November 2006 Archives

Here's a handout that I use to help my students practice and learn how to pronounce the 'th' sound. First, I show them how to make the 'th' sound. Then, I go through the words line by line. I have the students first listen to me pronounce the word and then I get them to repeat after me. I go through Part 1 several times. After that, I test their listening skills by doing part 2 of the handout. They have to circle the word they hear me say.

Here's a handout that I've used to help students practice useful classroom English - How do you spell (noun) in English?

I explain that when they don't know how to spell a word in L2 they can use this useful interrogative sentence. I then do a little bit of drilling and then do some examples e.g. "How do you spell (inu) in English?. It's D-O-G. How do you spell (nihongo) in English? It's J-A-P-A-N-E-S-E. How do you spell (empitsu) in English? It's P-E-N-C-I-L.

Next, I distribute the hand out to the students and explain what they have to do. I demonstrate doing several examples on the board. For example, a cat is an animal. Can you think of some other animals? What animals do you like? As students are completing the handout and are unsure as to how to spell a word, they can ask me, their friends or the Japanese English Teacher using the sentence pattern.