During the pandemic teachers have been forced to teach their subjects online. I have therefore developed some games that are specifically designed to assist Upper Intermediate and Advanced students with examination practice - such as IELTS or the Cambridge suite of exams. The games specifically help in the use of advanced or formal vocabulary which is required for the higher grades of these exams. They also help the students in the identification of mistakes and giving alternative ways of phrasing thoughts so as to provide variety and originality to their exam contributions.
This first set of games takes IELTS band 9 essays taken from: https://www.ielts-blog.com/ielts-writing-samples/ielts-essay-samples-of-band-9/ and presents them with formal words substituted for less formal vocabulary. For instance the text may say - After analysis the..., but I change it to: After testing the... Analysis being a much better vocabulary choice. Each text is divided into 19 boxes and in each box there is a vocabulary change.
​
When the exercise is seen on the screen the students can be challenged to choose any of the 19 boxes and suggest which word needs changing and supply the correct alternative. Each exercise is presented in two different degrees of difficulty. The first slide is the easier exercise which shows the alternative words in red in the bottom right corner. If students are able to do this exercise easily then present slide two which is the same exercise but this time with no words to choose from.
Each box is presented with the raw text. One word in the text has been changed to be less formal. Students can guess which word or ask for a clue in which case the teacher selects the C on the right.
Pressing the C button, will underline the inappropriate word. (The teacher needs to be flexible as there may be other words that could be changed)
To reveal the correct word select the small blue box and this will then alter the text to show the new word.
This is a cornucopia of different transformation exercises
This is a series of word transformation exercises that are a part of the Cambridge Proficiency examination. They have been taken directly from the site https://www.esl-lounge.com/proficiency-key-word-transformations.php Each one contains 24 different exercises. I am uploading them to this site as these questions are not available in this format. Whilst the exercises can be completed online, it is not in a suitable format for presentation on Zoom or Google Meet etc where participants cannot swap from one program to another so conveniently. Using PowerPoint the exercises can be presented to the whole class and response for each can be solicited by the teacher and the answer can be given. Click on the box to reveal the correct answer.
This is a series of exercises where the word in the statements 1 to 5 is exactly the same, but it is a different form. It could be the noun, adjective, negative, person etc and so the task is to find the route word and then all the different forms. There are two different exercises on each page. Enjoy.
These exercises are similar to those above except it is a single passage where the word is highlighted and needs to be corrected to be in the appropriate form. The first three are intermediate level, the rest are advanced.
I call these exercises Bloopers. What these are is a text in which 10 words are either spelt wrong or are totally incorrect, but the correct word sounds like the word in the text. For example I could write 'tank you' which should be corrected to 'thank you', or ' a whole gredation of learners' when I meant to say 'a whole generation of learners. Simply run the mouse over the text to reveal the pointer that shows the incorrect word. Click the incorrect word and it will appear in the list below. Then elicit from the class what the word should be. Click on the number next to the word and it will reveal the correct answer. Enjoy.
This next set of problems has a text where the participants have to decide if there is one word too many on each line. For instance if the sentence is 'This is an old ancient building', then either the word 'old' or ancient are unnecessary. To add to the challenge some of the lines are pefectly okay and do not need changing. Click on the box to reveal the extra word or indicate the sentence is okay as it is. Some of these texts have been taken from the following website: https://www.english-grammar.at/worksheets/language-in-use/editing-index.htm
This set pf exercises is an adaptation of the exercises presented on https://www.english-grammar.at/index.htm I have taken the simple matching exercise and made it into multiple choice, but I have also added an extra page where the definition of each combination is found. I find this interesting to demonstrate to the students the context in which the phrases can be used. It is essential that students don't just learn lots of new words, but also know how the words are used. You can demonstrate situations where the words make sense and others where the words just sound stupid. Enjoy.
