not the summer breeze.

Where Do Coffee Beans Come From?

This listening exercise helps ESL students learn about coffee. A good activity that teaches English students useful information, for coffee lovers that is.

Click here for the video, vocabulary exercises and comprehension questions: esl-listening-coffee.

City Water Lesson

This ESL exercise is a listening activity about city water. This video is about the New York city water supply.

Click here for the English language learning video: ESL-exercise-listening-video.

Friends The Cake Part 3

Here is the ESL worksheet for Part 3 of the Friends show with a birthday cake.

Video Game Inventor

This ESL English listening exercise is a video about the man who invented the first video game.

Click here for the lesson and video.

TV Commercials

Here are two quick listening exercises to help ESL students improve English listening skills. The English lessons use two TV commercials.

The TV commercial lesson page is here: esl-lessons-exercises-commercials.

Here is a short ESL video lesson that describes for English students what coffee is. By the end of this ESL lesson, my students should be able to describe what coffee is and where it comes from.

This video lesson and transcript comes from HowCast.

What is Coffee?

Vocabulary

tropical climate, high altitude, ripe, roasted

Comprehension

1. Where does coffee come from?
2. Is coffee a fruit?
3. What color is the coffee cherry when it is ripe?
4. What happens to the cherry around the coffee bean?
5. What color is final bean after drying?
6. When does the bean become brown or black?

Transcript

Here is the transcript for the video. The transcript comes from HowCast.

My name is Mike Jones, and I’m a barista at Third Rail Coffee right by Washington Square Park in New York City. I’m going to teach you some basic coffee-making skills.

So what is coffee? Coffee is actually the cherry that is grown on the coffee plant, which is a tree or a shrub. And most quality coffee is grown between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and higher altitudes, so just tropical climate. There are many steps that this has to go through in order to be the coffee that you can drink at home. It goes from the cherry, to being picked when it’s perfectly ripe—it will be this nice red color. And, then you have to wash off the fruit.

There are different ways of processing it. Some people will ferment it for a longer period of time in order to remove the sticky coating around the seed on the inside. So this bean that’s at the middle of the cherry is actually what gets turned into the beans you’re used to seeing.

The final step is drying and then shipping it off to a roaster. At this point, it’s green coffee, so it’s not yet roasted. It’s much harder than a coffee bean you might be used to seeing. And it has like an olive green/yellowish color to it. From there, it is roasted, and then sent off to stores or cafés, and then ground and then brewed to be drank, and it’s delicious.

This is a fun, fast-paced ESL speaking game for an English class. This English speaking activity uses videos as prompts for students to shout out answers based on what they see.

ESL Sentence Game Rules

1. Make teams.
2. One person from each team stands.
3. Show short clip from video. Pause video.
4. Student shouts out sentence to describe action.
5. One point for first correct answer.
6. Change players.
7. Show next clip. Repeat.

ESL Video 1

This ESL video can be used by students to make past tense sentences.

Dad’s Day Out (Weetabix) from DTan on Vimeo.

ESL Video 2

This ESL video about a motel company works well if you ask students to describe what the person looks like. For example, “He has a beard”, or “She is wearing a hat.”  You could also ask a more general question like, “What do you see?”

Motel from DTan on Vimeo.

This ESL video tells English students a story about city water. It’s a listening exercise about the water supply in New York city. The video is the Futures Channel.

Go the the video here: esl-lesson-water.

Water Video Lesson

Vocabulary

gallon, facility, reservoir, gravity, elevation, faucets, valve

Comprehension

1. How much water does New York city use everyday?
2. How far below ground is the water facility?
3. Is it longer than a football field?
4. How many pipe sections are there?
5. How far away is the water supply?
6. How much water is in the reservoir?
7. How deep is it?
8. How long would it take to open one value by hand?
9. How long does it take with an electronic system?

Here is an ESL listening activity that helps English students hear and understand words and phrases related to farming. This lesson also helps students improve their ability to describe lists of events.

Growing Rice Video Lesson

Here is the link to watch the ESL Video about growing rice: ESL lesson grow rice.

Vocabulary

tractor, organic, chemicals, variables, harvest, bin, hull

Comprehension

1. Why does the farmer like to grow rice?
2. Where is his farm?
3. What kind of farmer is he?
4. What is organic farming?
5. What variables can affect his farm?
6. What are five kinds of rice?
7. What do farmers have to plan?
8. How much water is put on the field?
9. How does the farmer plant rice?
10. What happens when the rice is done?
11. How many harvests do they have each year?
12. How much rice is in each bin?
13. What do they check inside the bins?

This ESL activity helps English students improve their listening and vocabulary skills with a video about ancient Egypt. The video is from National Geographic.

Video: Tombs of Ancient Egypt

The link for this ESL video is here: ESL-video-Egypt.

Vocabulary

civilisation, pharaoh, embalm, life after death, linen, tomb, monument

Comprehension

1. Where did ancient Egypt start?
2. When did it start?
   
3. How long did kings rule Egypt?
4. Name four things the ancient Egyptians made or built.
5. Why did Egyptians preserve dead bodies?
6. What is a mummy?
7. What things were put in the tomb?
8. How many blocks are in the pyramids in Giza?
9. How much do these blocks weigh?
10. How long did it take to finish the pyramids?

This week the theme for our English class is making stories. So, here are two short videos for the lesson. We will use these videos to make  summary stories.

ESL Summary Stories

Here is the link for the first ESL video: ESL video lesson 1.

Here is the link for the second ESL video lesson: ESL video lesson 2.