Summary and Paraphrasing Writing Lesson Activities.

I have just finished a section of lessons on writing a summary and paraphrasing. Like in my autobiography writing lesson it was based around a section from the book which required me to come up with many supplementary activities. Here are some of them!

Horror Movies ESL Lesson - Perfect for Halloween.

I have just finished doing this lesson with my high level classes and they really got into it. My students didn't need to be taught much of the vocab for the movie script activity but depending on the level of your class you could add in a vocabulary teaching activity as well.

Business English Lesson - Swot Analysis

This is the second in a mini series of Business English Lessons I gave to my high level students. It is taken from my text book so I am unable to share the whole lesson, however there are many ideas and activities you could use in your own lesson. The lesson is about SWOT analysis, which is a tool that businesses use to analyse business ideas. The lesson has the students looking at a couple of examples of SWOT analysis, before making their own for different products.

Business English Lesson - Blue Ocean Strategy

My textbook has recently had a section on business English and it brought up this very interesting lesson on blue ocean strategy. This is a theory that suggests that rather than trying to beat competitors in a crowded market (a red ocean) companies should create clear uncontested blue oceans. They do this by creating demand for a new product that was not previously there.

The metaphor of red ocean/blue ocean comes from an ocean being red due to the blood of sharks fighting and competing, while the blue ocean is completely free of competition.

Autobiography Writing Lesson Ideas

 

Recently I have taught a section on writing autobiographies from my text book. Alot of the activities were textbook based, so I am unable to share them here, however alot of the activities could be used in any lesson about Autobiographies. I will aslo explain the textbook activities as it would be easy to creat your own material for most of them.


High School ESL Self Portrait Conversation Lesson

This is a fun lesson about analysing self portraits that all my students enjoyed. First you will teach them some vocabulary related to self portraits then the students will have to draw a self portrait that represents themselves. The downside is that a fair amount of time is spent drawing a self portrait of themselves, but you could either ask them to do it as homework or set a specific time limit for drawing the picture.

ESL Music Gap Fill Exercise

This is part of a lesson I have just done about reassurance. It is a simple gap fill exercise, just give each student a worksheet and ask them to fill in the gaps. McFerrin's accent is obviously very strong but his voice is clear over the music and he speaks very slowly so the student's did not have too much trouble. I have included both a worksheet and a PPT you can use if your students have whiteboards/notebooks and you want to save paper.

I also ask a bonus question which is if they notice anything unusual about the song. The answer is that it is a cappella. There are no instruments used throughout the song!