Curated OER
Phonetics: The Study of Speech Sounds
A beginning study of linguistics will include phonetics and the way sound is made. Show your class these great slides with pictures and examples of consonants, vowels, and blends. Placement of the tongue, lips, etc. are displayed to give...
Curated OER
European Day of Languages
Young adult or adult English learners complete activities that test reading comprehension, vocabulary and grammar skills, listening and speaking, as well as writing skills. After reading a document on the European Day of Languages, they...
Curated OER
Major Regional Dialects
What does your dialect sound like? Examine variation in English as it relates to geographic regions with your class. They recognize some of the major differences between regional dialects and determine that everyone speaks a dialect....
Curated OER
Understanding Points of View
Investigate the importance of author's point of view. Young linguists study primary source documents related to the Treaty of Casco Bay. The first source is authored by the Native American Chiefs, the second by an English...
Curated OER
Teaching Social Studies in English
Case studies, an examination of images, and readings of passages from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are used to spark conversations in ESL/ELD social studies classes about this highly-charged topic. Using a variety of...
EngageNY
Analyzing a Central Idea: Carlotta’s Journey to Justice
Verbs are deceptive and like to disguise themselves. Young linguists identify verbals, specifically gerunds, infinitives, and participles when analyzing the third stage of Carlotta's journey in the novel A Mighty Long Way. Bridge...
Curated OER
A Discourse on the History of Language
Analyze and make inferences from the information used by linguists to construct the evolution of languages. They research different dating techniques to explain how scientists infer age with evidence.
Farmington Public Schools
British Literature Honors: Beowulf
Whether new to teaching Beowulf or an experience pro, you'll find much to like in a richly detailed unit plan that asks readers to consider how the epic represents the difficulty in defining good and evil but also reflects the changing...
Curated OER
Structure of Natural Narratives
Class pairs select a prompt from a provided list and tell (and record) their story to their partner. They then examine linguist William Labov's model for natural narratives, and apply his model to their tale. Next, class members watch...
Curated OER
Irony
Using examples from Socrates to Johnny Carson, this slideshow presents your students with the history and definition of dramatic irony, satire, situational irony, and tragic irony. This presentation would be useful in a language arts...
Curated OER
Antonyms
Familiarize linguists with antonyms as they examine examples and match up opposites. First, scholars read a short description of antonyms, writing as many antonyms for big as they can. Then, they match up pairs of words that are antonyms...
Curated OER
The ee Sound
When two vowels take a walk, the first one does the talking! Scholars see this motto put to use as they study the /ee/ sound in various spelling patterns. Learners read a short introduction on this concept before reading several example...
University of North Carolina
Poetry Explications
Explication may sound like a fancy word, but it's just a fancy way to say analysis. Using a handout on poetry explications, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, writers learn how to break down and analyze a poem. The...
Curated OER
Perspectives on Written & Spoken English
Students explore issues surrounding language norms, including the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive norms, the differences between norms for spoken English and those for written English, how word meanings change, and...
Curated OER
Poems and Translation (from Spanish to English)
Students read and are read various poems in their native language of Spanish. In groups or individually, they translate the poems into English and practice speaking English by reading them to the class. They answer comprehension...
Curated OER
Capturing and Sharing Language Acquisition
Practice language development and linguistics with a lesson featuring audio recordings. As kids record the ways they pronounce words and sentences, they learn to upload and organize their audio files into iTunes.
Curated OER
Newspaper Unit: Reading Lesson Plan
Work on identifying the different parts of a newspaper with your English learners. After reviewing newspaper terminology, pupils pair up and complete a scavenger hunt, looking for specific things in the newspaper and recording their...
Curated OER
Fun with Surnames: Fun Trivia Quiz
Covering a unit of surnames, linguistics or the history of the English language? Then this might be a great pre-test or sponge activity for you. Test learners' knowledge of how and where certain surnames originated. As with all Fun...
Curated OER
Language with Linguistic Legos
Learners visualize and manipulate sentences as building blocks, and, given a key, use Legos™ to demonstrate how to construct sentences of variety (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex).
Curated OER
English - Homonyms
In this grammar worksheet, students learn about homonyms and homophones. They then use what they learned to answer 14 questions. The answers are on the last page of the packet.
Curated OER
Creative Writing: Children's Building Blocks
Your class can participate in a writing program involving four building blocks. By exploring words, sentences, writing forms, and story organization, they improve their creative writing skills throughout this year-long unit. Early in the...
Curated OER
Exploring the Complexities of Language
An interview with Dr. Rosemary Beam de Azcona launches a study of the complexities of language and how meaning changes across languages and cultures. The investigation continues as class members view clips of the film, The Tailenders,...
Curated OER
Ambiguity and Puns
Get a giggle from this presentation about puns and ambiguity. From ad campaigns to old jokes to pictures of animals made out of vegetables, the slides are amusing, informative, and bizarre. The presentation spends more time providing...
Curated OER
Sentence Combining
Learners practice sentence combining at increasingly difficult levels throughout a week. They begin with nouns and verbs and build to contrasts, parallels, etc.