Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

A cloze exercise for Motor Vehicle students. To support subject knowledge, working out the meanings of technical vocabulary and learning subject specific spellings.

Editor's note

Written specifically for the new reformed English content which expects secure homophone skills at much lower levels than previously. Covers 6 of the 22 homophone spellings required at E3 using differentiated sets of cloze exercises. 7 sets each with 15 questions / sentences plus detailed teaching notes and an appendix listing all E1, E2 & E3 spellings.

Written specifically for the new reformed English content which expects secure homophone skills at much lower levels than previously. Covers all the homophone spellings required at E2 using differentiated sets of cloze exercises. 7 sets each with 15 questions / sentences plus detailed teaching notes and an appendix listing all E1 & E2 spellings.

These three simple resources are aimed for teaching the layout features and conventions of informal and formal letter writing.  There are three templates: 

This lesson was designed to help learners prepare to write articles for their L1 writing exam. 

There is a reading text "Woman ran last 18 miles of London Marathon with broken ankle" with vocab, gist and detail questions, and a few questions for genre analysis.

Then a worksheet to support learners to gain top tips from a youtube video (watch till 2:18).

They can check their learning by reconstructing the sample text from the video, cut up into sections.

Learners use a gap-fill to complete positive and negative restaurant reviews.
I designed this resource to encourage learners to use a thesaurus to help improve their vocabulary and use more interesting adjectives.

I’ve used it with Entry level and Level 1/2 learners.

Editor's note

Fully mapped to the new 2018 Functional English content which comes into effect September 2019.

4 Oct 2017. Updated information on source material added

A reading activity on legal age limits in different parts of the UK. Includes: education, voting, driving, marriage and work. Based on materials at: http://esol.britishcouncil.org/content/learners/uk-life/be-safe-uk/what…

A short cloze exercise on the Olympic Opening Ceremony based on numbers (E2-L1), plus a writing activity at 2 levels (E2-3 and L1-L2).

Editor’s note
The cloze is also a clever way of embedding some maths (large numbers).

Cloze activity, reading and a writing exercise to mark National Obesity Awareness Week which runs 12th-18th January 2015, although the activity does not specifically refer to this and so can be used at any time. The cloze acts as an introduction, while the reading should stimulate discussion and provide the background for the writing activity. The writing task includes space for planning and drafting.

A simplified adjectives resource that I created to use with E1/E2 learners to introduce them to writing a description of something. Students should be encouraged to provide one describing word each that can be displayed on the whiteboard before discussing the term adjective.

This resource covers what an adjective is with underlining and cloze writing exercises to build knowledge before students attempt to write a description of two pictures. The descriptions of the pictures can be basic but students should be encouraged to use full sentences.