How would you teach these English words??

Tokyo

As the title suggests, I teach English overseas, and am drawing up lesson plans for next week's classes. The following words are part of the vocabulary that I need to teach, and I"m somewhat stumped as to how I'll convey the meaning properly.


1. John's knowledge of French is now excellent.

2. I'm serious. From now on, no more monkey business.

3. I liked that movie a lot. It had a very compelling storyline.

How would you explain the above three words to ESL students??

Nicole.

mike_ie wrote: »

As the title suggests, I teach English overseas, and am drawing up lesson plans for next week's classes. The following words are part of the vocabulary that I need to teach, and I"m somewhat stumped as to how I'll convey the meaning properly.


1. John's knowledge of French is now excellent.

2. I'm serious. From now on, no more monkey business.

3. I liked that movie a lot. It had a very compelling storyline.

How would you explain the above three words to ESL students??

Knowledge- collection of facts, information

Monkey business- no more messing around, do the work or what task you're actually meant to do.

Compelling- attention grabbing, couldn't stop myself from watching it, very interesting

I'm no expert, these are just ideas. It might be an idea if you have word to type in the word into Microsoft Word and press thesaurus, look at their suggestions and keep clicking until you find a word that they are more likely to understand. Don't be afraid to give examples first and then explain the concrete definition later.

Tokyo

Thank you for that - unfortunately when teaching second language learner at the level I"m teaching, the dictionary definition isn't enough - I need to get the word across to them in a way that they won't mistake it for another word. And of course, ESL being what it is, I can't translate it for them Hence my problem with these particular words.

playedalive

I would give a sentence with the expression and then concept check by asking students a few simple yes/no questions.

Like for something like, monkey business? I.e. I would not study and my mother told me to quit with the monkey business (not a great use of the expression but still).

Then ask concept check questions (a simple question)

Does the boy have a monkey? No

Is the mother happy or angry with her son? angry

Hope that's an idea

Tokyo

playedalive wrote: »

Then ask concept check questions (a simple question)

You done CELTA by any chance? CCQ's are their baby, as far as I am aware

playedalive

mike_ie wrote: »

You done CELTA by any chance? CCQ's are their baby, as far as I am aware

Close. I did the Irish equivalent CELT. It's roughly the same but it's only accredited by the Irish Department of Education. But we did CCQ, TTT (Teacher Talking Time), and STT (Student Talking Time) too.