English Language Teaching Tips & Notes | EltTips

Summer Fun English Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Veysel Keleş) — Wed, 31 May 2017 10:33:00 +0000

If you are looking for creative ways to keep your students engaged with English this summer, this timetable is for you.

Firstly I have found this timetable on teacherspayteachers.com website and edited some of the activities according to my students' needs and level. You can check the original idea and document here and here. I have combined those two activities into one for my kids. You can also do the same with a simple pdf editor.

Here are the preview from the activites:

There are ten activities on five days and the kid will choose which one to do. To make this easy to follow for the parents is crossing the activity they did. You need to give the kids and parents a good guide how to follow this summer activity. For this, write an introduction page and a guide in local language and add it to this summer handout.

This is another creative activity in the pack. I hope you like the idea and if you have anything to add, please don't hesitate and comment below.

Why Do We Learn English?

noreply@blogger.com (Veysel Keleş) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 21:05:00 +0000

This is the question we all face when we enter a classroom with some youngsters who are always curious about "why English speakers don't learn our native language?" They keep saying "I want them to learn my language and i don't want to learn theirs".

They really wonder about that and hardly understand why it is otherwise. But no worries, I have found a TED Talk about this issue explaining it in less than five minutes; special thanks to my best friend Hakkı.

This video is a must-see for every English teacher and learner and i suggest you let your students watch it and discuss about the reality behind it. I hope it'll be fun and an inspiring lesson.

How to Keep Patience and Persistence

noreply@blogger.com (Veysel Keleş) — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 17:35:00 +0000

We as teachers are really impatient about our students' learning process. When we lecture our kids about a subject we assume that they understand it (probably because they said so) and will be able to remember it easily for the next lesson.

And what happens when we go for that next lesson! RAGE! Because they don't remember it. They misuse what you taught them. We all face such behavior and it is obviously very common. One of my colleagues told me that she'd been teaching about "what's your name?" for a very long time and she was complaining that she tried many techniques to teach that subject yet the students are not still aware of the phrases.

Well that is wrong to me!

What she should do is to go on teaching what's next in the curriculum and you should do that too. Because, we need to know that English as a language is a whole and everything is all connected. We need to give time and leave it to time. But never ever we should give up our struggle and love of teaching. Learning is a process. We shouldn't rush it for only one subject. And we should keep our patience. When you do a lot of activities about the same subjects, kids would be really bored. You know what happens when someone is bored. The ears would be closed. New generation students are really curious about new things. We should use that curiosity as advantage.

What we really should do is a regular repetition rather than trying to teach the same subject for a long time. Continue teaching what's next before you are out of school time. Students need to be exposed to as many phrases and words as possible in the target language because that's how they will get used to hearing new things and start getting curious. Curiosity is the key for kids and patience is the key in teaching language.

I really would love to hear your thoughts about this. Maybe I'm mistaken or just couldn't make it clear. So what's on your mind?

Making Music Videos with EFL, ESL Classes (Illness)

noreply@blogger.com (Veysel Keleş) — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 07:30:00 +0000

Songs are one of the other greatest tools for us to use in the classroom to encourage efl and esl students. For that matter, we really need good archive of interesting, funny and lively songs. Searching for the right song for the aim of our subjects is really difficult. Youtube is full of videos, thus that makes it even harder to find the right ones. With the use of right "search terms" on Youtube, we can be lucky at times to find the best song and once i found it and i used it as a cornerstone last year. I think Making music videos is another way to utilize the songs for our goals.

Here is the video i found on youtube searching for "what's the matter", "illness", and "esl" even though i teach efl. However it won't make a difference for a song. Here it is:

We listened to it many times in the class. They loved it! So, i had a look at this video again and thought we could make a parody of this funny music video and we did it in just 60 minutes. Editing and other stuff took for me like another one hour though. But the result was worth it.

How i did it?
While we were listening to the song on the smart board, the kids were singing the song as well and i was shooting it with an iPhone. Shooting it was not easy and also it wasn't easy to edit the video because of the lip synch problems but i think i managed it. While editing the video i deleted the kids' voices all because there would be noises. They already sang it many times in class and i just didn't wanted to add their own voices because it would make it more and more difficult to edit the video.

What do you think about the video? Are there any other videos that could be made with the kids easily?

I hope you like it and let me know if you would like to suggest anything for me to improve. Stay tuned for more and please follow my bloglovin page and also pinterest board.

Interactive Vocabulary Game with Quizlet in Classroom

noreply@blogger.com (Veysel Keleş) — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:43:00 +0000

Quizlet is a great tool to revise vocabulary for personal use. This tool is so great that i take advantage of it in the classroom as well. Actually, quizlet lately announced live features to use in the classroom and indeed i haven't tried them yet.
In this post, I'll tell you how i use QUIZLET in the classroom with another free interactive game called KILLER to revise vocabularies with students. They love this game and it could take forever playing the game but this activity should take 15 to 20 minutes.

First of all,
In quizlet i created a set of vocabulary that i taught them in the class. I normally do that for each unit and before exams i also combine some sets to review multiple units. While creating a vocabulary set, i prefer using sentences to single words because i want my students to recognize the whole sentence structures and learn their meanings altogether. In Quizlet we will use the FlashCard feature in the class.

Second,
There is this game called Killer. You need to download it first. This killer game is available here on this website. Actually they have a lot of games that could be used with smart boards. But i find this more interesting and fun. We open the game and read "how to" with the kids. Let them understand the game first, or you beforehand learn the game and start playing it. You will explain it when they discover a box with surprise.

Finally,
I divide the class into two or four groups. Then start asking from quizlet flashcards. I use it randomized. If a group answers or translate the sentence correctly, that group has a chance to choose a box in the KILLER game. They can discover some points, minus points, multipliers, crowns, castles, arches, swords from those boxes. After they discover what's inside the box, they decide whether to keep it or give it to another group. That what makes it challenging and interesting for all level of kids in the class.

I hope you like it and let me know if you would like to suggest anything for me to improve. Stay tuned for more and please follow my bloglovin page and also pinterest board.

Notes About ELT and Educational Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Veysel Keleş) — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 12:30:00 +0000

Better Late Than Never

I've been blogging like for 8 years about personal experiences but not about my profession. It's already time i think.

In this blog, I'm planing to post my notes about ELT seminars, conferences and trainees that i had alongside with the findings from web to improve my teaching skills and and i hope those will help others as well.

I've been teaching for 5 years now and I know It's not an enough experience to be a good blogger about elt but still you have to start somewhere and see how you are doing in this process.

I really hope that this blog will help others and myself during this journey of teaching and improve my skills with your comments as well.