A selection of English ESL phonics printables

Culture, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication

Adjectives to describe feelings, emotions

Adjectives to describe personality and character

Adjectives: Gradable / Non-gradable adjectives

Articles: Definite or indefinite article (a, an or the)

BE + infinitive structures (e.g. he was to become famous)

Clauses of contrast (e.g.  although, while)

Clauses of purpose (e.g. in order to, so that, so as to)

Clauses of reason (e.g. because, because of, due to, as, since)

Cleft sentences (e.g. It's Joey we're looking for)

Comparison: Comparative adjectives and structures

Comparison: Superlative adjectives and structures

Conditional 2 (second conditional) - would

Conditionals: Conditional phrases (e.g. unless, provided that, as long as)

Conjunctions (aka connectives, e.g. and, but, or, so, then)

Contractions (shortened forms, e.g. don't, aren't, etc.)

Determiners (words that can come before nouns)

Formal and informal English (politeness or colloquial language)

Future perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Future perfect simple and continuous (progressive) tense

Future phrases (e.g. be about to, bound to, likely to, due to, set to + INF)

Homonyms (two words with the same pronunciation - homophones and homographs)

It as preparatory subject (e.g. it's raining, it's nice of you to)

Linking verbs (aka copulas, e.g. I am a student)

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how to accuse somebody of something in English

how to apologize, say sorry, forgive and express regret in English

how to ask for information and make inquiries in English

how to ask for something, make requests in English

how to blame somebody for something in English

how to defend yourself from criticism in English

how to deny or admit something in English

how to describe things or people in English

how to emphasize important things in English

how to encourage or discourage people in English

how to evaluate people or progress in English

how to express agreement /disagreement in English

how to express approval and disapproval  in English

how to express cause and effect in English

how to express interest in something in English

how to express likelihood, probability in English

how to express likes and dislikes in English

how to express sequence and chronology in English

how to express shock and disbelief in English

how to express sympathy and condolences in English

how to give permission, authorization in English

how to inform somebody about some news in English

how to interpret what was said in English

how to keep a conversation going in English

how to make guesses about something in English

how to make, accept and refuse offers in English

how to order or make a booking in English

how to persuade, convince people in English

how to praise people and express appreciation in English

how to reassure somebody of something in English

how to refuse and object to something in English

how to remind people of something in English

how to rephrase, paraphrase what was said in English

how to say thank you, express gratitude in English

Nouns: Collective nouns (team, class, family, committee)

Nouns: Proper nouns (names of people, cities, companies)

Oxymorons (phrases with words of contradictory meaning, e.g. living dead)

Participles: Past participle (e.g. HAVING DONE)

Participles: Present participle (e.g. DOING)

Parts of Speech (aka word classes, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Past perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Phonetics (pronunciation, IPA, phonetic symbols)

Plural nouns: regular plurals with S ending

Prefixes (e.g. A, UN, IM, DIS, MIS, EN, etc. )

Prepositions vs adverbs (e.g. before me, saw him before.)

Prepositions: Double prepositions (e.g. out of)

Prepositions: Participle prepositions (e.g. pending, concerning)

Prepositions: Phrase prepositions (e.g. by means of)

Present perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Present perfect simple or present continuous tense

Present simple tense: S for third person singular verbs

Present simple vs continuous (progressive) tense

Pronouns: EACH OTHER, ONE ANOTHER (reciprocal pronouns)

Pronouns: Possessive pronouns (e.g. my, mine)

Pronouns: Reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself))

Pronouns: SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, EVERYBODY, NO ONE, NOTHING, etc.

Pronouns: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE (demonstratives)

Pronouns: YOU and THEY to talk about people in general

Quantifiers (e.g. some, many, much, any, few, little)

Questions: WH questions (open-ended questions)

Reported speech: reported questions (indirect questions)

There is / there are / there was / there were / there will be, etc.

Verbs: Transitive or intransitive verbs (words that can or cannot stand with objects)

Working with Paragraphs: ordering, titling

Role play, miming, drama activity or improv game

Pictionary (picture dictionary) or picture matching

Writing an opinion essay (persuasive essay)

Learners who are Pre-A1 have just begun learning English and will first learn how to:<ul><li>Say the letters in the alphabet and numbers</li><li>Say hello, talk about names and age</li><li>Name the colors and dates, express likes and dislikes</li></ul>

Absolute beginners who have begun to learn the letters and numbers

Learners taking the A1 Elementary exam should be able to:<ul><li>Introduce themselves and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, things he/she has, people he/she knows.</li><li>Communicate using very basic phrases as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: common adjectives & adverbs of frequency, going to, how much/how many, imperatives, I'd like, 's – possessive, common prepositions of place and time, present simple & continuous, there is/are</li></ul>

A very basic tourist level, which is enough for buying food and a bus ticket

Learners taking the A2 Pre-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand sentences and frequently used expressions (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).</li><li>Complete tasks that are routine and exchange information about familiar matters.</li><li>Describe matters of immediate need in simple terms.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: countable/uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, future will/going to, much/many, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, common phrasal verbs, common modals: can/should</li></ul>

A tourist who can do basic conversations about the past, present and future

Learners taking the B1 Intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand points regarding family, work, school or leisure-related topics.</li><li>Deal with most travel situations in areas where the language is spoken.</li><li>Create simple texts on topics of personal interest.</li><li>Describe experiences, events, dreams, and ambitions, as well as opinions or plans in brief.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: question tags, intensifiers: too/enough, future tenses, past tenses, modals, conditionals, wh-questions in the past</li></ul>

Learners who can deal with both familiar and routine situations, in friendly and work contexts

Learners taking the B2 Upper-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.</li><li>Interact with fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without difficulty for either party.</li><li>Produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain an opinion on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: perfect tenses, mixed conditionals, modals in the present, phrasal verbs, reported speech, wish, relative clauses</li></ul>

The level where you can be a tour guide for your foreign friends and talk about a lot of topics, even abstract ones, with ease and fluency

Learners taking the C1 Advanced exam should be able to: Express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts. Produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, using linking phrases (=words that connect ideas between sentences). Main grammar points to know: inversion, mixed conditionals, modals in the past, all passive forms, phrasal verbs (all patterns), wish/if only for regrets

Learners who can smoothly communicate in every walk of life, read long texts and write well

Learners taking the C2 Proficient exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand almost everything read or heard with ease.</li><li>Summarize information from a variety of sources into a coherent presentation.</li><li>Express themselves using precise meaning in complex scenarios.</li><li>Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations</li></ul>

Get here and you are ready to study in English at university

Simplified worksheet on the three ways to pronounce -ed endings: /t/ /d/ or /id/

How to Pronounce -ed

Listening activity that trains students to distinguish between similar phonemes - in this case S vs SH. Full usage instructions and a free online generator to make other word trees available at my website: http://quickworksheets.net

Shoot or Suit - Minimal Pair Word Tree

Useful worksheet to learn how to pronounce  the past simple regular form. you need to find the  written letters before the -ed form to know where to write. I hope you like it.

PAST SIMPLE (-ED) PRONUNCIATION ACTIVITY

This worksheet serves as a guide to pronunciation of -ED Past Simple regular verbs endings in standard British English. The rules and examples are given in a clearly arranged table that students are asked to fill in. The correct pronunciation is facilitated by encouraging the students to use the phonemic alphabet transcription (IPA). Answers are included.

Pronunciation of -ED Past Simple regular verbs ending

The idea is to have the pupils work individually or preferably in pairs/groups and ask each other the questions. To find the answer, they have to read and understand the phonetically written answers.

There are ten jokes, but also ten pictures, have your pupils match the corresponding jokes and pictures.

Phonetics - Jokes with phonetically written answers #2

A test paper for  a phonetic competition, transcription, pronunciation, stress

Phonetic competition

This worksheet makes use of the Betty Botter Tongue Twister to help students with pronunciation. It includes a brief minimal pair practice in which students must match the words to their phonetic transcription. I have also included a brief list of definitions for a few words. Note: there are two transcriptions, one uses a tap for the double t spelling and the other uses a t for the double t spelling. In American English, we use the tap (it looks like an upside down r) in normal speech and the t in careful speech (usually when we are clarifying the word for someone). The QR codes are for youtube and soundcloud so that your students can reference a native speaker's pronunciation when you are not around to help them. :) This worksheet was creating using the images I created for my Tongue Twister Tuesdays:

 Feel free to use this as well. Have fun getting tongue tied! ;)



Betty Botter

A simple matching exercise to practise three different pronunciations of digraph "ch". Key included. Hope you find it useful. Have a nice weekend, mada :) 

How to pronounce "ch" in English correctly? *Key included*

This worksheet was created as a fun way to introduce or review the simple past. Students must fill in the present form of the verb and then the simple past form. The activity is meant to resemble a mead notebook, with some fun sketches to brighten, an otherwise boring, grammar lecture. On the first page you have some regular verbs and on the second page you will find some common irregular verbs. It may be worth mentioning to your students that the most common verbs in most languages are irregular because they are the most commonly used and therefore most changeable over time. This emphasizes the importance of learning the irregulars. You really can't speak a language well without them! :)



On the bottom of the worksheet there is a brief activity for pronunciation. 

When I used this worksheet, I had my students put their hands on their throats and make a sound (eg. v vs. f, b vs. p, g vs. k, etc). If it was "voiced," their vocal chords vibrate and if it's "unvoiced," their vocal chords do not vibrate. I had them make different sounds and tell if it was voiced or unvoiced and then look at the rule on the page to determine how a word would be pronounced. Then we went through the list of provided words to determine each word's particular pronunciation. This helped them to understand the meaning of "voiced" versus "unvoiced" and to be more active in the learning process. I've found that "ed" pronunciation can be very challenging for non-native speakers. So, it's crucial to make sure they understand why it's pronounced differently in different words.



I hope this is useful to you! Have fun and good luck!



Please feel free to give feedback. Through teaching I'm always learning and, as a result, very aware that I have plenty to learn still. If you think this could be improved, tell me! :)



Simple Past Grammar Diary - Regular & Irregular Verbs

Students look at each picture and write the beginning sound letter in the box below

Write the correct letter

A pronunciation worksheet to practice the unvoiced "f"and the voiced "v" sounds.

Pronunciation of F and V

A simple worksheet to teach the three different sounds for 'ed in past tense regular verbs. I find it very useful to check on my students' understanding and pronunciation. Some translation into castellano, but this is easy to change. I found it hard to categorise from the drop-down lists.  Hope you find it useful too.

468 Phonics English ESL worksheets pdf & doc