English worksheets > contributions by bmcq
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bmcq
Barbara McQueen
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3 decades of mentoring fellow teachers one-on-one, through in-services, as an ESL teacher trainer for Oxford Seminars, and as a conference presenter for TESOL, the VWBPE, SLanguages, and MachinEVO. Currently developing and delivering immersive online ESL courses in the virtual world known as Second Life that make use of situational role-playing, games, mysteries, machinima, and special events.
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Ideas for Giving Game Instructions to Beginners
How do you get beginners to do or understand anything? You must mime and draw and emote. But most teachers, especially new teachers, talk a lot, and too often all that the students hear is a very frustrating, "Blah, blah, blah." Here�s an example of how to get very low beginners to understand the vocabulary term "game" and actually play a game--Pic...
Level: elementary
Age: 3-100
Type: article
Downloads: 23
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Grammatical Tic Tac Toe
This children�s game is one that is familiar to most students. After one quick review of the game rules, all of the class members should understand how to play. The game requires little or no preparation and can be played in those short blocks of time at the end of an hour. I�ve included detailed instructions and many variations.
Level: elementary
Age: 6-100
Type: activity-card
Downloads: 24
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Common Note-Taking Shortcuts and Practice
Students need practice taking notes. Too often they try to write down every word, they don�t use enough abbreviations, and they don�t interact to what they�re hearing while they are listening. So here is a list of many note-taking shortcuts and an efficient notetaking form, plus my notes on a practice mini-lecture I give on the differences between...
Level: intermediate
Age: 12-100
Type: activity-card
Downloads: 12
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Graphic Organizers to Help Students Summarize
Many people have trouble summarizing succinctly. Story hands and story maps can help solve this problem. I�ve included blanks of these graphic organizers that students can fill in, and I�ve also filled out one of each of the organizers for the story "The Three Little Pigs." These organizers can also be used as quick quizzes on stories that your stu...
Level: elementary
Age: 7-100
Type: reading
Downloads: 23
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Five Types of Persuasion
You can tell students to vary the types of persuasion they use in essays, but they often get in ruts or simply don�t quite understand. So I find it useful to take one topic and give them five paragraphs on it, with each paragraph representing a different type of persuasion. On this handout, I�ve done that on the topic of imposing a teen curfew.
Level: advanced
Age: 12-100
Type: article
Downloads: 32
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Definition Chart Game
An important skill that ESL students need to acquire that is related to vocabulary is the ability to define words. In fact, they need to be much better at this than native speakers of a language since ESL students will more often find themselves in a situation where they don�t know a word they need to use. If your students can explain their probl...
Level: intermediate
Age: 12-100
Type: activity-card
Downloads: 8
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Subject/Verb Agreement Checkers
Grammar meets checkers. The students can only jump opponents� checkers if there is subject/verb agreement between the pieces involved in the jump. For example, a checker with "he" on it can jump a checker with "writes" on it, but not a checker with "write" on it. Students will have to pay close attention to any s�s they see.
Level: elementary
Age: 5-100
Type: activity-card
Downloads: 25
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Intonation Practice
A handout to walk students through making recordings that help them understand how stress and emotion can change the meaning of a sentence.
Level: intermediate
Age: 10-100
Type: worksheet
Downloads: 5
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Diagramming Practice with Lines
Decades ago we diagrammed sentences to help us understand their structure. Not all students like to do this, but mathematical-logical students love it (see Gardner�s 8 types of intelligence.) Diagramming is useful to show if we have complete or incomplete sentences, whether a given word in a sentence should be an adverb or an adjective, how prepo...
Level: intermediate
Age: 12-100
Type: worksheet
Downloads: 6
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Things Found in a Pocket--Degrees of Probability Exercise
A cooperative learning task where students look at pictures of objects supposedly found in the coat pocket of an airplane passenger. The coat was left behind on the plane, and your students need to make deductions about the coat�s owner to help the airline return the coat. A chart is included for students to indicate how certain or uncertain they...
Level: intermediate
Age: 12-100
Type: article
Downloads: 13
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