The English Blog

2012 News Quiz

A good idea for a lesson at this time of year is to look back at what happened around the world over the previous 12 months. This slideshow forms the basis of a quiz about people and events that made the news in 2012. I created it for use in class with my EM Normandie students. The quiz is in two parts. To see the questions and answers for the first part (and get the hyperlinks to work), you'll have to download the PowerPoint version and check the Comments for each slide.

I put the class into teams of three students. For Part 1, I asked each team in turn to choose a question, and gave them a maximum of three points depending on how complete their answer was. If they couldn't answer, I threw it open to the rest of the class. In Part 2 (Who Is It?), the first team to give the correct answer got a point. The winning team won a packet of Hobnob chocolate biscuits (it is Christmas, after all).

US Election 2012 - Who Said What?

US Election 2012 — Who Said What? from Jeffrey Hill

I produced this quiz for my EM Normandie students as part of a lesson on the 2012 US Election. The quotes are also available in the form of a handout, which you can download here.

US Election Quiz 2012

US Election Quiz 2012 from Jeffrey Hill

I produced this quiz to use with my EM Normandie students as part of a lesson on the U.S. election. There are 15 multiple choice questions. You can find a version with answers after the initial quiz on slides 17-52. 

Creating Online Cloze Tests with Learnclick

 

Learnclick is a website which enables you to create online gap-fill (or cloze) exercises and share them with your students (or everybody).

Just take any text and paste it into the textbox. Then select a word for which you want to create a gap and click on "Create Gap Word". You can choose between three types of exercise:

• Empty Boxes - This is set by default. It will simply create empty boxes to fill out.
• Generated Dropdowns - This will automatically and intelligently generate drop down boxes from the gaps you created. The boxes have maximum 4 entries.
• Drag & Drop - Creates boxes that one has to drag into the empty fields.

When you've made your test, you can assign it for everyone to use or just the students of a class you created. Here's a sample test I made.

Learnclick is free to use, but upgrading to Premium Membership allows you access to "Grades and Statistics", and also enables you to download your tests in PDF format.

VERDICT
The site may not be much to look at, but it works brilliantly well. And $10 a year for Premium Membership is a real bargain. I'll definitely be using it with my students.

LESSON IDEA
Cut and paste the transcripts you find beneath the Reuters videos on The English Blog, and use them as the basis for gap-fill exercises.

ALSO SEE
• Review by Nik Peachey from his QuickShout site
• Use “LearnClick” For An Excellent Metacognitive Lesson (Larry Ferlazzo)

Quickworksheets: Create Vocabulary and Grammar Worksheets Online

I got an email from Timothy Due, asking me to review Quickworksheets, a website he founded that allows users to create a variety of vocabulary and grammar worksheets online. So here goes ...

OVERVIEW
I signed up for a free account, which gave me access to three worksheet generators: Word Scramble, Basic Wordsearch Maker and Minimal Pair Word Tree (a Premium Account costs $2.99 a month and unlocks a further 15 worksheet generators and other additional features).

1. Word Scramble automatically jumbles the spelling of up to 20 words and generates a worksheet with letter spaces for the correct spelling of each word. You can choose difficulty options such as whether to display hints or a word box. See example here.
2. Basic Wordsearch Maker automatically fits up to 12 listed words into a grid of letters. Students find the words, that are placed either vertically, horizontally or diagonally within the grid. See example here.
3. Minimal Pair Word Tree creates a listening tree exercise from 5 sets of minimal pairs. At each juncture the teacher speaks one word from the pair, and the students follow the path, listening at each juncture, to arrive at the correct number at the bottom of the tree. The exercise can be repeated multiple times using the same worksheet. See example here.

You can find examples of the 15 other paid worksheet types here.

Finished worksheets can be downloaded as a PDF file or as HTML for editing in a word processor (premium members only), and are stored online for easy access.

Another useful feature is the fact that members can share the worksheets they have created (there are currently 160 available).

VERDICT
There are plenty of free online worksheet generators available, (see here, here and here, for example), but most of them are cluttered with ads, and I couldn't find any that are as well-designed and easy-to-use as Quickworksheets. The variety of worksheet types available, including crosswords, multiple-choice quizzes, and bingo grids, is impressive. However, the cherry on the top (or the icing on the cake, if you prefer) is the fact that the worksheets are fully customisable. If, like me, you spend a lot of time creating worksheets for your students, it's definitely worth thinking about signing up for a premium account.

Road To Grammar Quiz Creator

A new tool has just been added to the excellent Road To Grammar website. Now you can create a multiple choice quiz and save it on Road To Grammar for your students (or whomever) to use. No log-in is necessary, but you can add a password if you like. When you finish creating and uploading the quiz, you will get a unique URL where the quiz will be located. Click here to see an example, and click here to create your own quiz.

COMMENT
Only three answer choices are allowed. An option to create four would have been useful, especially for teachers preparing students for the TOEIC and similar exams where four choices are standard.

Jon Snow's 2011 Quiz of the Year

COMMENT
I only got 9 out of 20 on this Channel 4 quiz (oh the shame!) See if you can do any better.

ALSO SEE
• CNN 2011 News Quiz

Test Your News Knowledge: 2011 End of Year Quiz

How much do you know about the stories that made news in 2011? Take this CNN Quiz and find out.

COMMENT
Got 9 out of 10 on that one. It was rather easy though (Silvio Berlusconi was PM of which country!).

The Body Quiz

Here's a quiz I prepared for my students on the human body. The answers are at the end.

Human body quiz

View more presentations from Jeffrey Hill

The Biz Quiz: Steve Jobs Special Edition

The excellent tutor2u Business Studies Blog has a tribute edition of The Biz Quiz, featuring 10 questions based on the life of Steve Jobs, one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, who sadly passed away on 5 October 2011. You can also download a printable version of the quiz.

COMMENT
I got eight questions right out of ten. Not bad, but I'm kicking myself over question 10.

Toporopa: Geography Quizzes

Sonja Snoek sent me an email telling me about her site Toporopa.

Toporopa provides educational and entertaining quizzes for everyone who wants to know more about Europe: countries, capitals, flags, regions, monarchies, mountains, lakes, seas, rivers, islands and other subjects.

The website is available in English, French, German, Dutch, Irish and Spanish.

COMMENT
A nicely-designed site, and a fun way of learning the names of countries and other geographical features. The quiz maps are full-screen, which means they can be used with a whole class on a video projector screen or interactive whiteboard.

ClassMarker: Online Test Creator

I've been looking for a way to create tests and quizzes and put them online for my students. The best solution I've found so far is ClassMarker, a "professional hosted online testing service with free and paid options available". To get an idea of what you can do with ClassMarker, take the tour and try the sample online test. I particularly like the fact that you can embed YouTube videos or pictures in your quizzes.

COMMENT
The basic version is free. This allows you to create and put your tests online. However, if you want to be able to collect your students' scores, you'll have to sign up for the Professional version. For educators, this costs $24.95 a year, which seems like pretty good value to me.  I'd be interested to know if anyone has used another online testing service.

English Language Quiz

If you're in London, don't miss the British Library's Evolving English exhibition, which runs until 3rd April. If you can't make the exhibition, see how you do on this quiz from the 'Evolving English' website.

ALSO SEE
• The 'conTROversy' over changing pronunciations (Sunday Telegraph)

Slideshow: TOEIC Vocabulary Quiz

Here's a slide presentation I put together to practice TOEIC vocabulary with my students. I put them into teams of three and asked each team in turn to pick a number between 1 and 30 (see Slide 2). They then had to come up with a sentence describing the picture. I gave from 0 to 3 points for each sentence taking into account relevance, range of vocabulary, accuracy and pronunciation. The team with the most points after 3 or 4 rounds was the winner. I'm sure you could use the pictures in many other ways, however.

TOEIC Picture Quiz

View more presentations from jeffreyhill.

FOOTNOTE
The number links on the second slide don't seem to work on this version of the presentation. You can download the original PowerPoint here. (Click on the pictures to return to the slide with the numbers.)

Saint Patrick's Day Quiz and Resources

Here's a quiz about Ireland I created as part of a lesson I'm doing for Saint Patrick's Day, which is on March 17.

Saint Patrick's Day Quiz

View more presentations from jeffreyhill.

MORE SAINT PATRICK'S DAY RESOURCES
• St Patrick's Day—History.com (Fantastic collection of videos and articles. Easily the best single site.)
• Learn English Central (British Council)
• St. Patrick's Day Quizzle (iPhone app)
• The Best Sites for Learning about Saint Patrick's Day (Larry Ferlazzo)