US Travel Advisory France Part 1

In this class, the students studied a text entitled US Travel Advisory.Unfortunately I don't know the source of this text - a friend who had been an assistant suggested we use it when we were working as 'lectrices' at the university and it worked very well with the students!
Once we had established that it was a humorous text based on the stereotypes of the French we had already discussed or seen, I asked the students to work in groups of 3-4 and assigned them different paragraphs to work on. They had to identify criticisms and positive aspects of France as well as the advice given to American tourists and the image projected of these same tourists by the text. If we had time, we also discussed which stereotypes they thought were justified or not. I projected this worksheet to help the students organize their ideas.
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What is the BBC?

In this class, I presented the British Broadcasting Corporation to the students using these slides and they then characterized the organization together and also thought about its strategy, micro environment and how it differs from other organizations they've studied.

Geoff Marshall [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Job Interviews 3

In this lesson, the students did job interviews with each other to practise some of the language we've been talking about in the previous sessions (talking about strengths and weaknesses, your skills etc). We used the worksheet from eslflow, but only as a speaking activity, not a writing one.

Political Issues in the UK

In this follow up to the How Political Are You? class we talked about some of the main political issues facing the UK, notably the EU referendum and the risk of Brexit. There is a quick explanation in these slides of this concept as well as the details of the role play we started working on at the end of class. We worked on the video below from the Financial Times and the students noted down the pro-Europe and pro-Brexit arguments they heard. They then started preparing in their groups for a TV role play debate in which two Eurosceptics and two pro-Europeans have to convince an audience of undecided voters how to vote in the referendum. They used the infographic below from The Economist to add to their arguments.

How political are you?

I used this powerpoint with the terminale ES group to find out what they know about politics in the UK and France. The class ended with a lively debate about the French employment law reform. One of the students had been on the demonstration that day and was more than happy to discuss why he was against it.

Image via You Tube

St Patrick's Day Lesson

In this class we used the following material from Reward English: a quiz about Saint Patrick, Ireland and the Irish, a text to check the answers to the quiz and finally a crossword puzzle to review the new words and to learn more about the topic (the answers to all the clues are in the text). The students were surprised to learn that the official colour of Ireland is blue!

Stereotypes 2: The Simpsons, The Crêpes of Wrath Episode

This lesson follows on from the first Stereotpyes one. We used this worksheet and watched an episode from series one of the Simsons in which Bart goes to France. While watching, the students made notes on stereotypes, cultural references and positive and negative aspects of the following cultures/nationalities: American, French and Albanian.

Job Interviews 2

In this lesson, the students finished the worksheets about their good and bad points. We then used this infographic I made about the top ten skills employers want and compared it with the ideas they had written about themselves. They addeed new good and bad points as necessary. We then moved on to the "Get That Job!" board game to finish the lesson.

Top 10 Skills Employers Want
Create your own infographics

Stategy and the Ansoff Matrix

In this class, we worked on an article about the four different marketing strategies in the Ansoff matrix, particularly specialization and diversification. We used this worksheet to gain a deeper understanding of the terminology and the advantages and disadvantages of different strategies. Finally, we did this task to check that everyone had understood the new notions and to prepare for the Bac sujet for the following week. 

Valentine's Day Lesson

The material for working on this theme can be found on the Padlet below:

Created with Padlet

How to improve you listening skills with Breaking News English

Listening is a skills that many of you find very difficult. It's normal. Fast, natural English can be hard to understand. I know a lot of you listen to English regularly via TV series, films, podcasts and YouTube videos. However, if you do some intensive practice, like dictations, you can really develop your listening skills.You can use the website Breaking News English. to do dictation exercises based on news articles. The video below explains how to get started and how it works:

 

Another excellent website is the Voice of America learning English website, where you can hear different American speakers reading news articles aloud for English learners. There are three different levels to choose from depending on number of words and the complexity of the language. There is an explanation of difficult words at the end of the article.  

Level Two News Story main page on the Voice of America website

You can also watch subtitled videos about news topics which are in careful spoken English that is easier to understand. Some of the videos are also about language such as 'Everyday Grammar' or 'English at the Movies'.  

Learning English TV video with subtitles, spoken in slow, clear American English.

English at the Movies videos with explanations of expressions heard in films.

If you're not so interested in news broadcasts, you can listen to other types of audio and video on topics such as American pop culture.

Don't forget to follow VOA Learning English on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube so that you don't miss the latest videos or audio. I hope you enjoy using these resources.

Job Interviews

For this class on job interviews, we used part of this lesson plan, namely the images from the warmer and worksheets 6 and 7. We then used the exercises on self-evaluating our good and bad points in TJ Taylor's English for Job Interviews.

Stereotypes Part 1

To follow on from our work on the film "L'Auberge Espagnole" we worked on different national stereotypes, firstly about English-speaking countries and after about France and French people.

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Burns Night

As a Scottish person, I generally celebrate Burns Night on the 25th of January. This evening of haggis eating and poetry reading is in honour of Scottish national poet, Robert Burns. In this lesson, there is a video from scotland.org about Burns' life as well as a worksheet and a hilarious video all about haggis that also comes with a worksheet. Everything is on the padlet below. The fantastic haggis video came from Michelle Henry's website. 

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L'Auberge Espagnole Part 2

We started this session with a Flipquiz and/or corrections from last week's role-play. We then watched another two scenes from the film using this worksheet. 
William's ideas about the Spanish and the Germans will lead in to some work on stereotypes within the Spaces and Exchanges theme. 

PESTLE Analysis

Today, we went talked about how to use a PESTLE analysis to analyse a company's macro environment. We used this article and a worksheet to understand each of the factors (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal) and applied them to Harley Davidson, the company whose micro environment we had studied the previous week.

Questions for DNL students

I've made a list of questions for DNL students about their school trips which could be useful for practising the baccalauréat oral exam for this subject.

Music for Classroom Games

I'm planning to use the word game 'Countdown' in class at some point, so I wanted the authentic music to go with it, which was easy enough to find on YouTube. I've also discovered a random letter generator thanks to tekhnologic's excellent blog. While I was searching for other countdown/game show music, I came across all different kinds of videos that could be used in class, including some nice TV show theme quizzes. I've compiled it all into this playlist which you might find useful. Enjoy.

Questions for a Scottish person: survey and presentation

Both groups made a questionnaire using Google forms which I sent out to friends and family to be filled out. Each team had to find questions related to the theme they had done brainstorming on in the previous class (see Scotland week 45 materials). They had to think of 5 questions and choose the two best ones for the survey. They were encouraged to use open rather than closed questions.

Group A's survey
Group B's survey

 The students were given the following task for the next 2 sessions, which involved creating a Powerpoint presentation about their survey results.

L'Auberge Espagnole Part One

First, the students had to make the connection between the following pictures and if possible explain the film briefly to the others if they'd already seen it.

Created with Padlet

Then we watched the following scene from the film and the students answered comprehension questions about it using this worksheet.

Finally, the students did a flat-hunting role play in groups of 4. One was a French person looking for a flatshare in the UK/USA. The others were 3 flatmates of different nationalities looking for new flatmate. They had to ask each other questions about the flat and the potential flatmate to see if the new person would be a good 'fit' for their apartment. Here are the instructions to show the students.

A video with useful links for DNL teachers

I've just had a quick look at the video below which gives some links to websites with useful content for CLIL ( Content and Language Integrated Learning) classes i.e 'DNL'. Maybe you could make use of some of the links?

Micro Environment

The students read this text quickly and had to find subheadings for the different paragraphs labelled 1-6 to revise the micro environmental factors affecting a business. The original text can be found here. Afterwards, for a business of their choice (preferably one they had already talked about or seen in class), they had to identify and explain the different micro environment factors affecting it. They then gave a quick presentation to the other students about their company and its competitors, suppliers, customers, employees, media, and shareholders.

Coca Cola Christmas Adverts

In the second last session before Christmas, we spent about half an hour watching and discussing the Coca Cola Christmas adverts. The students really enjoyed working on these ads. We talked about the different elements of the adverts: the music, what we see, the Christmassy elements. We also compared the "classic" advert to the new ones.

Original Coca Cola Christmas Advert 

Christmas 2010 and 2015 versions

Motivation Pyramid Discussion

The students had to read this text and put the subheadings in the right place. The original blog post can be found here. In the following session, the students did a pyramid discussion activity. First, they had to classify the factors from most to least motivating according to their opinion. Afterwards, they worked in pairs/small groups to agree on the most/least motivating factors for the group. We then discussed this as a whole class and compared the choices of the different groups.

One Stop English Numbers Review

 We used this lesson plan in November with the STMG group to practise numbers in between doing mock baccalauréat orals. I also did this quick quiz with them to revise saying the year:

• What year was I born?
• Which year did Christopher Columbus discover America? 
• Which year did the financial crisis start? 
• Which year did France win the World Cup? 
• Which year was the French revolution? 
• Which year did man go to the moon?

What are my New Year's Resolutions?

This was a short, 10-minute or so activity, that I used to finish off my class about the New Year. The students had to guess my resolutions from the pictures and make sentences using the language in the box. If time, they then made a short list of their own resolutions for 2016.

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Questions to ask after the Christmas and New Year holidays

You could use this list of questions as a basis for a discussion with a group during the first week of term. Click here for the link to the Google Doc. 

Christmas Adverts

The lesson plan for the John Lewis advert is available here

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Dae ye ken Scots?

I did this class just before the holidays with the STMG groups, using a copy of Asterix in Scots dialect.

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Speaking: Inventions | Onestopenglish

This is a lesson plan that I used with the STMG group. Speaking: Inventions | Onestopenglish

New Year in Scotland and in France

New Year in Scotland Quiz

Quiz created by leopold.cara with GoConqr