Teaching or learning English as a foreign language (EFL) by using authentic materials which have been prepared for native speakers in real-life conditions is an excellent way to stimulate your English language learners to acquire health and beauty-related foreign language vocabulary. English language newspapers and magazines are readily available in most parts of the world. So you be easily able to pick up a regional or international periodical to use in your English as a foreign language (EFL) class room setting. Let’s briefly look at extracting some extensive English language teaching using the regular columns in a periodical.
Health and Beauty Columns
Talking about good openings to teach parts of the body, this is certainly one. Add containers, medicines, health problems and home remedies to the possibilities list too. You could present / practice verbs for getting dressed, putting on make-up and performing bodily care functions. Mind your manners and personal hygiene now.
Food & Culinary Arts Columns
Likely you’ll find recipes for entrees, soups and desserts of all kinds. Tips for special occasions and food service etiquette might appear here too. You could use these to work with sequence of steps in a process, giving directions, naming kitchen, cooking and dining utensils, ingredient names and quantities along with rare or specialty food items. The topic area is almost limitless. Who doesn’t like to eat?
Travel Page or Column
Travel is an interesting, fun area for almost everyone, whether it’s a destination piece or a descriptive one on a hotel or resort. If a quantity of related photos isn’t provided on the page or in the column, you can add your own (or have the learners do it). This makes a great assignment for learners to dig up relevant support photos to help “flesh out” a text-only piece. What is the location, region or country noted for? What other or unusual activities might be available there? A historical background of the area may quite well yield some surprises. Have you or one of your learners ever been there? Would you or one of them like to go? Why or why not?
Editorial / Opinion / Commentary
Relevant topics, opinions and commentary on current local, regional and national or international events can offer support for essays, compositions, debates and oral or written reports from your learners. Learners have opinions too you know. Get them to express their ideas, opinions and feelings on contemporary issues that directly or indirectly affect them.
Classifieds
Of course you’ve used the classifieds in some way in your classes before, haven’t you? If not, shame on you and get cracking. They are literally a gold mine of opportunity to enrich English (or foreign language) language communicative skills. A brace of good classifieds can keep you “in the clover” for weeks, months, or even years if you really want to “milk” them. Try “shopping” them, having “yard” or “garage” sales while adding pictures, photos, graphics or “realia” to illustrate the item ads. Job interview dialogues can very easily come out of the classifieds. “Dating games” should flow quite easily from the “personals”. Don’t even think about passing any of these up.
Get Started ASAP
Be sure to pick up an authentic English language periodical to use in your English as a foreign language class room as soon as possible, later on today or first thing tomorrow morning. You be delighted at the possibilities you’ll discover. If you e-mail me at lynchlarrym@gmail.com and you’re nice, I’ll send you a free copy of my e-book, “The Foreign Language Learner’s Startup Guide” by return e-mail.
By: Larry M. Lynch
Posts Tagged ‘Native Speakers’
Extracting the Maximum Use From English Language Periodical Columns
February 7th, 2010Of the Thousands of Foreign Languages You Can Learn Which One is Best for You?
January 29th, 2010
A Key Question
A key question people ask when thinking of embarking on the life-long quest that foreign language learning can ultimately become, is which foreign language should I try to learn? Certainly there’s no lack of choice. Reasons for wanting or needing to learn a foreign language can be almost as many and as varied as the number of people themselves. Family, ancestry, employment, business, education, travel, adventure, romance and other personal concerns all may have their respective roles in the decision to learn and continue learning a foreign language.
Some Interesting Language Statistics
According to Vistawide World Languages & Culture statistics online at: vistawide.com/
there are currently 6912 living languages in the world, but did you know that 516 of these are nearly extinct.
The Fabulous Five
Of the top five spoken world languages, Mandarin Chinese has the greatest number of speakers with a whopping 1.051 billion who manage one of the nearly one dozen forms or dialects.
English is a “distant” second with an approximate total of 510 million speakers in 64 different countries. It is also the world’s most widely published language and has the largest number of words – approx. 250,000* distinct words. (*Some linguists even contend that there are as many as one million or more words in the English language.) English also has the greatest number of people who speak it as a second language – with up to 350 million non-native speakers.
Hindi is in third position with 490 million.
Fourth place is occupied by Spanish with 420 million native and second language speakers.
Arabic comes in fifth with 255 million speakers when all of its varieties are combined according to a World Almanac estimate.
Additional Language Statistics
The language with the fewest number of words is Taki-Taki, also called Sranan, which is spoken in Surinam. It has a mere 340 words.
The country where the largest number of languages is spoken is Papua New Guinea with 820 different languages even though it has only around 5,545,268 people. (That’s one language for every 6762 people for all of you statistics freaks out there)
Number two Indonesia has 742 languages among its 241,973,879 people.
Nigeria, with 516 languages spread through its 128,771,988 people, steps in at third.
In India 1,080,264,388 people spread across the country’s vast reaches speak an astounding 427 languages among them.
These statistics are likely, one of the reasons English has been adopted as an official language in each one of these countries.
Summary
So whether your reasons for wanting or needing to learn a foreign language include family, ancestry, employment, business, education, travel, adventure, romance or other more personal ones, a wide variety of language choices are available.
By: Larry M. Lynch