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One of the big problems all teachers face, whether teaching English to children or adults, is maintaining learners? interest throughout our lessons. Consequently, we often have to be very creative in the techniques we use. This unit is giving us many options of the different teaching strategies and themes that we can use during the lessons. Planning for the use of songs in class: ? Carefully examine what it is you want your class to learn in the lesson; ? Think about the language level of your class; ? The age of the students; ? The cultural differences; For younger students it is advisable to use rhymes, actions along with the word so the students can easily understand the meaning, and strong rhythms. The older students might feel uncomfortable to sing or dance, but we can use the song for writing or listening activities. Use of games in the classroom is an interesting process to make the lesson funnier, engaging and productive. All students, no matter the age like to be involved in more relaxing way of learning. Games are certainly one of the ways to do that. By playing a game, students may be able to understand a new concept or idea, take on a different perspective, or experiment with different options or variables. Games provide a context for engaging practice and students develop a variety of connections with the content and can form positive memories of learning. Through lively games of charades, Pictionary, or others, students willingly use the vocabulary and structures, repeatedly gaining much-needed practice. There are many benefits of using stories in the classroom such as: great vocabulary builders, good for all age groups, engaging and motivating, a useful model for writing, all the language skills can be developed when using stories in the classroom. Also, the use of drama in the classroom can be a fun and amusing warmer activity, but we should be careful which level and age are the students, because not all the activities are appropriate for the students? age. Using arts and crafts in the classroom can be an excellent way to facilitate language learning. Providing students with the opportunity to practice the arts, have multiple benefits, some of which are: ? access multiple intelligences, ? develop higher thinking skills, ? enhance multicultural understandings, ? build self esteem, ? gain positive emotional responses to learning, ? engage through a variety of learning styles. Here we can also add the holidays and other seasonal activities which are useful and helpful in the skills development. But when talking about holidays we should be more considerate and sensitive in order not to hurt students? feelings.
