94 Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
board to show what kind of information or expressions can be used to go in
each paragraph before they start writing by themselves. See Chapter 11 for
tips on organising writing lessons.
In the next section I talk about ways to engage students in writing and
presenting.
Miming a story
A fun way to set a writing activity is by miming it. Students love to watch you
doing all the actions while they make notes and later write the entire story
in the tense(s) you set for them. Of course, you need to make it an amusing
story full of actions and without too many characters.
Making speeches and presentations
An example of an individual freer practice activity for speaking is to have
students do a speech or presentation. This is particularly applicable for
business English students who may need to do similar activities at work.
However, if there’s an election running, students can try delivering a mani-
festo speech.
Students need to do this kind of activity from time to time because it allows
stronger ones to show off without compromising for the sake of their classmates.
It also reveals students’ true speaking levels without the support of a group.
Role-playing in pairs
Role-playing is an effective way of speaking freely in pairs. In the Practice
stage the students can just act out a role-play from a script. However, in
Production you can get them writing the script themselves and then perhaps
performing for the rest of the class.
What’s the question?
An exercise in using creative language is to give students just the answers to
an interview and asking them to come up with the most interesting questions
they can think of to match.
Write a question in the Past Simple to match each answer.
Answer: Vanilla ice cream.
Question: What did you want for breakfast when you were a child?
