St. Parick´s Day.

Culture is one of the most rewarding  ways of learning a foreign language. Through culture we can  experience both the language and traditions of the country where the language is spoken. We are going to deal in this post with a typical Irish but a the same time worldwide celebration: St. Patrick´s day.

To start with, the idea is to introduce the origins, the characters and traditions so that our students become familiar with this celebration, just in case they haven't heard about it.
Firstly, let's answer a little quizz before reading a text with the story of this saint.  After that, we are going to learn some new vocabulary  related to this celebration and make some pen-and-pencil follow-up practice : word search,  vocabulary activities,  boardgame,  wordcloud , flashcards, vocabulary  key , crossword key
5 ESL festivity activities for St Patricks day.

English Sounds and Pronuntiation

In this unit we are going to review the English sounds, intonation and stress patterns. In order to achieve our goal, I am presenting you some links that can be very helpful. This PDF is a useful tool to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and here you can practice the pronunciation with flashcards and some pronunciation exercises. In this link ( Phonemic Chart Keyboard ) you can transcribe to and from phonetics The vowel chart and the Alphabetic Code Chart Phonetis vs_spelling . This skill allows you to check the pronunciation of a word in a dictionary. We are going to focus mainly on vowel sounds. Once you have become familiar with the IPA symbols, you can try practising English pronunciation using “minimal pairs” (Words with different meanings that vary by only one phonological element) . Minimal  pairs exercise 2, matching game.  Minimal pairs exercise 3 , games, Games  and PDF cards, children activities PDF . Further practice . Bingo card maker.  Sheep or ship video . 

Short / long vowels exercise 1 , exercise 2. Homophones . Homophones pair game. Other activities to teach phonetics: Tongue twisters.

Finally, Text to Phonetics is an online application that transcribes small English texts into broad phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This application will allow you to practise with short texts next. IPA code generator

Assignments and practice:

• Revise the English sounds from the Phonetic chart. English vowels  (videos). Pronunciation game. Practical phonetical exercises. Rhyming exercises. Kahoot
• Read the text Easy Rhymes and give a word that rhymes with the words in bold.
•  Exercise  “Confusing Words". Choose the right word and say if the sounds are the same or different. 
•   English Pronunciation Practice Read the article and do exercise 1  and ex 2 to distinguish between function and content words. Word stress  Stress Patterns Pronunciation Pyramids 
• Intonation – Stress Types.  Practice  video . Content and grammar words
•  Finally, listen to the dialogue  1 and underline the word or words which are given prominence (Prominence is the rise in pitch, loudness and length of a tone unit. This term should not be confused with word stress which is the stress accent on the syllables of individual words) .
• Extra practice. If you are interested in practicing sounds in English, Cambridge online  presents many funny games to play with English sounds that can be used in the primary classroom as well. Don´t miss it, it´s great!!!
• Phonics, a way of learning sounds in English : alphabet video

Ice-Breaking
These are the kinds of activities we usually do at the beginning of the course or semester (link).
They usually involve both written and oral activities in order to to make students meet each other or get personal information about classmates. These kind of activities are very useful for the teacher as well as an initial assessment. Here you can find some more activities, I hope you enjoy them.