Teaching English as a Second Language, part 2: Five (More) Ready-made Lessons

The American Institute is where
I hatched most of these ideas.
A great language school!

Many of you seemed to have found my last entry on 10 lessons for Teaching English useful. Since I posted it I've thought a bit more about the army of American expats who have spread across the globe to fulfill their travel dreams, taking advantage of the global demand for native English teachers. (If you're a prospective TEFL teacher and interested in Spain, I highly recommend you check out Young Adventuress's excellent profile of the Spain auxiliares program by region, tips for preparing to go, and potential problems.) 

Digression: What with my being one of this odd breed of expat, my wife loaned me a book about one such TEFL teacher who set off to teach English in Tokyo: Tim Anderson's Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (2011). IT IS HILARIOUS! It's a wonderful read, and interesting to think about what problems the author faces which are the same in Spain, and which ones are really truly unique to teaching in Japan. It was therapeutic, too, since one's batteries can get drained trying to make classes animated when your students are, conversely, trying extra hard to be timid and not have to speak.

This is a must-read for anyone teaching
English as a second language. It is hilarious!

All of this is to say I'm still teaching English, and still getting ideas for ways to get students engaged in learning about the language _outside the classroom_. Here I'm posting a Part 2 entry where I share five more ready-made lessons that I've come up since my last post that I've found to be useful.

It doesn't hurt to review more general grammar rules with one's students.
I'm amazed at how quickly my students' grammar descends when they try to write in English,
as if the same rules they know for Spanish don't apply to foreign languages!

Before I dive into those, I have to share a couple of other resources I've learned about. First, one of the readers on my last post mentioned some interesting books that create a fake Spanglish language: "fromlostiano". "Colín" (a.k.a. Federico López Socasau) and "Güéster" (a.k.a. Ignacio Ochoa Santamaría) have written a series of humorous glossaries —From lost to the river (1995) ("de perdidos al río"), Speaking in Silver (1999) ("hablando en plata"), and Shit yourself little parrot (2003) ("cágate lorito")— that play with literal Spanish-to-English translations (or really, lost in translation) of classic, colorful Spanish expressions,  e.g. "for the face" ("por la cara"… for free, aprovechando). I'm not sure what the actual learning value is of these books would be, but they're good for getting laughs from Spaniards whose English is good, and maybe for English-speakers trying to remember common catchphrases in Spanish. (For those "tweeple" out there trying to learn Spanish, you can follow their tweets here: @fromlost; though a more useful resource on Twitter might be: @SpanishAddicts. Truly hilarious, the Spanish vocab they tweet!)

I guarantee you that if you just read these titles to your Spanish friend or partner,
you will hear them snicker. My wife, who had never heard of these books, couldn't
help laughing with each "fromlostiano" phrase that I read to her. Good stuff!

The second resource is local. A new shop opened up in Valencia, Rana Books, which I highly recommend to anyone in Valencia or who passes through who is interested in getting English-language books or learning materials. They have a fantastic collection, and they do workshops and special events that are great for Valencian parents who want their kids to get into learning English.

I finally got to visit Rana Books when a friend and co-worker did her book-release
party there. Here you can see my colleague, Dana Gynther, talking about her
new novel, Crossing on the Paris (2012), which was just published this past fall.
Look at what talented people work at the American Institute in Valencia!
Get a copy of her book and read it!

So now the lessons...

***Lesson 11: We Are Family – Family vocab and description practice***

This year I'm teaching a lower level class, and I've found it necessary to come up with some more rudimentary-English teaching tools, for example, a handout to get students reviewing and building their vocabulary for family. To do this I decided to use one of the most famous families, the Simpsons. On the handout below you'll see a Simpsons family tree with some model questions to get students reviewing basic relation vocabulary. On the other side, for contrast and to review more complicated family vocabulary, I put both a picture of the Simpsons family and another of the family from the TV show, Modern Family. The latter provides an opportunity to talk about extended family; but also about non-traditional family: gay marriage (my two dads), adopted children, step-children, first wife, second wife, etc.

Click here to load a PDF I made for reviewing family vocabulary.

Here's how I use the handout. Start with the questions on the handout: this gets them thinking about different sentence constructions to ask about relationships (i.e. practice using the genitive, a.k.a. apostrophe "s"): "He's ___'s sister". After going through the Simpsons family tree a bit, I then have the students brainstorm more relations they know: cousins, aunts/uncles, and so forth. Here I make a chart on the board: with prefixes on the left (grand-, great grand-, step, half-); roots in the middle (sister, mother/mom); and suffixes on the right (-in-law; -once-removed). I also talk about examples of neutral plural: siblings/parents (for brothers/sisters and mother/father). Or other less common relations: (fraternal/identical) twins; first/second cousin; "the in-laws". (I test their comprehension by asking: what's the difference between your stepbrother and half-brother; your mother-in-law and your stepmother; or your stepson and adopted son?)

This was my board by the end of the brainstorm and diagramming of
family relations. Confessions: I have horrible handwriting!
Clarifications: "bald eagle" is on the board because I was trying
to make the link between "Homer is bald" and America's national emblem.

At this point, I have students look at the other side with the two pictures of the "Nuclear family" and the "Extended family". Here I ask student to describe someone in the photo: physical description ("Homer is bald"), personality ("Lisa is smart"), what they are doing ("watching TV"), and link it to explaining their relation to the rest of the family. While this lesson is particularly important for beginning and intermediate students, it didn't hurt when I did it with my advanced students, since describing the "Modern family", with all of their unconventional relations and personalities, was actually quite a challenge!

While some of my students knew this show, Modern Family was far from the
 universally familiar Simpsons. So you might have to explain who is who,
which is why I include a family tree chart underneath this picture.

***Lesson 12: Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator – Personality vocab***

Robert Benchley had it right when he said:
"There are two kinds of people in the world:
those who divide the world into two kinds
of people, and those who don't."

Probably after family, the most useful, complicated, and rich source of vocabulary is for describing personalities... This fall when I had to cover this with my advanced class I thought it might be fun to discuss the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator test. If you don't know it, you probably use some of its language anyway, Extroverted versus Introverted, for example. The Myers-Briggs is a great teaching tool because of the richness and diversity of personalities it describes, and because getting students to try to determine their own personality type is very interactive: it gets students to talk about themselves, and laughing about personality words that are close in meaning (which ones are positive, negative or neutral; which ones mean the person is the source of a sentiment (loving) versus the recipient (lovable or loved); etc.).

To prepare the class for this exercise, I ask them about following hypothetical scenario: You are the boss of a company and it is just before Christmas. You know that you have to layoff/fire some of your employees and you have to choose one of two options:

1) fire them before Xmas but give them a Xmas bonus, or
2) fire them after Xmas such that they continue to be paid over the holiday.

With four categories and two options each, there are
sixteen combinations of personality types in this test.

The question is, what is best from point of view of employee? The idea is that, financially, employees will end up the same, have the same money and same work days, but that in the first scenario they will know during the holidays that they are unemployed, whereas in the second they won't know until after. The point is, do your students think that "ignorance is bliss", that the emotional suffering during the holidays is worse than the potential for financial mismanagement that comes from ignorance (employees spending on Xmas gifts unaware of their imminent financial troubles)? This is an example of a question from the Thinking/Feeling category of the Myers-Briggs test. There is no "correct" answer, and arguments can be made for either side. When you poll your students, don't let them think to much; try to get a "gut answer" from them. And then have them discuss it. Once they've talked a bit about that kind of personality difference, have them consider the others of the exam (Sensing/Intuiting and Judging/Perceiving):

Click here to load a PDF I made of the Myers-Briggs personality type vocab.

Ask students what combination of the four categories do they think they would be, and then turn to the last two pages of the handout to discuss that type, and whether the description fits them. The descriptions have lots of personality vocabulary, so there is lots of opportunity to explain new words, and brainstorm synonyms. To encourage students to practice this vocabulary at home, tell them to find out what their "type" is by taking the test online at a site like this one: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm.

Remember: The Myers-Briggs test is intended to be used therapeutically, to help people be aware of their natural biases and world views. There is no "correct" or true answer or "best" personality type, just differences that reveal how we think and reason, and what that says about our motivations and personalities.

Of course, the ultimate reference on personality types, in my opinion,
continues to be "Mr. Men", cute and educational!

***Lesson 13: Thanksgiving – Holiday vocabulary, cross-cultural conversation***

As much as they denied it, I swear my students must have
seen at least one movie, like Miracle on 34th Street (1947),
or a Friends or Seinfeld episode that features the parade.

In my last teaching English post, I had a lesson for Christmas holiday vocabulary because, let's face it, Christmas is great! This year I decided to work up some lessons on the United States' other most important holiday: Thanksgiving ("Acción de gracias"). Given how important, maybe even central, this holiday is to Americans, Spaniards can be quite ignorant about it. As a proud American, I could not accept that my students learn English (at a language school called "the American Institute") without having a basic understanding of what Thanksgiving was about, in history and today.

Thanksgiving has a lot of cultural elements to it, any of which you can use for discussion. Being a historian, I like to talk about the differences between the history and the myth-making surrounding the holiday. There is a lot of food vocabulary. There are also fun and funny cultural practices today: the Macy's Parade in NYC with the floats (I'm always shocked by how few Spaniards know anything about this); the holiday is an important movie-watching and/or football watching day (rivalry match-ups that I describe as like "el clásico" of American football); and the presidential pardon of one turkey on the Wednesday before, among other traditions. 

I worked up three handouts for three different levels:

      • Thanksgiving for Advanced (adult) learners:

This has a nice summary of the history and traditions of Thanksgiving with a lot of advanced vocabulary. It also includes a copy of the poem, "Over the River and Through the Wood" [that's right, not "woods"! I had an elementary music teacher who used to always hammer home that when she had us sing the song], which by tradition was a Thanksgiving poem and song:

      Click here to load a PDF I made for an advanced discussion of Thanksgiving.

      • Thanksgiving for (Pre-)Intermediate (adult) learners:
This has a fill-in-the-blank listening exercise which I got from the website, ESL Holiday Lessons:

      Click here to load a PDF I made for an intermediate discussion of Thanksgiving.

Have students fill in the blanks as they listen to this recording:

      Download this audio clip or click this link while in class, to play for your students.

      • Thanksgiving for Kids

I composed this kids' activity from this "The First Thanksgiving Book" activity and from activities on the ESOL Courses page for Thanksgiving. (An additional, optional activity is to print out the lyrics to "Over the River and Through the Woods", and sing along to it with your students.):

      Click here to load a PDF I made for discussing Thanksgiving with kids.

Thanksgiving also marks the beginning of Xmas holiday season, which means you can talk about holiday shopping and the tension between materialism and spiritual ideas about the holidays. (This year's Thanksgiving was a particularly juicy topic, what with the Black Friday controversy. Thanksgiving is also an opportunity to bring up cultural differences: for example, that Americans rarely have an extended (three-hour) meal with the family, in comparison to Spaniards, who in many cases do it every weekend. (The fourth week of November is an important week of recipe swapping in the States, too, which is why it is a good time to discuss cooking vocabulary. In my next post on English, I'm going to include a handout on cooking vocabulary, which you might use.)

In addition to the non-Pilgrim-related traditions, I try to get across to my students
all the humor and playfulness that surrounds this uniquely American holiday.

***Lesson 14: The Oscars – Film vocabulary and passive voice***

I worked hard to have this lesson ready for early February because it's Oscars season!!! The Oscars, in my household, are a serious pastime, analogous to one's annual Super Bowl or el clásico. We try to watch as many nominated films as possible, and, yes, we do stay up here in Spain to watch them live. And one of our traditions it to guess which films will win which awards. So we each print out a ballot, make our bets as to who we think will (or ought to) win, and make a sport of it.

Perhaps for this reason, and because many of students expressed an interest in movies, and, well, also because film can be a useful topic for introducing certain issues (the passive voice, for example), this year I worked up a vocabulary handout with a lot of possible activities for you to do with your students on the topic of movies:

Click here to load a PDF I made of movie vocab plus the 2013 Oscars ballot.

For any of you readers who teach English in Spain, I highly recommend you do this lesson in mid February, in the weeks before the Goya Awards (February 17, 2013), Spain's main movie awards, and the Oscars, a.k.a. the Academy Awards (February 24, 2013). That way it's award season when you do the activities, and then you can have your students score their ballots and see how they did the following week. Nothing like a friendly wager to make an otherwise dull awards ceremony interesting. Oscars! Who will win this year? Exciting!

***Lesson 15: English-language songs – Narration and slang vocabulary***

There is no easier and better ready-made lesson plan for language learning than to have your students listen to a carefully selected popular song and discuss the lyrics with them. Songs are a great way to: 1) introduce a lot of vernacular and slang vocabulary (we sing more like we speak, day-to-day), and 2) get them thinking about narration and how verb tenses are used to construct a story. 

I can't, like, emphasize too much how, like, totally
important slang is for communication.

I cannot underscore the importance of teaching vernacular, and the value of using songs. Thanks to the exportation of American rock & roll, apparently African American vernacular (slang such as: "ain't never gonna" or saying "cuz" for "because") has even been picked up by rock singers in Great Britain. (Yes, British rock singers do sound American. Ha!) If you're students don't learn to recognize and understand "wanna" (want to), "gonna" (going to), or "I'da" (I would have), then they'll never be able to understand actual speakers of English, rather than just erudite English professors. Getting your students to listen to Motown hits by Aretha Franklin will quickly fill that gap. 

The same could be said of "Valleyspeak", the dialect of "Valley Girls", who use of "like" has become so common among teenagers that you'll here it across all demographics in the U.S. and even, increasingly, in the UK. (The Spanish equivalent, I'm told, is the discursive "o sea".)... Not to mention other Valleyspeak expression such as "for sure", "I know, right?", "whatever" to "whatevs", and a distinctive "uptalk" intonation. One good Lana del Rey hit (like "Blue jeans" maybe), and your students will see how . As this article explains, socioeconomic dialects are proliferating, not disappearing in our media-saturated age. Songs are a good way to pick up widely-used slang and common cultural references. (Teacher: you must be their guide to which are more common than others, or what registers and cultural valences these expressions fit in.)

In addition to colorful expressions, the key is to find a song that tells a story and doesn't just repeat a chorus. (Unfortunately, this eliminates most Beatles songs.) And which introduces some topic (with relevant vocabulary) which you can use for conversation, or which illustrates some difficult kind of grammatical structure. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of some songs that I've use to teach with, and why I chose them: 

• Narrative arc... 

1) We Are the Champions, by Queen – from present perfect to present/future [Spaniards love this song, and yet often haven't paid attention to the lyrics]

2) My Way, by Frank Sinatra – from past to present to future

3) White Flag, by Dido – future predictions ("I will go down with this ship")

• Specific grammatical constructions...

4) You Can Get It (If You Really Want), by Jimmy Cliff – modal verbs of possibility

5) Top of the World, by the Dixie Chicks – conditional to express regret ("I wished I'd a")

• Specific vocabulary...

6) Say a Little Prayer, by Aretha Franklin – getting ready in the morning action verbs
7) We Are Family, by Sister Sledge – family vocabulary, you can pair this with the exercise above!

* Doesn't hurt to make sure they've memorized the "Alphabet song", so that they can recall their ABCs!

The songs on this album by Lana del Rey are "chock full" of great one-liners
and classic code-switching references to Valleyspeak. My friend Chic Soufflé
wrote an entry (in Spanish) about it, with links to some of the more popular songs. 

Once you've picked the song, simply download the lyrics, remove some choice words or phrases, and have the students listen to it once to fill in the blanks. Then check with them what they got right/wrong, discuss the song, ask questions about what the song says/argues, discuss metaphors, phrasal verbs or idiomatic expressions used in it ("keep on fighting"), and then listen to the song again. (Though this time tell them to just listen, and not look at the lyrics.) Ideally, you should provide them a link to someplace online where they can listen to the song at home, so that they can do it on their own. 

Eh voilà! Instant 15-minute lesson, much more likely to teach them English-as-it-is-used than some dreary language book. Encourage them to take this practice home with them, to find songs that they like in English and practice studying the lyrics and their meaning. One of my students mentioned an incredible online tool to me when we did the Dictation exercise I developed last year (which I must boast is a _very_ popular exercise with my students): http://www.lyricstraining.com/. The site provides fill-in-the-blank lyrics which you type in as you listen to the song, and it adjusts for different language-levels. It is a great listening tool, and fun, too!

– – – I plan to continue this discussion of English-learning tools 
I've developed later in the academic year, in a Part 3 post of 
"Five More Ready-Made Lessons". Until then, I refer you back 
to my previous TEFL entry for further TEFl links and references – – –

Teaching English as a Second Language: Ten Ready-Made Lessons

I can't remember what blogger or expat friend of mine said it, but I once heard someone claim that nearly every English speaker who passes through Spain will eventually, at some point or another end up teaching English for a living here. Such was the case for me this last year, when I landed a (great) job at a private institute in Valencia teaching mostly adults (though some kids and teenagers) at the intermediate (i.e. Preliminary English Test, or PET) and advanced (First Certificate, or FCE) level.

I've noticed that many of you expat bloggers and readers out there who are interested in Spain are also English teachers or "auxiliares de conversación" (whether you're "ESL" versus "ESOL" depends on if you're from the U.S. or Britain, but we're all really "TEFL" if doing it in Spain). So I thought I'd share with you here some of the ideas I've had for English lessons. (NOTE: these lessons were designed to aid Spanish speakers from Spain, and some are specifically tailored to them.) While I'm no expert on language acquisition, I spent a fair amount of time making these language tools and I think they work for helping students explore different aspects of the language —be it cultural, grammatical, or whatnot— and, just as importantly, provide a tool for the teacher to escape from the tyranny of the textbook.

If you are curious, these are the two textbooks I used most heavily. They were both pretty good.
The New English File Intermediate was better for explaining the grammar in a simple,
schematic way, and had nice cultural activities, while the First Certificate Masterclass
was better for test-preparation (for the format of the test) and had excellent applied grammar
exercises, especially for phrasal verbs and collocations.

Digression: A funny story about how my wife and I met, and national differences in language learning... My wife and I met in French class in England. (Yes, long story!) On the first day of class, the poor French teacher asked the class, "How many of you know what a noun is?", and most everyone raised their hands. Then he asked, "How many of you know what a verb is?" Amazingly, some Brits didn't raise their hand. Then he asked, "adverbs?" I kept my hand up (barely), but other Americans didn't. And finally, "Participles?", to which my hand dropped, but my wife and other continental Europeans continued to raise their hands... But they now looked at us doofus Anglophones wondering, what planet did we come from that we didn't even know our basic grammar? 

What I learned from this, and from teaching English to Spaniards this past year, is that continental Europeans learn language in a way that is very different from most English-speaking countries. Whereas we use the immersion method for our own language, and thus (ironically) only learn grammar when learning foreign languages, Europeans tend to still learn structured grammar in their own languages, such as sentence-diagramming, verb conjugations, and identifying sentence elements like adverbs or independent clauses. In other words, many of my students understood the grammar-grammar of English better than me, but often without understanding how to actually use it well.

Me want speak English good!

*** Lesson 1: Tongue Twisters ("trabalenguas") to practice pronunciation ***

Pronunciation is often a key challenge for EFL students, but I personally find the pronunciation listen-and-repeat exercises in language books to be quite boring. One day I got the idea to use tongue twisters, which are not only fun and culturally significant (natives are always happy to perform them for you on the spot), but often highlight a particular pronunciation challenge quite effectively. I compiled this list of what I saw as either the most classic of tongue-twisters, or the coolest that I could find online:

Click here to load a PDF I made with tongue twisters.

To make this lesson more than just repeat-after-me, I recommend you look at the links at the bottom of the PDF, which offer great ideas for more interactive tongue-twister lessons. I found that the "disappearing tongue twister" exercise, using "She sells seashells by the seashore" on the chalkboard, was an excellent exercise for Spanish speakers to practice. And for adult learners who would like to take the pronunciation practice home, I highly recommend the website Forvo.com, which hosts audio pronunciations recorded by native speakers for words in many different languages and dialects.

*** Lesson 2: "The History of English in Ten Minutes" and fun proverbs ***

I ran across this excellent video series by the Open University, which in ten chapters, each one-minute long, manages to provide a pretty good summary of the evolution of the English language, many of the most important internal and external influences reshaping it, as well as the origin of many words and popular phrases and proverbs... all in just ten minutes! To give you an idea of which trends it describes, the chapters in the series are: 1) Anglo-Saxon, 2) The Norman-Conquest, 3) Shakespeare, 4) The King James Bible, 5) The English of Science, 6) English and Empire, 7) The Age of the Dictionary, 8) American English, 9) Internet English, and 10) Global English.

"Chapter 1: Anglo-Saxon or, whatever happened to the Jutes?"

"The History of English in Ten Minutes" is an excellent teaching tool, though it moves too quickly for most non-native speakers to be used unaided. I recommend you show it in class, but be prepared to pause the video to discuss specific phrases and proverbs that it describes, and to add your own embellishments. What with my being a trained historian, I used it to talk a bit more about the history of the English language, to encourage them to think about the language as a product of a history and culture that is constantly changing.

For my advanced students, I brought a Dictionary of English/Spanish Proverbs, and asked them to name some proverbs in Spanish for which I tried to give them the English equivalent. (The video on Shakespeare is "chock full" of wonderful phrases and proverbs coined or canonized by the famous bard.) Even if this proves to be too difficult a translation challenge for you or the students, it gets them speaking about colorful sayings in their own culture and thus trying to articulate subtle meanings. And it is also incredibly fun!

*** Lesson 3: Dictation exercises to practice listening comprehension and spelling ***

I sorely underestimated the value of doing dictations in my classes, and only really tried them towards the end of the year when many of my students began to worry about the listening comprehension portion of the Cambridge Exams. I found some excellent guides to giving dictations, many of which were online and I realized (almost too late for my students) would make excellent self-guided educational tools for them outside of class:

Click here to load a PDF I made with dictation exercises.

In this handout, I tried several different kinds of dictation exercises. I read excerpts from classic novels (which www.dictationsonline.com has wonderfully classified by levels to match the Cambridge Exam system). I read sentences with the "-ough" root, to illustrate how the same spelling can change dramatically in pronunciation for different words. And I found a wonderful online exercise playing with homophones (words that sound the same, but are spelled differently), which was fun for how it tested my students' ability to recognize different spellings, but also introduced them to new and unusual words. Lesson learned. These dictations are activities I will now do from the start next year and will return to regularly.

*** Lesson 4: Christmas special... holiday vocabulary and pop culture ***

For holiday fun and classic cultural iconography,
I recommend students watch the 1964 stop-motion
animation short, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Chic Soufflé wrote a nice entry in Spanish about it.

I'm a big believer that the only real way people will learn a foreign language is by learning about the culture, partly because language reflects culture and some things really are lost in (literal) translation, and partly because I think students have to be motivated, even passionate, to really learn a language well, and so it helps if you can link the language acquisition to their pre-existing personal interests, hobbies or passions. 

Oh, and I love Christmas! I think Christmas (a.k.a. Xmas, a.k.a. "Navidad") is slightly different in Spain than in the United States. So naturally for the last class before the December holiday break I decided to give my students a cultural lesson on classic English-language (mostly American) Christmas songs, poems and other traditions, which introduces them to a lot of new holiday-related vocabulary. A particularly good one which many Spaniards don't know about is the poem, "Twas the Night Before Christmas," which has lots of new vocabulary ("dash away", "snug", "clatter") and is fun to read together with the class. Few of them know about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, so I also included the song lyrics for them:

Click here to load a PDF I made for Christmas.

There are a lot of opportunities for constructive digression with this lesson... you can talk about cultural differences in holiday traditions (the Spanish "belén", "El Gordo" lottery or the Three Kings, versus Santa in the Macy's parade), winter/snow-related vocabulary, or Xmas pop-culture that they might not know about. (I try to bring in a lot of less conventional songs, like "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" by Elmo & Patsy or "Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt, to play for them, since I've noticed that in Spain Christmas music tends to be more traditional and less diverse than in the United States.)

*** Lesson 5: The Amazing Verb "To Get"... or how phrasal verbs are key in English***

This handout started with a conversation with one of the other teachers at my language institute. He and I were talking at the end of the day about how interesting it was to re-learn English by teaching it to non-native speakers, and he said, "Like the verb, to get. I mean, I love it! Have you thought about all the different ways we use that verb in English?" We started riffing on that theme, and then to wrap up I joked, "Do you get me?" to which he replied, "Get out of here!" That night I talked about it with my wife, and the next morning I sat down and started to make a list. Many hours later, and consulting a few grammar books to construct a loose, informal but helpful categorization, the result was this 4-page handout of examples:

Click here to load a PDF I made on "The Amazing Verb 'To Get'".

I suspect this list is still not comprehensive, and I could have done a more serious job at formalizing it with grammar concepts... but you can have fun with your class for easily an hour just talking about all these different usages and tying it in to larger points about phrasal verbs, how they work (are they "separable", "transitive", or not?) and examples of slang formed from common ones.

 - - - - - INTERLUDE - - - - -

For a laugh, I highly recommend watching this skit by Gomaespuma on "Clases de inglis",

wonderful English-Spanish puns and erroneous explanations of 

how English works according to a Spanish teacher.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - -

*** Lesson 6: Baseball Language, sports language and fun cultural sayings ***

So to give this lesson you kind of need to understand the game of baseball. And it might make more sense to teach it if you are an American. (Any Brits out there want to work up a similar lesson using cricket?) But the fact is that for American English there are a _ton_ of phrases used which come from baseball or sports in general, and for which it helps to have a basic understanding of the game. And I myself love baseball, so one day I decided to teach my students how it works, and then tie it to commonly heard expressions like "be on the ball" or "you hit it out of the park":

Click here to load a PDF I made on baseball and baseball sayings.

Now as you will see, this lesson is currently targeted to adults. Because the best part of it is when you arrive to the section about "getting to 1st base" or "going all the way". Needless to say, there is nothing more fun than talking indirectly about sex in foreign language classes. So this classic American euphemism, which they are likely to have heard in American movies, can be an interesting launch point into other common sexual innuendoes. (But, of course, if you want to adapt this for younger audiences, I suggest you remove those expressions from the handout and skip explaining them!)

And for advanced students you can take the baseball discussion to another level by introducing them to the classic poem, "Casey at the bat", published by Ernest Lawrence Thayer in 1888. Baseball is rightfully called "America's national pastime", not because it's the most watched sport (today American football or basketball probably trump it), but because it's part of our national DNA, so to speak. Thayer's poem is a classic because of how it takes the baseball-game quintessential moment of tension, "the bottom of the ninth, two outs and three runners on base", and transforms it into a broader cultural metaphor about hubris, human struggle, and defeat. Reading the poem to your class will not only introduce new vocabulary but will also teach them a classic American literary text.

Disney adapted the poem to this equally or even more famous 

cartoon version, Casey at the Bat, released in 1946.

*** Lesson 7: Latin and Greek expressions used in English ***

This lesson still needs some work. At the moment, this is just a list of commonly used Latin (and some Greek) phrases that appear in English. It was prompted by my observation that it is more common in English than Spanish to leave certain ancient, fixed expressions in the original Latin rather than translate them to the native language. (This is probably because Spanish and Latin resemble each other, so translating to Spanish doesn't alter the expression much.) The reasons for why these phrases appear in English are manifold, ranging from the entry of legal language ("alibi", "addendum", and "de facto") or scientific language (psychoanalysis: "alter ego") into pop culture to the popularity of "Greek culture" in America, by which I don't mean Greek Americans, but rather fraternities and sororities ("going Greek"?: "alma mater", "alumnus"). But the result is that one encounters a lot of Latin in English, though pronounced differently and sometimes used in a way that is not a linear translation of the phrase:

Click here to load a PDF handout listing common Latin phrases or expressions in English.

Your Spanish students will recognize many of these phrases, but it is still useful to cover them for a variety of reasons: 1) they will not know which expressions English-speakers tend to say in the original Latin, and which we translate, 2) they will probably have seen, and been confused by many of the commonly used abbreviations (for example, "e.g.", "AM" and "PM", "etc.", "P.S."), and 3) they will want to know how you, a native-speaker, pronounce them, which is not the way they might have said it. Also, many of these expressions have cultural nuances in how they appear in popular usage, which you can elaborate on.

It's funny. In English we say "It's Greek to me" when we mean, "I can't understand it at all."
But in Spanish they say, "Me suena a chino" ("It sounds like Chinese to me").
Apparently, every language culture has it's own idea of what a cryptic language
would be, a subject which this blogger wrote up a nice entry about here.

Ideally, you could combine a discussion of these phrases with a discussion about the Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes that populate the English language. For example, "pre" and "ante" mean before, such as "prequel" whereas "post" and "seq" mean after, such as "sequel". (I have to express a debt of gratitude to my 9th Grade English teacher for this inspired idea, which is his... He really "blew our minds" with this lesson way back then!) Eventually I'll add that to this lesson plan, but for now I direct you to these webpages for a list of examples: Wikipedia's entries on "Latin words with English derivatives" and "Greek words with English derivatives".

It's all relative: Here's a flow chart posted by a UPenn language blog,
which shows the flow of "It's [as confusing as] language X to me" for different languages.
Notice how nobody considers English to be incomprehensible.

*** Lesson 8: "To Be" Versus "To Get", applied grammar ***

This lesson is specifically targeted to Spanish speakers learning English, or English speakers learning Spanish, and centers on the structural differences in the two languages in how they attempt to distinguish between provisional, superficial descriptive statements and deeper more permanent statements using the verbs "To Be" and "To Get", in English, and Ser/Estar and Ponerse in Spanish. I attempt with this handout to systematically explain and explore the parallels between Ser/Estar and Be+past participle (p.p.)/gerund. And then move this discussion on to a parallel structure, where "To Get" works with p.p. and gerunds for descriptors much the way "To Be" does, except it means "to become", much the way Ponerse, Volverse (and similar reflexive verbs) do in Spanish:


Click here to load a PDF handout explaining differences between verbs To Be and To Get.

This was what the board looked like after I taught this topic of "-ed"/"-ing" adjectives
used with "to be" and "to get". I brainstormed some opinion/emotion verbs that use it,
and had students practices talking about things they find annoying, upsetting, or disturbing.

("Oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed!") I don't know how well this grammar lesson translates to paper, so please let me know if you are still confused by what I'm saying here. I wish I was better at sketching, because then I could draw for you the stick figures I draw for my students on the chalkboard, to illustrate some of the comparisons I'm making. Maybe one day, if I get inspired and organized, I can work up a video explanation of it, since mastering these verbs is foundational to speaking both languages well.

The Pre-Existing Conditional tense in America:
This cartoon is just excellent on so many levels... A laugh for any of you who
have ever taught the conditional tense to a non-native speaker.
And (tragically) a laugh for any of you Americans who have ever tried to
explain to all others the U.S.'s non-universal, private healthcare and insurance system.

*** Lesson 9: "English Pronunciation" Poem by G. Nolst Trenité***

I ran across this wonderful poem during the course of the year, and decided to torture read it to my students. It is a great poetic critique of the English language's idiosyncratic tendency to butcher complicate the relationship between pronunciation and orthography. I would hope that students found the poem entertaining, and enjoy learning some new vocabulary and pronunciations. But I suspect it will also frighten them a bit:

Click here to load a PDF handout for the "English Pronunciation" poem by Trenité.

Of course, it is also just darn fun to attempt to read out loud. I bet you will, despite your best native-speaker effort, manage to mispronounce at least one or two words. Which is why you can direct your students to this video of a British speaker reading it, for them to practice listening to it...

*** Lesson 10 (for kids ages 5 to 10): "In the Jungle" ***

So this final lesson is a quick activity I threw together one day "to mix things up" a bit with a 9-year-old kid I was giving private tutorials to. He was a sweet kid, and though probably a bit old for the lesson, he ended up really enjoying it. It was a short vocabulary exercise on the Jungle. Kids love this s**t stuff, and chances are yours will already know most of the animals' names in English. But you can use this as a springboard to discuss other animals, or talk about plants versus animals, or whatever.


Click here to load a PDF handout on Jungle vocab and "Lion Sleeps Tonight" lyrics.

After discussing the vocabulary, my student especially enjoyed singing along with me to the classic song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," whose lyrics I included on the handout. He loved the video version which I've posted below with a singing hippo. After we watched it together, I had him sing the lyrics, and I sang the "wimoweh" accompaniment. It was good fun. He was requesting the song for weeks afterwards. Whether it was the most instructive lesson is hard to say, but at this age I think the main challenge is making English-acquisition exciting and fun, and it was hard to top this song for that. (I'd place it up there with the "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" for a younger age-group.)

Spanish kids may recognize this song, but have probably never had the chance to sing-along to it.

And that's it for activities I developed this past year. (Addendum: However, the following year I developed 5 More Ready-made Lessons which you can find at this post here, and a "part 3" post with 5 more lessons.) If I come up with new ones I'll be sure to post more in a later entry. I very much welcome any and all TEFL readers to post their feedback on these lessons, or descriptions or links to their own tricks-of-the-trade or lesson ideas. The best teaching is done in an open community of collaboration and criticism, so consider this an open call for that!

I should close by making a plug for my language institute employer:
the American Institute in Valencia is one of the oldest in town.
It has great teachers and offers great rates!

_____________ADDENDUM: FURTHER TEFL RESOURCES_____________

In the spirit of reducing redundancy and the work of new TEFL recruits (why reinvent the wheel?), here I'll add and periodically update a list of web resources that I (or others) have found useful in teaching English to foreigners and specifically to Spaniards. They are listed in no particular order. [A special thanks to Spanish Sabores for this section, since I got many of these initial ideas from her series of posts on "Language Assistants", and in particular her post on "11 Best TEFL Resources"! There is also her 2013 updated and very thorough compilation of links, "Required Reading for Future English Teachers in Spain".]

• BBC Learn English – Recommended by Spanish Sabores as "the best", I have to agree that it is a very solid resource for all levels and ages, and very professional.

• The Internet TESL Journal – Again, I only discovered this now-dormant website recently through Spanish Sabores, but wow! With 15 years of posts from many different people, it is full of ideas and useful suggestions for lesson plans, techniques and games of use to the English teacher.

• Oral English Activities [found by Spanish Sabores] – As a native-speaker, getting students to practice speaking is your number one job here in Spain, so this site and its many ideas for speaking exercises is really great.

• Dictations Online – The name says it all. This is a great stop for getting dictations to use in class.

• ESL Base [finder: Spanish Sabores] – Another great all-around resource for teaching English, complete with useful worksheets to print out and use with your students.

• America's Library – This Library of Congress website, designed for American students, is a perfectly good resource to use for your Spanish students when talking about U.S. history or culture.

• To Learn English – Very obnoxious web format and images, but this site has some really nice interactive exercises, such as the homophone one I mentioned above in dictations, or a Pride and Prejudice video with fill-in-the-blanks exercise that is nice.

• British Council's Teaching English – This is up there with the BBC site for solid, professional web resources for teaching English.
• Common Errors in English Usage – Frankly, this is a list of typical mistakes that even native English-speakers make, but I think it can be useful to pass along to your EFL students. The list is from a book by Paul Brians, Common Errors in English Usage (2008)... and it lists some more online resources for ESL:
          – Curricular Resources for English as a Second Language
          – ESL Online Help Desk Washington State University 

Music: "D'un temps, d'un pais" by Raimon... La Nova Cançó, music for a cultural revolution

"Los libros son nuestras armas" (Books are our weapons).
Brilliant counter march on Tuesday, February 21st,
following Lluís Vives incident on Monday

Here I've been posting about how wonderful Valencia is, and meanwhile things have gotten ugly here in local politics. There has been an escalation in confrontations between a group of student protestors, mostly from Lluís Vives, a secondary school located in Valencia's center, and horribly incompetent riot police. The high school students have joined their teachers in protesting the "recortes" (budget cuts) in public education. Here in Valencia this has been a particularly bitter affair, given that the PP regional government has repeatedly implicated itself in a number of corruption scandals involving the embezzlement of public funds or the extravagant use of public money on frivolous and elite spectacle events instead of public infrastructure and services. This past Monday things turned violent. The police manhandled and then beat some of the students during a protest, and apparently also in the process beat teachers, parents, and onlookers nearby. Shedding light on how out of touch the police are, video of the police chief shows him talking about the students as "el enemigo" (the enemy). Everyone is quite naturally worked up about it, and some have taken to sensationally likening this "Valencian Spring" to the Arab Spring. (To follow these "Primavera Valenciana" events more closely, go to this story-feed page.)

I remind you that, "La corrupcion, como la paella en ningun sitio, se hace como en Valencia."
("Corruption, like paella, in no place do they make it like in Valencia.")

A whole series of suspicious and disturbing things have surrounded all these events. For example, on Monday evening, if one were to tune in to one's Catalan-language news, one would have seen two _very_ different stories on Canal Nou, the Valencian-run TV station, versus on TV3, the Catalonia-run channel, about the events at Lluís Vives. TV3 showed the images of the police beating teenagers in clear disproportion to the protesters' actions. Canal Nou, in what was clear ideological bias in favor of the local government, showed no video of the violence, just the protest, and then mostly showed video of various government officials talking about the incident with their predictable spin of "protesters shouldn't recur to violence". This form of media distortion on Canal Nou is no real surprise. The channel has been manipulated by the PP government for years. But it is sad that it would carry to the extent of attacking an idealistic and active youth in the self-interest of protecting a jaded and decaying political class. 

You can see a slideshow of powerful images of the police attacks on protesters at Public.es

Yet, let's not disparage the actual workers at Canal Nou, who Tuesday held their own protest about the station's media manipulation of Monday events, complaining that the Canal Nou's directors changed the story: "Se ha criminalizado a los jóvenes presentando a los policías como víctimas" (It has [falsely] criminalized the youth [while] presenting the police as victims). All of this stinks of the usual Valencian PP paranoia and persecution complex reaction to any legitimate criticism and popular complaint. (While I love most everything about Valencia, I find the politics here —PP and PSOE alike— to be one of the city's few shortcomings.) One wonders what economic miracles the PP government here could produce were they to invest this energy they waste on pageantry and the _show_ of success on the actual foundations of success in a modern society: education. (If only the PP would apply some of its neoliberal reforms to the political class, and make it easier to fire incompetent political leaders.) Kudos to the Canal Nou employees, as it now (as of Wednesday) appears that that Channel is taking the protests seriously. Score one for 'speaking truth to power'.

Canal Nou's webpage on Wednesday, February 22nd, the day after the station's workers
protested the directors' manipulation of the news coverage of the Lluís Vives students

It wasn't just students. Parents and teachers, enraged at the
police's treatment of students, also got involved

As it turns out, I first learned of the Monday protest because one of my co-workers had a teenage daughter who was involved in the protest and whose leg was badly scraped Monday as she was dragged on the street by some of the police. Needless to say, she was worried about her daughter, but also furious at the police and eager to see all of this bring about some kind of change in the local Valencian government's handling of public protest and complains about the "recortes". In our brief conversation about it, she and I were talking about the need for student protestors to keep positive, despite this infuriating turn of events. Keep positive as both a tactic, to shame the government, and also as a legitimate source of their youthful strength and social authority, since they are the future of the country and any government would be foolish to ignore them or dismiss them (as the current government seems to currently be doing). 

For a wonderfully playful, if also a bit depressing video montage and critique of this Valencia problem, 

I highly recommend you watch this music video, which uses a song written a while ago by Jaume Sisa, 

"Qualsevol nit pot sortir el sol" (transl. from Catalan: Any night the sun might come out), and foregrounds 

images of the many ways that Valencia's government squandered its wealth on special events 

rather than on basic public institutions. (It certainly provides a contrasting perspective on many of the
spectacular tourist highlights I've been showing of Valencia's capital.)

Forgive me for what may seem like a total change of subject, but as it happens I've been listening a lot recently to a Catalan-language song which I think really nicely encapsulates these issues of reform, hope, but also social critique. "D'un temps" by Raimon was, in its day, music for a cultural revolution, and I think it's worth taking a look at it here both for its importance to Catalan-language culture, as an example of La Nova Cançó, and as a timeless message for advocating change and reform without falling into bitterness about the seemingly intractable nature of political corruption and the indifference of power to real justice. (Without, in other words, ceding the debate to the powers that be, who would want us to get frustrated and give up our complaints.) 

Here I've embedded a copy of the song for you to listen to, and below you will find the lyrics:

I had been listening to some songs by Raimon, Ramon Pelegro Sanchis, and others of La Nova Cançó movement, as part of my usual language-acquisition trick: listen to music in a language, in this case Catalan, as a way to get a twofer, new language phrases _and_ cultural insight. This song in particular really got me. Raimon wrote "D'un temps, d'un pais" way back in 1964, and I like if for how it is at one and the same time incredibly critical but also incredibly empowering and forward-looking. It jibes with a line I read from Reinhold Niebuhr many years ago, that we must have "hope without optimism." In other words, we should not be surprised if the future doesn't meet our high expectations, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold those expectations; because in being fervent in our hope that the future _could_ be better, we ourselves will take actions to make it so.

Raimon is a great starting place for learning about Catalan-language music and culture. (I can't help but note that he is Valencian, since he's from Xátiva. Yes, (many) Valencians speak Catalan, too.) I think of him as a kind of Valencian equivalent of Bob Dylan, though admittedly not quite so prolific. Like Dylan, Raimon was part of a cultural movement in the 1960s which used folk music to address political concerns. Many of his songs therefore have a transcendent style and message. Maybe the parallels end there. While Dylan was "the original vagabond," "like a rolling stone," and a rebel's rebel, it wasn't like his singing in English was illegal or anything. Raimon's very act of singing his music in Catalan was. Speaking Catalan in public was illegal during the Franco dictatorship, and it took some real class and "collons" for him to do it. He faced legal sanctions and was blocked from certain events by the Regime, again, just for singing in the Catalan language.

The sixties in Spain. Catalan language as a cultural heritage worth fighting (peacefully) for.

Raimon's experience was characteristic of the movement la Nova Cançó, the name for the resurgence in Catalan-language in music during this period. He rocketed to fame and is probably most famous for his ballad, "Al vent" (1962), popular in the early 1960s and marking him as a serious song writer. He got a boost career-wise by collaborating with Els Setze Jutges, an important group for the movement whose members read like a who's who of important Catalan singers. Some prominent members are still famous today, especially Lluís Llach, whose song "L'estaca" (1968) is another of these iconic classics of the period, and Joan Manuel Serrat. (The name Els Setze Jutges comes from a Catalan tongue-twister ("trebalengua"): "Setze jutges d'un jutjat mengen fetge d'un penjat." Much of their music was playful, and used symbolism and humor to skirt around the Franco censors.) In the 1970s, during "la transición," Raimon and other Catalan musicians' music resurged in popularity, becoming a kind of soundtrack for the new Spain and its hopes for an open and diverse society. (When my wife first heard me play this music, she said: "That's what my parents used to listen to!") For a longer, more detailed discussion of the movement, its critics and legacy, read this web entry in Spanish. Among a future generation of Nova Cançó figures, you can find none other than Jaume Sisa, author of the song featured in the video at the beginning, and like Raimon a "cantautor" (a musician who writes his own songs, usually with some protest or critique content).

All of this is just some historical context for understanding the import of Raimon's lyrics in "D'un temps". He was writing at a time Spain when was growing, economically flourishing really, and yet paradoxically was still a political dictatorship. In other words, the seeds for social and cultural reform were taking root in the streets even while political institutions sought to constrain and repress many ideas, groups, "threats". Take a look at the lyrics, and you'll see how he rises above the frustration to put forward the argument that we already own the moment and have control over the future.

------------------------------------------------------

D'un temps, d'un pais (1964)

D'un temps                                   Of a time

que serà el nostre,                        that will be ours,

d'un país que mai no hem fet,        of a country that has never been made,

cante les esperances                    I sing about the hopes

i plore la poca fe.                          and I cry for the little faith.

No creguem en les pistoles:           We don't believe in guns:

per a la vida s'ha fet l'home            it is life which defines man

i no per a la mort s'ha fet.              and not death that has made him.

No creguem en la misèria,             We don't believe in the misery,

la misèria necessària, diuen,          the necessary misery, they say,

de tanta gent…                             of so many people...

D'un temps                                   Of a time

que ja és un poc nostre,                that is already a bit our own,

d'un país que ja anem fent,            of a country that is already being made,

cante les esperances                     I sing about the hopes

i plore la poca fe.                           and I cry for the little faith.

Lluny som de records inútils          Let's leave behind useless memories

i de velles passions,                     and old passions,

no anirem al darrere                      we will not march behind

d'antics tambors…                        the ancient (war) drums…

D'un temps                                   Of a time

que ja és un poc nostre,                that is already a bit our own,

d'un país que ja anem fent,            of a country that is already being made

cante les esperances                     I sing about the hopes

i plore la poca fe.                           and I cry for the little faith.

D'un temps                                   Of a time

que ja és un poc nostre,                that is already a bit our own,

d'un país que ja anem fent.            of a country that is already being made.

------------------------------------------------------

Having thought about these lyrics a lot, what I'm most struck by is the hopeful progression they offer. While in the first stanza he talks of "un país que mai no hem fet", very quickly he is already talking about "un país que ja anem fent" – from a country that has never been made, to one that is already being made. Or a shift from "un temps que serà el nostre" to "un temps que ja és un poc nostre" – from time that _will_ be ours, to one that already is a bit ours. And there's the subtle but poignant rejection of what "they say" about "necessary misery". Again, this in 1964, a decade before the end of the Franco Regime, and in a banned language!

Another topic which didn't make the cut this week: the "Golpe de estado de 
1981" or "23-F". Thursday marked the 31st anniversary of a famous failed military coup,
when Spain's young democracy was tested and many feared, even if only for a few hours,
that the country would fall back into a dictatorship. I think expats, in their armchair
commentary over the Garzón case don't appreciate how recent democracy is in Spain. The
still oh-so-controversial Amnesty Law of 1977 was only four years old when all of Spain
watched this coup unfold onscreen and wondered whether that was the end of the
experiment. In retrospect, with a firmer, healthier democracy, some are now
wondering whether the Franco regime abusers got off too easy in "la transición".

I've noticed a lot of "rencor" (bitter resentment or rancor) recently about the turn to the right and "no holds bar" politics in Spain... Camps miraculously acquitted. Garzón sentenced. (This post was originally inspired by all the buzz here and abroad on the recent verdict in the Garzón case. I won't dissimulate. I'm incredibly disappointed in the outcome. In systems of justice, sentences send messages. And it is the _wrong_ message to send that Baltasar Garzón, a judge, is the first and, I believe, so far _only_ person to be convicted for the Caso Gürtel.) And now the so-called "Valencia Spring" in my hometown. It's enough to break a Left-leaning politico's heart. Surrounding all of these happenings is a lot of, "See, I told you the Spanish are intractably corrupt" in the expat blogosphere, or "Of course the political class doesn't care about the public" among the locals. Now I can understand this sentiment as a knee-jerk reaction from the angry and disenfranchised. But I actually think this sentiment, though human and understandable, is not the right way to direct anger and disappointment over injustice. Somehow we reelected this corrupt Valencia government, and it is hard not feel frustrated with how a political class so clearly corrupt and out of touch with the economic needs of its electorate is not fired for its incompetence. But I try not to let it get to me, and to instead think of the long road (not just the next election cycle). What these kids at Lluís Vives are showing people is that it is not about how we feel now, it is about what we do now for our futures.

Back in 1981, the King Juan Carlos interceded on behalf of the public, and helped diffuse the
coup d'etat by going on television and asking that the military return control to the Congress.
This irony, that it was the king who helped save Spain's democracy, is why many, including
even me, are so loyal to the royal family even though it's criticized as an anachronistic institution

I take this as the deeper wisdom of Raimon's song. It is about not ceding _any_ ground, not even the terms of the debate by succumbing to bitterness, cynicism, or defeatism. I'm hopeful that as people take to the streets to protest the injustices of this economic crisis —the pigheaded, untested and probably foolish ideology of "austerity"— we are all able to hold on to that positive spirit. (Consider this an extension of my earlier soapbox rant manifesto to willfully ignore the economic crisis negativity.) To not let the negativity of the powers that be —who keep telling us about "la misèria necessària", necessary cuts and economic misery— convince us that our future is not defined by us. Spain continues to be a country that is being made, and I'm hopeful that its future will be brighter than its past.