Vocabulary

A Perfect story

Submitted by TE Editor on 1 January, 1970 - 12:00

The present perfect is a tense that many students have problems with. Most course books provide only controlled grammar sentences where students choose the correct tense. This activity leads students into writing a short story using the past simple, present perfect simple and continuous, but in a more creative way.

Procedure

•Tell the students they are going to write a short story.

•Get the students to read the following questions and decide, with a partner, what the missing words are, but not answer the questions now.

•Monitor well to check they understand the activity. There are no 'correct' answers, they should use their imagination.

1.What is his / her name?

2.What is __________ about them? (e.g. strange / unusual / nice...)

3.What was their --problem last year?

4.What happened?

5.Why have they become so __________ ?

6.How many __________ have they -__________ ?

7.Who have they been __________ recently?

8.What have they been __________ for the last five years?

Download sample questions 40k

•Now the students, working in pairs still, have to answer the questions. The answers should link the questions together to form the basis of a story.

•Next ask students to draw their characters. This is fun and brings the character to life. Students can laugh at each other's drawings.

•Using the notes above, students put the story together. They can add more information if they wish but they should not make it complicated.

•Students then swap their story with another pair to edit. They read the story and underline any errors they notice, or question any word or phrase they don't understand.

•The stories are returned to their owners who make changes as necessary depending on the comments that were made by the editing pair.

Freeze the writing - A way to make writing tasks a group activity

Submitted by TE Editor on 1 January, 1970 - 12:00

This activity would follow input work on writing in a particular style - for example, an informal letter inviting a friend to visit your home town for a holiday.

Preparation

Set up the context for the letter, you might do a letter layout on the board to make sure that everyone knows how to lay out an informal letter.

Procedure

•Put the students in pairs or threes.

•Give them a large piece of paper and say, 'Right, everyone, I want you to write your address, write the opening greeting and then stop. And you do it immediately and you do it straight onto the paper.' And they do that. Then you say, 'OK now you're going to write the letter. But as you write it, at some point you'll hear me say 'Freeze!' and when I say 'Freeze!', I mean 'Freeze', even if you're in the middle of a word - you stop writing. If you're in the middle of a sentence you stop writing.'

•The students begin to write. I check that everyone has written something before I say 'Freeze!' for the first time. I try to hurry the ones along that are lagging behind a little.

•When I say 'Freeze!', I transfer each paper to the next group so that everyone's working with another piece of paper with a letter on it. I give the following instruction which is to read, correct, improve and continue. So, they work on the letter that they've received and then they continue that letter.

•A bit later I say 'Freeze!' and off we go again. Transfer letters, read, correct, improve and continue.

It's always good to get the paper back to the original group just before the ending and again

...