More Sponge Activities to Teach English

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Sponge Activities that Teach English

Teaching English requires a panoply of skills. One of them is preparation. ESL teachers need a good supply of ready to go materials when the inevitable surprise comes up. Like when a lesson finishes early and you want to fill a gap with a useful activity.

Consider adding these 5 activities to your collection of back pocket activities, fun language-focused exercises, video lessons and pair work discussion builders that require little prep.

Most of the activities are geared towards a conversation class (high beginner+), but  can easily be adapted for writing classes with some imagination.

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Teach English: Correlation and Causation

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Teach English Writing Concepts

This lesson helps ESL students improve the quality of their writing, speaking and thinking by understanding the differences between correlation and causation.

Learning these vital concepts helps students write logical stories and essays by avoiding post hoc fallacies. It also helps them develop critical thinking skills and an ability to express complex ideas in writing and conversation classes.

Developing an ability to identity and evaluate cause and effect relationships is not easy for students, especially those coming from an education system that emphasizes rote memorization. Finding causality requires a degree of imagination and a willingness to inquire, to dare and explore ideas.

In that sense, imagination fosters understanding.

Lesson Purpose

By the end of this lesson, ESL students will:

  • define correlation and causation
  • explain the differences between the two concepts
  • demonstrate that knowledge in practice exercises
  • apply that knowledge in a writing assignment

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Quick ESL Class Resources and Activities

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aplomb

Every ESL teacher needs a reliable set of quick ESL class resources and activities ready to use at any moment. Classes often run into unexpected time gaps, early finishers, or energy dips that call for a simple change of pace. A flexible toolkit ensures that students stay engaged while they build real English writing and speaking skills in short, meaningful bursts.

This post shares practical ESL classroom activities that help learners strengthen vocabulary recall, improve writing accuracy, and build conversational confidence. These ideas include printable worksheets, vocabulary reviews, conversation prompts, and pair work tasks. Each activity maximizes learning opportunities without requiring long preparation time.

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Learn English Writing: the Hypothesis

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Learning how to write a sentence with a hypothesis helps ESL students organize text, summarize complex ideas, and write with style.

Summarizing information is a challenge for my EFL students. For example, if I ask students to summarize a short story in a video, they tend to present information in the same sequence as the story. There is no synthesis of information, no presentation of a theme, no defense of an idea.  It’s all very cook bookish.

Teaching students how to write a hypothesis is one solution. The idea is that students synthesize information into a specific sentence pattern and then spend the balance of the text defending the idea or at least explaining it with evidence and details.

Part 1. Basic Hypothesis Format

A hypothesis is a sentence that tells us two (or more) things are related to each other. What is not in the hypothesis is an explanation about HOW the two things are related.

Hypothesis sentences are useful for two reasons.

  • They can summarize complex ideas in one sentence.
  • They tell us what to expect in the future.

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