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Here ESL students learn to form questions while learning information about their teacher
Title – Information about the teacher
By – Chris Evenden
Primary Subject – Language Arts
Grade Level – Any/All
I teach English as a foreign language, and one of the big problems all students have is that of forming questions.
Prior to the class, prepare an overhead transparency with facts about yourself. These facts may include things like: married, number of siblings, favorite food, favorite book, etc., type of music that you hate, etc. Include about 8 or 10 things. Show the OHT to the class, and get them to work in pairs, trying to decide what each piece of information refers to. Show students how to tackle this by (for lower levels) writing your name on the board and eliciting the question that would give the answer, e.g. ‘Chris’ needs the question ‘What’s your name?’ whilst ‘her name is Chris’ requires a question in the third person. Students work in pairs deciding what each piece of information refers to, and after about 10 minutes, bring the activity to a close by going through the information and eliciting the correct question. If time allows, students may do something similar – write 4 or 5 pieces of information about themselves, and then, again working with a partner, try to ‘decipher’ each other’s list.
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