Activity Ideas and Links

This page links you to great simple activity ideas we found on the Internet around HLT. These are ideas that take the entire person to experience the activity, whether they be strand specific activities (listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing and representing), or theme based activities.

Enjoy.

1. Drumming the Past Continuous - the link to the English language version of this activity can be found at: http://www.hltmag.co.uk/oct11/less02.htm . This idea works well with languages that have at least two past tenses - one that describes actions occurring in the past and one that defines a specific moment in time in the past. Use the drum idea, or something else that can be used in a small group to define an action in the past. then ask students to explain what happened. This also calls on the experiential learning side of things to create the experience and the describe it.
2. Thematic use of Images - bring to class images that could be grouped in a number of different ways, by themes that you or your students could come up with. Have students pick a number of images and group them according to that theme and what they have experience with. Ask students to explain.
3. Free Listening - Expert Reviews - Invite students to select two or three interesting audio or multimedia resources online. Students review the resources and must provide interesting bits of language explanations around the key ideas of why those resources are cool and interesting. reviews can be shared in podcasts, blog entries or live presentations.

Humanising Language Teaching Home website - a coll site with tons of ideas (English mainly but also transferable to other languages)

Humanistic Approaches to Language Teaching - a website - this lists the critical methodologies behind this approach - Suggestopedia, the silent way, community language learning, total physical response,

Reflections on a Humanistic Approach to Teaching and Learning - an interesting article.

Principles of HLT - an interesting page as reference.

Humanistic Theory - a video overview

Humanistic Language Teaching Article - Interesting and simple reflections