Today I was teaching a group of students how to talk about the internet. Last year we learned some technology vocabulary, but today I wanted to teach them words specifically related to the internet. Textbooks are woefully out of date when it comes to this area, and if you rely on them you’ll just end up teaching them out-of-date words and phrases like “surf the net.”
A PPT on Internet Vocabulary
I made this PPT to teach my students. As I usually do, I’ve included a number of pictures so I can elicit the vocabulary first. I sometimes guide them towards answers they might not know off the top of their heads, and then we work on pronunciation. Next, I’ll reveal the word and definition. This PPT also contains a little test at the end. It takes me about 20-25 mins to teach this, but obviously that depends on the group of students. More advanced level students may breeze through it quickly.
Activities
You could easily follow up this PPT with questions about their internet habits. Personally, in my class we were working from a textbook and so I used this as a way of updating the vocabulary in the book, and they moved on to grammar exercises, where we just incorporated these words.
To relate this specifically to IELTS, you could point out some IELTS and technology questions. Have your students ask and answer questions about browsing online, or ask them to describe their favourite website. You could also give further practice by having them label an internet browser on a computer (or printed out).
