Short texts and activities packed with the kind of phrases which come up a lot in natural speech (and The Cambridge Corpus) but not necessarily in the course book. This kind of language is becoming more and more important in Cambridge exams as they strive to reflect authentic English in their assessments. All of the vocabulary included in these activities has featured in FCE exams or official Cambridge practice tests, but is also likely to feature at CAE.
If you are preparing students for the FCE Exam, I recommend looking at the previous post with the main grammar types first (see related posts below). This is because the questions here often combine new vocabulary with those structures.
Lesson Structure
The lessons (in the section below) all follow the same basic structure:
1. Read the text.
A short text to present target phrases in context.
2. Gap Fill
After reading the text, students complete a gap fill with key phrases missing. In each case the clue (in brackets) is the similar language which would be used in a sentence transformation question.
3. Use the Language
Display sentence halves, in pairs take turns to complete the sentences so they are true for them (speaking only).
Take away display and ask students to swap notebooks and write out their partner's sentences. (To do this they have to remember the phrases, facilitating the learning process.)
In pairs learners check each other's sentences, then display sentence halves to confirm.
Each student should now have a copy of the language in a context which is meaningful to them in their notebooks. They need to learn these phrases for a future next lesson.
I believe strongly in the power of post-its. If a structure is hard to remember and a student can be persuaded to write it on a post-it which they stick on the fridge/above their bed/on the toilet door. Within a week they are pretty much guaranteed to remember it with very little effort required.
4. Sentence Transformation Questions
Once students have been given a chance to learn the phrases, get them to complete the sentence transformation questions. This could be a straightforward worksheet task or copy and paste the questions into an online quiz. Alternatively, to add a little energy in the classroom you could display the original sentences on a board and turn it into a grass skirts activity or a treasure hunt.
Grass Skirts:
Cut the question paper into strips so it looks like a grassskirt (see picture). Each team has 1 "grass-skirt". A team member has to run to the skirt, remove one question and return to their team to complete it. When you have confirmed their answer is correct, another student can run for the next question. The winning team is the one that answers all of the questions first.
Treasure hunt:
Hide the questions around the rooms in strips. Teams race to find the questions and answer them.
Materials
Ready to use:
Language focus:
call off cancel make the most of take advantage couldn’t make it unable to attend
it doesn't matter I don't care fed up with annoyed get on with be good friends
point out inform put it off delay/postpone take part in participate
told me off shouted at
Language focus:
Fall out argue Find out discover Even though despite the fact
Run out have no more of No doubt certain Pick up collect
Take no notice ignore feel like want to It's her fault she's to blame
ought to should move out leave home make up your mind decide
Coming soon:
Language focus:
Get round to start doing Held took place No longer not anymore
Make up for it say sorry No matter how despite Put up with tolerate
Take no notice pay no attention Take his word for it believe him
Talk you into it persuade Turn up arrive unexpectedly
Follow up.
Once students have completed a few of these, get them to make sentence transformations for each other using the examples you've given them. This is a good homework task because then you can turn it into a quiz in class. Students tend to learn more from making the questions than they do from answering them because they have to really think about the context.
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