May all your dreams come true!
Thank you all! 😍🎅🏼🎄
May all your dreams come true!
Thank you all! 😍🎅🏼🎄
The first time you read a text intensively:
It is easy to read this by focusing on the content words in bold.
At the age of 16 / most students take exams / in about ten different subjects
At the age of 16 / most students take exams / in about ten different subjects
Source: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/pte-success/1/steps/930514
Video with explanation on how to use Future in English.
The following outlines the three stages and steps for summarising.
The party was great!
The food was “spooktacular”!
Everyone had fun and enjoyed a lot!
Young children learn in an integrated way and not in neat, tidy compartments. A child making shapes out of plasticine is learning maths (shape) and art (texture, shape, design, colour), building fine motor skills (physical development), and hearing or using language to describe shapes, colour, texture, materials and techniques (English). The activity drives the need to communicate.
Young children will learn a language better when they see a genuine need for communication, which is often the language they are hearing or using while they are doing an activity that they enjoy.
While adults can plan a range a activities to enhance the learning experience, not all of them will be motivating for every child. Children more likely to be motivated if the activity or experience is meaningful to them. Taking time to get to know the children and finding out what they are interested in is essential if you want to motivate them and help them learn.
The interactions you have with a child while they are engaged in an activity help develop language and communication in context, making the language learning more memorable and authentic.
Rhymes, songs and chants help children memorise words and sentence structure, and they also help with pronunciation, expression and the rhythm of sentences. Children learn their home language by playing with language in this way, and it’s a fun way for them to learn another language too!
A good story takes children to an imaginary world filled with characters and events that will make them want to find out what happens in the end, and that they will want to hear again, join in retelling, and even retell in their own words. Illustrations and actions help children understand descriptions of characters and events, because they can connect what they are seeing and doing with the language in the story.
Giving clear, simple instructions in English with accompanying actions, gestures or demonstrations is more likely to result in children understanding. Children love copying – the teacher, their parents, older siblings or friends – and will often join in after observing how something is done. Including routines is also a useful way of helping young children understand what is expected of them (e.g. every time we sit on the mat we will hear a story or sing a song). Children may not understand straight away, but giving instructions in English is an excellent way of reinforcing key language, so in the long run it’s worth the effort.
Here are several games and activities to do with children to help them learn and interact.
Playing with blocks
Dress-ups (and drama)
Making and decorating (art and craft)
Malleable materials (dough, plasticine, clay)
Music and movement activities
Toys and small world play
Puzzles
Sand play and water play
Have you got anything else to add to these categories?
Can you think of other activities or areas of childhood development and the related language development opportunities?
Share your comments with us below.
© British Council
Study some of the verbs related to movement so you can use them during your conversation practice. 👍😃
Reading for gist/Skimming
Reading quickly to get a general understanding of a written text, eg reading a description of a city to find out if it sounds like somewhere you’d like to visit.
Searching for a particular piece of information in a written text, eg reading a description of a city only to find out which country it’s in.
Reading or listening more carefully so that you get a full understanding of the text, eg reading a description of a city to find out everything about it.
Getting a general understanding of something you hear, eg listening to the weather forecast and deciding you might need to take an umbrella when you go out.
Listening for a particular piece of information, eg listening to the weather forecast to find out what the temperature will be tomorrow.
Making guesses about what is not stated explicitly in a text, eg listening or reading a conversation and deciding that the people are brother and sister without them saying so.
Organising ideas in a logical way when speaking or writing so that the listener or reader can follow our ideas.
Joining sentences together using words like and, but and because so our language flows more easily.
Strategies we use when we are speaking, eg showing you are listening to other people by saying things like, mmmm or uh-uh or oh!
An interactive strategy which is about knowing when you can join in a conversation and signalling when you think someone else should speak.
For speaking; this is speaking without a lot of hesitation and too many long pauses. For writing; this means you can write without stopping for a long time to think about what to write.
© UCLES 2016
We’ve talked about why children play and the benefits of play, but the idea still persists that if it’s too much fun, children are not learning.
However, the evidence suggests the opposite. Research shows that children actually learn through play. Play is learning.
Internationally renowned expert on early childhood and play, Tina Bruce, outlines in her book, Early Childhood Education, the 12 features of free-flow play:
1. Children use the first-hand experiencesthey have had in life during play.
2. Children keep control as they play. Play does not bow to pressure to conform to external rules, outcomes, targets or adult-led projects.
3. Play is a process. It has no products.
4. Children choose to play. It is intrinsically motivated and spontaneous.
5. Children rehearse their possible futures in their play. Play helps children learn to function in advance of what they can do in the present.
6. Play has the potential to take children into a world of pretend, beyond the here and now, in the past, present and future, and it transforms them into different characters.
7. Play can be solitary, and this sort of play can be very deep.
8. Children can play together or with an adult, in companionship (parallel play), associatively or cooperatively in pairs or groups.
9. Play can be initiated by a child or an adult, but adults need to respect the child’s play agenda by not insisting that the adult agenda dominates the play.
10. Child-led play is characterised by deep concentration.
11. In play, children try out their recent learning, mastery, competence and skills, and consolidate them.
12. Play makes children into whole people, able to keep balancing their lives in a fast-changing world.
Tina Bruce (2015) Early Childhood Education 5th Edition