Minimal resources | Teaching English | British Council

Jane Calder
Hi,
You already have the best resources any teacher could hope for...students. You can get them to create the resources, bring the resources into class or become the resources.

Creating resources: Giving crazy presentations

Ask students to use something in the class in a non traditional sense, or unusual and inventive way, to practice grammatical structures of use. They can give mini presentations and students can vote on the most creative invention.
For example, his pencil is used to choose people in a game. First, everyone has to sit in a circle. After that, you have to spin it on the floor. Then, you have to follow the direction of the tip etc etc.

Speaking and listening: Giving instructions

Ask students to collect a few things in the classroom (pencils, erasers, piece of chalk. even pebbles, leaves etc.) place the students in pairs back to back. Student A has to place his objects in a pattern and then tell his partner what order they are in. Student B has to listen and recreate the pattern. To make it trickier tell them that they can't use the name of the object. Good for practicing listening and adjectives. "Put the long, black thing next to the soft, round thing-a-ma-bob"

Speaking fluency

Get students to incorporate classroom objects into a skit or short dramatic sketch. Ask students to choose a place and a situation and a relationship. Then, students choose some objects in the classroom (desk, shoe, glasses, etc). Two students go to the front of the class and begin improvising a scene. Every 30 seconds or so give an object to a new student who must incorporate herself into the skit naturally whilst using and refering to the object.
For example:

Place: Canada
Relationship:; a sled driver and a customer
Situation: polar bear hunt
Student A and Student B are talking about the weather (of course)
and how they can't find any polar bears etc. Student A is angry because he paid a lot of money to see polar bears etc.
Student C enters with a whistle. She pretends to be training for the winter Olympics in snow running.

These tend to be silly and very funny.

That's all for now: I have to go to work!

P.C. Joshi, India
Hello Sharmila, if you don't have many resources you can use your students and yourself as the available resources. You can build your lessons on the following aids. 1. the clothes they are wearing
2. the food they eat
3. the house they live in.
4. what do they see in nature.
5. ask students what they know about yourself
6. ask them about the weather.
I hope these topics might help.

Richard Kearney
Flash cards, post it notes from 3M.empty cardboard boxes, street chalk(first rain It's gone). Ask a company to use their lecture rooms or sponsor you by purchasing material for your class.

Demostene
Dear Friend,
Basically, you use the old Audio-lingual Method.Use dialogues, sentence repetition, drills, dialogue memorization, plays, etc., translate native songs into English whenever possible. Use a communicative approach with emphasis on oral production. Just forget the written language for a while.

Ruth Lüers, Germany
Hello to Nepal. Even in Germany you do not always have all the facilities.

In large groups, I've tried to form subgroups and set them tasks, the results of which they would have to report back to the group as a whole. This is good on vocabulary or dialogue.

Make sure, though, that participants speak English among themselves, even when the teacher/trainer is not near.
Best wishes

Alex S
The main condition - your pupils should have ears - the rest is secondary.

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