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ollection/lessonplan.html
This page was originally designed to share my materials with other English teaching
assistants in France, especially those who have no experience in teaching ESL yet. I've also
included worksheets that I used for private English lessons in France as well as some of the
materials I used in my ESL classes in the United States. Feel free to use them as you'd like.
Some of the lessons listed under the Assistant section can also be used for private lessons and
vice versa.
Recommended Books:
The one ESL book that I brought to France was Highway to ESL. A few other helpful books
are: Keep Talking, Lessons from Nothing, Pronunciation Games, Games for Language
Learning, How to Teach Vocabulary, Teaching ESL/EFL with the Internet, Teaching
American English Pronunciation, Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of
English to Speakers of Other Languages, Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language
Learners, and Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
For fastest downloading, use the DownThemAll add-on for Firefox. This will allow you to
download all of the documents on this page at once and increase the download speed up to
400%.
Refer to the Teaching section of the Assistants Guide if you'd like a more detailed account of
how I used these lessons in my classes, as well as links to other plans that I found online.
Most documents are available in Word format; however if you do not have Microsoft Word,
you can still open the documents in OpenOffice, which is a free software. (I try to provide my
documents in Word format instead of PDF format so that you can modify them.) The majority
of the below documents I have written myself, but some I have found online and can no
longer locate the original source to link back to.
Conversation / Speaking
You should only have to focus on teaching conversational English (listening, speaking and
pronunciation skills). The students will learn reading and writing skills in their regular
English classes. Your school may have some materials and books that you can use, but try not
to fall into the trap of only teaching the stilted form of English found in these books. You
should incorporate authentic language (such as from television and movies) as well as
reduced forms (such as gonna, wanna, doncha, etc.) because that is the way that most
Americans talk and that is what the students will need to understand the most. Textbooks will
focus on the formal ways of speaking and writing, but students need to learn the informal
ways too.
Color Cards - for games (Go Fish, Memory, etc.) to review colors and family
members, and perhaps "do you have / have you got?"
Expressing Likes, Dislikes & Indifference - Sample phrases followed by nouns
and gerunds, as well as space to write more
Telephone Conversations - Students match up English & French phrases, read
sample dialogs and write their own
Debate Topics - Students choose topics and write a dialog in pairs debating the
pros and cons of both sides
Anglophone Countries - Students give oral reports on anglophone countries of
the world
Fillers & Reduced Forms - common fillers and reduced forms in everyday
speech with sample sentences
Synonyms of say & uses of like - Plus exercises on switching from informal to
formal language (reduced forms)
Common Reduced Forms - Includes all the reduced forms presented in
Slangman Book One, but not in the order of the chapters
How to Present a Document - For Terminale students, guide on how to present
the unknown document on the oral bac
Pronunciation
Listening
Minimal Pair Listening Exercise - Students must circle word they hear among
minimal pairs: want, won't, or went?
Similar Sentences Exercise - Students mark the sentence they hear: She's taking
a bath or She's taken a bath?
I've Never Been poem - Good for stress and intonation patterns; author
unknown
Little Tree by ee cummings - Short poem to read at Christmas, with fill in the
blank exercise
Cherokee Nation Lyrics - Good for teaching about Native Americans in
November
Girl Next Door Lyrics - Includes typical vocabulary for American high schools
Strange Fruit Lyrics - Sad song to show severity of racism and lynching in the
South
Animaniacs Presidents Song - Funny song to learn about the US presidents, up
to Bill Clinton. Video available online too.
Animaniacs Capitals & States Song - Another fun song to learn the US states
and their capitals. Video available online too.
Le Web Pdagogique also has several other "fiche vocabulaire" for bac topics.
Culture
Don't forget to teach culture in your plans. Students are really interested in how the United
States differs from France, so make sure to include these differences. This is also a good way
of increasing vocabulary. (Some of these resources are very specific to my life in Michigan,
especially pertaining to the school system, so you may need to make adjustments to the
lessons.)
English MP3s
I made the following vocabulary pack (English and French) for my private student and
recorded my pronunciation of each word. I haven't yet double-checked the French
translations and please note that I speak American English with a Midwestern accent (that
may have been slightly modified by years in France.) I have also created an American
English Vocabulary tutorial from this file and integrated the mp3s into the pages, if anyone
would like to read and listen online instead of offline.
The private students that I have in France are all at the beginning level. Since they are
learning English at collge or lyce, the focus is on grammar (and British English instead of
American English). I've found a lot of useful exercises on Anglais Facile, Learn English
Online, English Grammar Reference, English Basics, Lanternfish (formerly Boggle's World),
and ESL Flow. For more advanced topics, try English Page, ESL Resources at OWL, and
Breaking News English. You can also buy Anglais workbooks designed for collge students
at many bookstores. They usually cost less than 5 and include all the relevant grammar that
students learn in school, so you know what to teach. Additionally, a lot of publisher websites
allow you to download sample pages or units from their textbooks, such as New Interchange.
Grammar
Be & Have got charts - to fill in; present tense of be and have got: regular
conjugation, question, contraction, negative, negative contraction, etc.
Be & Have Past Tense - Charts for the past tense of be and have.
Play & Go Present and Past - Charts for regular and irregular verbs in present
and simple past tenses
Three meanings of 's - contraction with is, contraction with has, and possession.
Rewrite sentences with no apostrophe s.
Personal Pronouns - Review of subject & object pronouns, possessive adjectives
& pronouns.
Contractions - Contractions of be and have in the present tense; subject + verb
and verb + not
Contractions Exercise - Write the contractions for subject + verb and verb + not.
Includes past, future, conditional tenses.
Auxiliary verbs - followed by infinitive and followed by to + infinitive; word
order in negative sentences and questions.
Two Groups of Verbs - Put the verbs in the correct group depending on their
word order in negative and interrogative sentences
Word Order Exercises - correct word order with negative and interrogative
sentences
Past & Progressive Review - Exercises on forming past tense and progressive,
with negatives.
Wh- Questions Exercises - forming questions with wh- words from given
American Slang
When I taught ESL in the US, my classes focused on slang, pronunciation, and conversation.
Slang / Accents
I used the Slangman: Guide to Street Speak books in my conversation classes, which teach
common slang words and reduced forms of speech. I created quizzes for each chapter of the
first book. (I also used Focus on Pronunciation in the same classes, so some parts of the
quizzes test pronunciation.) The dictations at the end of the quizzes generally focused on the
vocabulary and reduced form lesson from each chapter. Another book that teaches essential
slang and idioms is A Year in the Life of an ESL Student.
Quiz 1
Quiz 2
Quiz 3
Quiz 4
Quiz 5
Quiz 6
Keep in mind that your students may have had assistants in the past who spoke with different
accents and they may be confused if they don't realize that you speak with a different one. I
like to expose my students to as many accents as possible, so I often use Dr. Ladefoged's
recordings of "Arthur the Rat" in five accents of English. The Speech Accent Archive also
has a large collection of sound files of speakers of English. I hand out this list of links near
the end of the semester so that students can use the internet at home to learn more about slang
words and English accents: