ESL Activities

If you're looking for some new ideas to keep things fresh, interesting and fun in the classroom, then you'll need to check out these two other websites of mine:

ESL Activities

It has a ton of ESL activities that you can use in your classroom today. They're organized by skill (speaking, listening, reading, writing) as well as age (children or adults) so you'll be able to find what you're looking for in 30 seconds or less. Stop wasting your time wading around through all the junk on the Internet! 

http://www.eslactivity.org/

ESL Speaking

The second site to check out is ESL Speaking. I know that most foreign teachers have to focus their classes on conversation and the activities and games you'll find here can help you do that. Everything is organized by children or adults and then into games or activities. Check it out-you'll find lots of new ESL games and activities you can use in your classroom today.

http://eslspeaking.org/

Like Free Stuff? Get Some Now!

I'm holding a contest where I'm giving away three of my Ebooks for free. The contest ends in 8 days, so get those entries in now. The best part about it is that if you use your custom link and someone enters the contest because of you, you'll get three more entries!

You'll have your choice of one of the following books:

The Wealthy English Teacher (personal finance for English teachers abroad)

How to Get a University Job in South Korea

How to Thrive in South Korea: 97 Tips for Expats

ESL Speaking Activities for Kids

ESL Speaking Activities for Teenagers and Adults.

Use this link to register now

39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities: For Kids (7+)

A new book on mine is available on Amazon: 39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities: For Kids (7+)

This is the book that every elementary school ESL teacher needs to have in their libraries. There are 39 no-prep or low-prep, interesting, engaging and fun activities. I give you my personal guarantee that they'll make your classes awesome and lesson planning easy. Only electronic version for now, but the print version will be available shortly.

New Book: 39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities

My new book is up on Amazon: 39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities- For Teenagers and Adults. If you teach middle school, high school or university, I think you'll find it useful. The activities really are low or no prep so you can pull something together in the last few minutes before your class.

I take a student-centered approach, unlike many of the other books out there because after all, your students should be working hard, not you. You're already really good at speaking English!

39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities: For Teenagers and Adults

The book is now complete! It will be available for free within the next couple days, but the link is secret unless you sign-up for my email list. I promise to respect your privacy and will never share your information or email with anyone.

The normal price will be $2.99 on Amazon.

Top 5 ESL Speaking Activities

Top 5 ESL Speaking Activities

Here are some of my go-to speaking activities for conversation classes. While many of the activities are designed for adults, some of them can be adapted really easily for kids too. I try to make activities that are interesting, fun and interactive and I hope you find some of them useful in your classes.

Small Talk Warm-Up Game- a fun activity to practice this important skill that's hard to design good activities for.

Just a Minute Speaking Activity- an excellent warm-up for intermediate-advanced level students

Problem/Advice- it's also a great reported speech activity

Tell Your Story- Another activity to work on reported speech

Taboo- ESL speaking game for kids and adults

ESL Lesson Plans for University Students

Lots of people are finding their way to this blog looking for ESL lesson plans for university students and adults. Help is here! I've shared plenty of my lesson plans over the years, but I'll put them all in one place to make them easy for you to find.

Sample lesson plan for Top Notch 1


Introduction to Cause and Effect Essays Lesson Plan


Smart Choice 2 sample lesson plan



Random Lesson Plans for Adults

8 conversation lesson plans for university students in Korea

Simpsons lesson plan

Second Conditional-If I Had a Million Dollars Lesson Plan

CELTA Lesson Plans

Celta reading lesson plan

Celta grammar lesson plan

Celta listening lesson plan

ESL Speaking Games and Activities

ESL Speaking Games and Activities

If you're looking for some solid ESL speaking games or activities for your classes, check out these posts over on my other site, ESL Speaking.

Small talk ESL speaking game- adults, beginner--->advanced levels.

Problem/Advice: Reported speech speaking activity- adults, intermediate--->advanced

Daily Schedule interview activity- kids and adults, beginner--->intermediate

Conversation Starters for ESL students- kids and adults, beginner--->intermediate

Role Play ESL speaking activity- kids and adults, beginner--->high-intermediate

Even more awesomeness, delivered straight to your inbox once a week. More than 40 ESL game and activity ideas, as well as lesson plans, website recommendations and other good stuff. I promise to respect your privacy and nobody has unsubscribed in weeks!

Sign-up for Jackie Bolen's mailing list.

Free Talking and Why I Loathe It

Why I hate Free Talking

Over on my other website, ESL Speaking I talked about free talking and why I loathe it. It got a lot of discussion and comments over on Facebook.

The original, quite controversial post: ESL Free Talking

The explanation: Free Talking and Why I Loathe It, Explained

A Fun Reported Speech Activity

Problem and Advice- a fun reported speech activity that I talk about on my other blog, ESL Speaking.

My Upcoming Kotesol Presentations

A quick note for readers of this blog in Korea. I'll be giving a couple presentations at upcoming Kotesol conferences.

1. May 16th-Busan Chapter Kotesol Meeting. "How to Teach Speaking." 5 tips and 5 activities for all levels and ages of students. If you miss it, don't worry...all the stuff is from my upcoming book about ESL Speaking which I'm giving away for free to everyone who signs up for my mailing list. But, of course I promise interactive, informative and fun in person so it'll be better to just come on Saturday!

2. May 30th-Seoul Kotesol National Conference. This is the second biggest English teaching event in Korea (behind the International conference). "How to Get a University Job in South Korea." If you miss this one, you can get the book: How to Get a University Job in South Korea. But, of course in person is better because you can ask questions and get some more immediate feedback for your jobs in Korea related questions.

39 Low-Prep/No-Prep ESL Speaking Activities

ESL Speaking Activities

The book is in the final editing stages and will be available by the end of May; I'll be giving it away for free, but only to members of my mailing list. I promise to respect your privacy.

Sign up for Free ESL Speaking Activities here.

In the meantime, check out this website- ESL Speaking: Games, Activities and Resources. It's perfect for when you're planning your lessons and need a new idea or two.

Conversation Starters for Adults

10 Conversation Starters for Adults

A post over on ESL Speaking that many of you might find useful for your university classes:

Conversation Starters for Adults- ESL Speaking

39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities for Teenagers and Adults

 ESL Speaking Activities for Teenagers and Adults

Good news my readers! My editor and I have been working away like busy beavers writing and editing a book filled with 39 of my favorite ESL speaking activities for adults. The book also has some teaching tips, advice for teaching very low level speaking classes, lesson plans, my favorite ESL speaking websites (besides this one!) and other goodness; it should be done in less than a month.


I plan to give the book away for free but only to members of my email list. When you join the list, you get an email about every week with some of my favorite ESL game and activity ideas (speaking, warm-ups/icebreakers, writing, etc.), websites I use to plan my own classes, lesson plans I’ve designed, book recommendations, and other good stuff.

Sign-up now. Free book coming soon!

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It's that time of year: ESL Speaking Tests!

ESL Speaking Tests

It's that time of year again: speaking tests!  I've blogged about speaking tests already over on my other site, ESL Speaking.

ESL speaking test rubric
ESL speaking tests- 3 ways to do it

But, I will add this. This semester, I set up my tests so that students talk to 1-1 with a random partner (chosen by me) and with random topics from a list of 10 (chosen by me). My role is just that of an observer.

Ideally, I never like to do more than assign partners, hand out topics, tell which student to begin and then signal a topic change and then the end of the test. But, I will intervene if necessary if one partner is clearly weaker than the other one.

40+ ESL activities and games, delivered straight to your inbox:

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The weaker student's mark is never in question-low, but for the higher level student, it can be hard to show their true abilities if the weak student is not asking them any questions, or is asking terrible ones. In this case, I'll interrupt and ask the higher level student a couple difficult questions and see how they handle it. If they handle them well, then they'll get a higher score. If not, they'll probably fall into the mid-range category and not get the highest marks.

I would never want to punish a higher level student with a low score simply because their partner was bad at asking them interesting, or appropriate questions.

Join the Facebook group: Foreign Teachers in Korean Universities.

4 Hot Discussion Topics for Korean University Students

Discussion Topics for Korean Uni Students

This past week in my advanced conversation class, we've been talking about rules and regulations using the passive form and Touchstone 4, Unit 5. For homework, I had my students make a short video (3+ minutes) answering the questions, "What 2 things should people be encouraged to do to make it a better place. And, what should they be encouraged not to do?"

I just finished watching all the videos and the four topics that the students mentioned almost without fail were:

1. Smoking in public places.

2. The lax sex crime laws, especially if drinking is involved.

3. Trash on the streets and lack of trash cans.

4. Cutting in line at the bus station, bank, etc.

So, if you're looking for hot topics for your uni classes in Korea, these are some that your students would probably enjoy and be willing to talk about.

Graded Language: We Need to Use it!

Comprehensible Input for ESL Students

There's a post over on another website of mine, ESL Speaking which may be of interest to you. It's about using graded language in order to help our students actually learn English.

Graded Language: Use It!

ESL Speaking Games and Activities

ESL Speaking Games and Activities

Inspired by the success of my first two books, How to Get a University Job in South Korea: The English Teaching Job of Your Dreamsand The Wealthy English Teacher: Teach, Travel, and Secure Your Financial Future, I've started work on a third one about ESL Speaking Games and Activities.

It'll contain around 50 of my go-to games and activities that I use in my own classes and I've tried to include lots of good stuff for teachers who teach young kids as well (I got my start way back in the day teaching kindy, so I know how it is!). I also have a few sample lesson plans for intermediate-advanced level adult conversation classes and some general teaching tips to keep in mind when you're teaching ESL Speaking.

If you want to get 40 ESL games and activities for all skills, delivered straight to your inbox, as well as be the first to know when I finish my latest book, sign up here:

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Some oldies but goodies

Oldies but Goodies From My Life! Teaching in a Korean University

I went back in the archives for you, my readers and pulled out some of the best posts from way back in the day when I started this blog. Can you believe it's been 7 years and that the same stuff that I was thinking about back then is still what I'm thinking about today?

Student Evaluations

Physical Activity in the Classroom

The First Day of Class (still haven't really figured this one out yet!)

Speaking Tests (am still changing this one almost every semester!)

Social Interactions with your Bosses and Co-workers

A Group Project Speaking Idea

Enjoy!

ESL Speaking Activities, Games and more

ESL Speaking

If you're on the lookout for some new English speaking games and activities to make your classes interesting and engaging, some help is here. First of all, check out one of my other websites: ESL Speaking: Games, Activities, and Resources.

Next, don't forget to sign-up for my mailing list. You'll get 40 ESL games and activities delivered straight to your inbox, along with lots of other stuff that I think will be helpful for you.

40 Free ESL Speaking Games and Activities

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Next, go to ESL Warm-up Games and Activities. There's lots of goodness here that you can use to help get your classes started off the right way.

Finally, check out Speaking Activities That Don't Suck: Foolproof Ways to Force Your EFL Students to Produce Enormous Amounts of English from English Teacher X. Speaking activities, presented in an extremely funny, witty way.