Teaching English Through English Made Easy: HanLin B2U3 Which Painting Do You Like?

 

Ready-made plug-and-play activity ideas for teaching the use of 'which' and 'how much' questions to inquire about preferences or prices, including Canva slides and English activity instructions

 

As a passionate and driven English teacher who takes pride in conducting classes in English, I am eager to contribute to the promotion of this teaching approach among my fellow Taiwanese English teachers. Therefore, I am committed to creating resources that can be used in real classroom settings or even for teaching demonstration classes for any textbook publishers. The following activity ideas are stated in the format of ABCD Learning Objectives:

 

1. Find Someone Who

ABCD 1: With two choices provided for each question, students will answer based on their personal preferences correctly.

ABCD 2: With the questions provided on the worksheet, students will interview each other and fill in their classmates' names accordingly to compete in the contest.

Are you a cat or dog person? Or, are you a mountain or beach person? Questions like these are great for initiating small talk in real life. Following this pattern, we can design a warm-up activity for our students to practice answering these questions. Then, we can transition to a 'Find Someone Who' activity, where students walk around the classroom and interview each other using the target sentence structure. Compared to mechanical substitution drills found in textbooks, this approach will motivate students to actively use English to complete the task.

 

2. Bingo Fun!

ABCD: With the provided bingo sheet, students will circle the corresponding picture and word for each question, aiming to complete a full row, column, or diagonal in order to win the contest.

A bingo game is always a sure-fire fun activity to engage our students in actively practicing the target sentence. With randomly arranged pictures and words, students need to listen attentively to the questions and then circle the matching answers correctly on their worksheets. The game becomes more exciting as they get closer to crossing off the last word or picture. Offering a simple incentive, like some potato chips, will significantly increase their motivation to participate.

3. How much is X in Taiwan, Japan, and the U.S.?

ABCD: With the given items, including Starbucks coffee, McDonald's fries, and Suzuki SV650, students will look for their prices in three countries and use "How much is ...?" correctly.

It's really challenging to come up with a fun activity idea for this simple "How much is something?" grammar point. However, with a structured lesson planning framework consisting of real-life scenarios, collaborative tasks, and the development of an end product, we can brainstorm many possibilities to consider and decide on the optimal combination of the three.

I'm always wondering why a certain item, like my SV650, would cost so differently in different countries. With this in mind, I devised this price comparison task for students not only to use the given sentence pattern but also to have fun discovering price discrepancies and attempting to explain the reasons behind them.

 

4. Painting Matching

ABCD: With the provided paintings and descriptions, students will match them correctly and identify the corresponding structures.

Given the theme of the reading, 'Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night,' I have added three more world-famous paintings and created simple descriptions for students to match correctly. The goal is for them to identify key elements included in the descriptions, such as observations, colors, emotions, and so on. Lastly, I have generated multiple-choice reading comprehension questions to further students' understanding of what they've learned.

 

I've received more invitations for TETE workshops and hope that participants will find my No BS systematic lesson planning approach practical and feasible.

For English teachers, teaching English through English requires practical demonstrations and hands-on practice. That's why I aim to demonstrate effective teaching methods and facilitate step-by-step practice sessions during workshops.

By actively engaging teachers in these activities, we can work towards successful lesson delivery in open classes and ensure students have fun while using English in meaningful contexts.                                                                                                                           EMI