Занимательный материал для учителей английского языка "How to make writing activities funny"

How to make writing activities fun

Does your class consider writing to be the pastime of the dull and antiquated? Is the word ‘writing’ enough to set pupils’ heads nodding – with boredom as opposed to enthusiasm? If your class needs a motivational boost in this activity,  there are some helpful suggestions that will help you to make your English lessons more fun.

Of course, it  involves increasing classroom engagement and using a range of channels to convey the subject matter in hand. This will boost children’s motivation and help open up their eyes to the endless opportunities that this rich subject has to offer.

A creative and enthusiastic teacher always has a lot of ideas how to motivate students throughout the lesson and uses various teaching resources including Internet. In this article I'd like to share  a collection of  different types of dictations with their short description, gathered from around the net and books. Hopefully, you can find something you like!

So, the first is Banana Dictation:

 Remove a language item (e.g. preposition) and say banana instead of the supposed word. For example, dictate the sentences: I got banana the airport a bit late. You can use  your own “code” word instead of banana (i.e. I like choosing something the student finds funny) The second is Transformation Dictation:

 Dictate sentences which students have to transform (e.g. tense, aspect, register, style, passive vs active etc.) For extra challenge, do it orally (i.e. the student is not allowed to write anything down) and   encourage varying responses (i.e. often there are numerous possible options)

Dictation number three is Error Correction Dictation (one of my favourite)

Dictates sentences with errors and students write the correct version. Students  enjoy to correct a techer! Don’t only focus on grammar – think about the lexis, language chunks, appropriacy, etc. and how it could be upgraded

Dictation number four: Intensive Dictation

 Select and read a text. While reading students write down all examples of the language item which a techer  plans to zoom in on (e.g. verbs of movement, adjectives describing personality etc.) After finishing, feedback against the original I recommend to choose a motivating text your students can relate to.

My childrens favourite type of dictations is Running dictation

This is a lively activity that practises speaking, listening, writing, walking and remembering!

Choose a short passage or dialogue and make several copies. Put the copies up around the walls of the classroom (or even the school building).

Put the students in pairs or small groups. The aim is for one of the students in each pair to walk (or run!) to read the passage on the wall. They remember some of the passage and walk (or run!) back to their partner. They quietly dictate what they remembered to their partner, who writes it down. They then swap roles. Over several turns they will build the whole passage. This means they really do have to run back and forth because students will only remember three or four words at a time.

The winning pair is the team that finishes first - although you need to check for mistakes. If there are mistakes, they must keep walking to check!

A good idea is to teach them punctuation vocabulary beforehand if you want them to use the correct punctuation in English. It's a good way to check spelling and fabulous for pronunciation - and great memory training!

As you see there are some  creative and funny activities that really work! And don't forget to praise you students for great job!