English

Rob Whyte ESL speaking and writing class lessons, activities and worksheets for English students who want to learn and improve their English communication skills.

Learning English with a Walk About

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Learning English with a Walk About

Main Idea

This wonderful, student-centred fluency activity generates lots language in the classroom with a good mix of scripted and spontaneous talk. If you’re weary of the traditional oral presentation format – one student speaks for five minutes and 19 others feign attention – yet want to give students a chance to write and speak, this is a must-try activity.

  • Level: high beginner and up
  • Time: 40-90 minutes
  • Resources: each student prepares a poster; teacher brings adhesive tape.

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Learn English Speaking: An Inquiry-based Frame

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English Conversation Lesson

This ESL pair work activity helps students learn English by developing speaking, listening and critical thinking skills. Students interact with a specific question and answer format that requires one student to process new information continuously. The objective is for one student to retell the story with accuracy and detail by asking the right kinds of questions.

  • Level: high beginner and up
  • Time: 10-20 minutes
  • Resources: one short story, level appropriate for the students.

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ESL Fluency Activities

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ESL Fluency Activities

Fluency, basically, is an ability to perform a language task faster. Helping ESL students improve language fluency is an important challenge for teachers. Of course most ESL students need to read, speak and write with better accuracy; they also need to perform these communication skills with alacrity. The job of the language teacher, then, is to help students progress to the point where mundane aspects of language production become automatic.

Below are three fluency building activities that can help students improve language processing speeds and, if continued over time, make progress toward the broader goal of automaticity.

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