ESL SQUARES [1]

This adapted activity is borrowed from human rights field to introduce students to different topics of ESL. During this 15-min activity each participant should find a different person from the group to answer one question and put his/her name in the square. The task is to answer as many squares as possible during the allotted time, and find out which questions were so difficult to answer. It is a useful tool as part of the intake and determination of the different levels in the class.

 

What is ESL?

Name a country where English is the official second language?

Tell me about a situation you felt yourself in bad need to know English?

Are there any letters in your native alphabet you don’t find in English?

What is your level in English: beginner, intermediate, or advanced?

Put in the Past Perfect: They leave by the time we arrive!

Have you sat for any English test before?

e.g. TOEFL

What is your need area in English?

Do you write, read, and communicate well in English?

Which is correctly spelled: organization or organization?

I go or I gone, which is correct?

Make correction:

He was born in midnight of Dec. 6, 1990.

What is the difference between regular and irregular verbs?

Find a verb, which differs in Present, Past and Past Participle forms?

Find a verb, which is the same in Present, Past and Past Participle forms?

Find a verb that its forms alike in Past and Past Participle?

Find a verb that its Present, Past, and Past Participle are alike?

Make Correction:

He laughed of my mistake

Find a verb that its Present and Past Participle forms are alike?

Find a verb that its Present and Past forms are alike?

Put this in Progressive past: I drink beer

Put in the future progressive: I eat my lunch at noon

Put in the Present Perfect: He just returned from abroad.

Make correction:

He believed of his innocence.

 


[1] Created by Mohamed I. Elgadi (UMASS-Amherst, 2001), Adapted from David Shiman, Teaching Human Rights. (Denver: CTIR, 1999)