How to develop fluency for an oral examination?

The speaking examination for the IGCSEs can be a stressful experience for our students as they are having to speak in the target language for 15 minutes and they are being recorded. It is therefore best to practice this experience often during class time. In the past I have used Audioboo so that my students could practice and review the general questions (which are a series of linked questions on two or three topics which students have covered in grade 9 and 10).

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Yoga to become strong

I discovered yoga soon after the birth of my third boy. I wanted to get back into shape and it worked. Before I always thought yoga was a kind of meditation activity but that it didn't involve a lot of physical activity. I was wrong! Yoga can make you sweat!

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access2 Adriene3 exercise4 flow3 growth1 hapiness1 journey1 pause1 pose3 reflect3 reflection4 reward1 sweat1 yoga7 youtube17

Reading activity for French learners (beginner level).

Yeah!!! I am back to blogging! I had a very good excuse though for not posting for such a while: I had my fourth boy on the 24th of September. His name is Antoine and he is a lovely baby boy doing well :-)

Whilst recovering from the birth and taking care of my precious little boy,

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Resources for English learners: superstitions.

Although I am taking a break from my school and "formal" teaching, I have not really quit and I have now started to teach online (via Google hangout or Skype) private lessons to Spanish students who want to improve their English. It is actually very different from teaching a whole class and my students have a good level of English but they are not confident enough.

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activity13 comprehensible41 comprehension31 conversation12 culture22 Education8 engage14 fluency15 fluent12 language26 learning14 personal8 questions19 reading36 teacherspayteachers11

Spanish story: El chico cansado

This story comes from a French story on The Task Magic blog: Bob est fatigué. I wanted to recycle the structures "debe", "tengo que" which my students already learned with Los niños prisioneros de Bolivia and I also wanted to use "está cansado".

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cansado1 comprehensible41 comprehension31 debe2 debes1 Education8 input39 key structures7 obediente1 personalized13 questions19 reading36 script10 Spanish27 story34 storytelling28 teacherspayteachers11 tengo que1 text4 TPRS34

Fun and simple idea to practice "gustar"

The verb "gustar" is not an easy verb to use as it is so different from "normal"verbs. The majority of students know how to use it in the first person singular "me gusta" but they rarely know how to use it when they want to refer to someone else.

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activities5 cards1 clapping1 Education8 engage14 focus6 grade 68 grammar6 gustar1 lesson4 listening29 marker1 matching1 motivation6 objective2 reading36 Spanish27 speaking37 warm up2 whiteboard2 writing17

How to practice and review the general conversation for the IGCSE oral exam?

My students in grade 10 have a speaking examination in 5 weeks time and I believe this is the most stressful part of their IGCSEs. In order to prepare them well for the general conversation (which consists of asking a series of linked questions on two or three topics which students have covered in grade 9 and 10) I asked my students to get in pairs,

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