Practice Your Spelling

As with most languages, spelling is pretty important in English. It's also something that gives many native speakers problems too, so don't be too worried if you find English spelling difficult and confusing. In this activity you'll be able to practice spelling and your vocabulary in an enjoyable way.

The activity is a fast paced game. You have a row of letters and have to use them to create and type words as quickly as you can.

Task: 

Go to: http://deepleap.org/. The game starts as soon as you arrive. You will see some letters and a space below to type.

If you can't make words from the letters you see, just wait and more will appear on the right.

As the row fills, the letters on the left will disappear and be lost.
You must try to use as many of the letters as possible before they are lost and make as many words as you can.

You will lose any letters that are used in words spelled incorrectly.

Try to score as many points as you can. You will have 75 letters in total.

I hope you enjoy this game and play it regularly to help activate your vocabulary and practice your spelling.

Best

Nik Peachey - Pedagogical Director - PeacheyPublications Ltd

Play Word Games to Improve Your Vocabulary

Having a wide vocabulary is really important to push the level of your English. This activity shows you how to push the level of your vocabulary and revise some of the words you already know while playing a simple online game similar to Scrabble.

In this task you'll also learn how to use an online tool to help you find new words to use your letters.

Task:

Go to: http://wordsquared.com/. You don't need to register, just click on 'Start Playing'

You will see your row of letters at the bottom of the screen. Choose any letter on the board that you can join your letters onto and make a complete word.
Drag the letters onto the board the click on 'Add Word'. If the word is correct it will be added to the board and you will get a score and some new letters.

The next word you make must join onto the previous one and you can only build on the words you have added. Each word you add increases your score.

If you can't think of a word, go to Scabble helper at: http://www.wineverygame.com/ Type in your letters and in either the 'Prefix' or 'Suffix' box type in the letter that you want to join onto from the board and click on 'View words'.

You will then see a list of possible words that you can make with your letters. Add the one you want, but be sure to check the meaning of the new word if you don't already know it.

Continue with the game until you have at least 100 points. Keep a list of any new words and their meanings as you play.

Try to play the game every day and build up your score and your vocabulary.

• Here you can find more games to improve your vocabulary.

Related links for teachers:

• Create Image Books
• Create a Flickr Montage
• Great Time Line Tool
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Interactive presentations
• A Picture's worth
• Picture phrases
• Make Your EFL ESL Yearbook
• Personalised flashcards

Best

Nik Peachey

Learn How to Correct Errors

Students often expect their teacher to correct their written errors, but students can also learn a lot from looking for and correcting errors in written work.

This activity gives you the chance to test your correction skills and find errors in short texts using a site called BookOven and a tool called SpellChecker

Task:

• Go to: http://bookoven.com/ Here on the front page you will see a short text that may have an error.

• Look at the text carefully and try to find any errors. If you see one try to correct it. If you aren't sure you can copy and paste the text to http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/.
• Paste the text in to spellchecker and then 'Spell Check.'

• This will open a new window showing where any errors are.

• Go back to BookOven and correct the error. You will then be given another error to check. Try to find and correct at least 10 mistakes.
  

You can do this everyday for a few minutes and it will improve your ability to check and correct your own work. You can also use SpellChecker to check your own compositions.

• You can find more writing activities here.

Related links for teachers:

• Write Your Own Quick Biography
• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Drama project tools
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials
• Extending a Sentence
• 60 Second Writing Activity

Best

Nik Peachey
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Speed Up Your Memory

Good reading depends on your brain's ability to quickly and accurately recognise words. Today's activity tests your ability to recognise words by flashing quick phrases at you and then asking you to accurately reconstruct them.

The task uses a website called 'Games for the brain' which has a collection of mental challenges to help develop and test your IQ.

Task:

Go to: http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/speedread/

You will see a short phrase appear for a few seconds. Try to memorise the words you see.



The words will then disappear and you will have to type them into the answer field.



You get 10 points for a correct answer. You then have a tip on how to improve your memory and IQ. When you have read the tip click on continue and you'll see another phrase.
Keep playing the game until you score 100 points. I hope you enjoy this activity and be sure to come back tomorrow for more, or check the full list of EFL ESL activities here:

• Daily English Activities

Related links for teachers:

• Create Image Books
• Create a Flickr Montage
• Personalised flashcards
• Animating vocabulary
• Exploiting Image Sequences
• Tease your Brain

Best

Nik Peachey

Improve your English Typing and Punctuation

Having a good standard of English can really help you to get a good job - having a good standard of written English with good spelling, punctuation and fast typing can help you even more. Today's activity use a website called TypeRacer which turns improving your typing, spelling and punctuation into an enjoyable game.


You can play TypeRacer against the clock or you can challenge an opponent or friend. The website gives you a short text that you have to copy accurately (If you make mistakes you won't be able to proceed until you correct them.) and quickly.

When you finish the text you will be told your WPM speed (The number of Words you type Per Minute).

Task:

• Go to: http://play.typeracer.com/. You can either register (This will allow the site to remember your score if you want to use the site again and invite friends to challenge you) or you can play as a guest (No username or password is necessary)

• Click to play as a guest and then click on 'Practice'.
• Once you do this you will see a text and a field that you need to type the text into. You will have 12 seconds before you need to start typing. Use this time to look closely at the first few words.
• Once you start , you must type accurately and as fast as you can.

• You must pay very close attention to punctuation and spelling. If you make mistakes, you will have to correct them before you can continue.
• Try to play at least 3 times and improve your typing speed. If the first text is too difficult or you type very slowly, you will have the chance to make the text shorter and simpler.

I hope you enjoy improving your spelling, punctuation and typing speed.

Come back tomorrow for more EFL ESL activities.

Related links for teachers:

• Prompting reading speeds
• A Picture's worth
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Becoming a citizen journalist
• Interactive multiple choice activities
• Picture phrases
• Learning through karaoke!

Best

Nik Peachey

Send an English Singing Telegram

This activity is something for you to have some fun with. It is also good for helping you to improve your spelling punctuation and your ability to write short concise text.

The activity uses a site called KakoMessenger which enables you to create singing telegram messages that looks like the one below. Click the image to hear the message.

Task:

• Go to: http://www.kakomessenger.com/ There you will see a choice of two different singers. Select the one that you would like to sing your text for you.

• Then type your text. Make sure that you are careful with spelling and punctuation (Your singer can only sing words in English if they are spelled correctly)

Here are some possible things to write about:

• Write some tips for learning English
• Send a message to an English speaking friend
• Send a message to your English teacher
• Create a message about this site and then post it to the comments

• Once you have written your message, click on 'PLAY' and wait a couple of minutes. Your telegram should then start to play.

• If you like the message you can then send it to someone by email, or you can click on 'MODIFY' to change it or correct the spelling or punctuation.

I hope you enjoy this activity and send lots of singing telegrams to your English speaking friends.

Have a good weekend and come back on Monday for more free English language learning activities.

Related links for teachers:

• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages
• Create your own game

Best

Nik Peachey

English Texting Language

SMS and other forms of texting are changing the spelling of some words in English. Many people in the UK don't like this kind of spelling, but many younger people do.

Here's a quick activity to help you learn about internet safety and English spellings for texting.

Task:

• This is a safety advertisement that was designed to inform young people in the UK about internet safety.

Click the image to make it bigger

• Look at the tips and try to write them with 'proper' English spellings.

• Once you have done this you can post your answers in the comments to this page and we'll see who is the first to get them all right.

Remember that this kind of 'text' spelling is not acceptable in formal or academic writing in English and many older people are annoyed by it (and don't understand it).

• If you want to read a newspaper article about this from the British Newspapers click here: The £3,000 'txt-spk' poster that 'undermines English teaching'
  

Do people in your country change the spelling of words when they send SMS text messages?
Please leave us a comment and tell us all about text messaging in your country.

Come back tomorrow for more EFL ESL activities.

Related links for teachers:

• Listening Dictation Puzzles fo EFL ESL
• Interactive multiple choice activities
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk

Best

Nik Peachey

Improve Your Vocabulary and Make Friends

Improving your vocabulary is more than just learning the meaning of new words. You need to be able to hear them, spell them and use them too. That's why Babbel is such a useful site.

Babbel can help you to learn new words with its interactive activities. The activities have pictures and sound and once you can recognise the words you hear, you have to learn to spell them. There is a good range of topics to learn about.
The site also has a social network so you can make friends with other people who speak your language or who speak the language you want to learn.

You'll need to register to use the site and create your own profile.

Task:

• Go to: http://www.babbel.com/ and click on 'Register for free'.

• When you get into the site you'll need to add some extra information so that the site knows what language you speak and what language you want to learn.

• Then click on 'Learn' and choose a topic to study. As you can see I'm studying Spanish, but there are a wide range of English topics for you.

• The site keeps track of your score, so visit every day and try to build up a good score

Hope you enjoy this site and make some friends there too. Post a comment below to tell me if you enjoyed this site.

More activities tomorrow.

Best

Nik Peachey