Tractor Transmission: Mechanics Vocabulary Quiz

Students learn and practice tractor mechanics vocabulary through a vocabulary quiz about mechanical terms related to tractor transmission.

You can also try the General Tractor Vocabulary Quiz

and the Tractor Features Vocabulary Quiz 

as well as the 2017 News quiz

Find out how to create your own quiz on this post: Create a Quiz with Google Forms: Vocabulary, Writing and Reading Activity

Cécile Sohier 

General Tractor Vocabulary Quiz

Students learn and practise general tractor vocabulary through a tractor vocabulary quiz.

You can also try the Tractor Transmission: Mechanics Vocabulary Quiz

and the Tractor Features Vocabulary Quiz 

as well as the 2017 News quiz

Find out how to create your own quiz on this post: Create a Quiz with Google Forms: Vocabulary, Writing and Reading Activity

Cécile Sohier 

Analysing Superheroes: Speaking, Writing and Listening Activities

Students synthesise everything they know about superheroes (and heroes) in order to analyse superhero stories, and practice their speaking, listening, and writing skills.

The main objective of these activities is to get students to talk about a familiar topic, as well as to understand the pattern behind superhero stories. The final task of this chapter will be to get the students to create their own superhero and present it to the class.

Students have made some diggings on superheroes through the Superheroes web quest (click here to read the post and access the worksheets). In teams, they have had to write questions on one superhero of their choice and then play a board game with questions from all teams. This activity gave common grounds to all of them to start analysing superhero stories.

In Analysing Superheroes worksheet (you will find the link at the bottom of this page), the key question is: "what makes a superhero?". So in exercise 1, we analyse different aspects of superhero stories to try and outline a pattern: how they became superheroes, what is their purpose, how they achieve their purpose and what type of characters we usually find in superhero stories. 

Exercise 2 focuses on how different superheroes and heroes are. We listen to a video ( the link in which young people give their definition of a hero. Ultimately I ask them to come up with their own personal definition that starts up with "a hero is someone who...".

Finally, in exercise 3 students are expected to think about the differences between superhero stories and the real life. How crime is dealt with in superhero stories as opposed to the real life for example. 

Eventually, I wanted to make them reflect upon the black and white vision of the world in superhero stories but it turned out to be a little ambitious (especially in the time lapse that we had). I was happy that they all came up with convincing reasons as for why people like superhero stories so much (exercise 4).

The activity worksheet is followed by a proposal of answers for each exercise.


Here is the worksheet (with answers on the second page)

Analysing Superheroes

This activity was preceded by a web search and board game creation

Superhero web quest

And it is followed by activities on comics covers (namely Captain America) and their link to major historical events:

Superheroes and History (the Example of Captain America): Reading, Writing and Speaking Activities

Cécile Sohier 

Tractor Troubleshooting Vocabulary Speaking Lesson

Students learn extensive mechanical vocabulary - including verbs, nouns and expressions - and practice their writing and speaking skills.

That is a worksheet that took me a lot of preparation! I wanted to give students some significant input to allow them to handle situations in which they would have to talk in English about mechanics.

I may have got a little carried away for the list is quite long. It consists of nouns, verbs and expressions that I took from Rachel Gingell's video "Why won't my tractor start" that you can watch by clicking here:

Why won't my tractor start video

The list of words is relatively long for two reasons. Firstly because the video is 15 minutes long. She tackles a wide variety of potential issues so the vocabulary range is broad. Secondly, the classes that I teach are very heterogeneous. Levels go from A2 to B2 so I have to widen the range of vocabulary to give weaker students something to hold on to, and stronger students some new input as well. 


Subsequent to the matching vocabulary exercise, exercise 3 is a speaking activity that allows students to put into practice the vocabulary.

Why won't my tractor start exercise 2 and 3 (vocabulary and speaking)

This exercise is preceded by a listening exercise on Rachel Gingell's video. You can read the post about exercise 1  and find the worksheet by clicking on the link below:

Why won't my tractor start exercise 1

More articles on English for Mechanics:

Fixing Tractor Hydraulics: Listening Activity to Learn English for Mechanics

Tractor Transmission: Mechanics Vocabulary Quiz

Tractor Buying Facts: Reading Activity and Oral Presentation Skills Practice

Tractor Troubleshooting English for Mechanics Listening Lesson

Tractor Warranty Issue / English for Mechanics: Listening and Speaking Exercises - BTS Final Exam (CCF)

Cécile Sohier 

Superheroes Web Quest: Reading, Writing and Board Game Activities

Students practice their reading and writing skills, as well as learn about different famous superhero stories, and revise the interrogative form.  

I believe superheroes are a great way to motivate students. They are alluring to them, not just because they are endowed with superpowers and fight the crime by killing supervillains, but also because they can relate to them. Superheroes are portrayed in an increasingly humane way in movies. They are super humans because of their super abilities, but they also have their fair share of trauma, bad dreams, fears, anxiety because they see their body changing or because their loved ones are in danger, typically they are victims of events they cannot control. From this standpoint, they are very much alike our teenager students.

These activities are intended as an introductory set of activities to a chapter on superheroes. I wanted to get them to think about what makes superheroes so special and so alluring. 

Students are required to choose a superhero and make some research (a webpage is provided to help) in order to make questions that will later be used in a board game. Initially, I wanted to focus on humans who became superheroes using technology (like Batman or the Green Harrow) but I ultimately allowed some students to work on Hulk or Deadpool. It took them a one-hour lesson to make the 12 questions and answers (depending on the groups, some made less), I then gathered all the questions on a single document and made copies for each group. 

To fit into the STI2D program, I have oriented the chapter as followed:

Cultural entry: Myths and heroes
Question: Why are superheroes such mythical heroes?

Technical knowledge: Technological innovations

Question: How do men manage to enhance their physical abilities to become superheroes?

Here is the worksheet for the web search: 

Superheroes web quest and board game

And a board game template:

Board game template

The follow-up activities are a reflection on superhero stories, as well as the link between superheroes and history:

Analysing superheroes

Superheroes and History (the Example of Captain America): Reading, Writing and Speaking Activities

Cécile Sohier 

Open Source Tractors: Listening, Reading and Speaking Activity

Students learn about copyright issues in tractor repairs, and find out about the Open Source and Maker Movement. They also practice their listening, reading, and speaking skills for the BTS final exam.

This video presents the copyright law (DMCA) that bulwark software against hacking and also precludes farmers from fixing their tractors themselves. It also talks about the Open Source and Maker Movement, which arose as a consequence of the restrictive nature of the DMCA. 

It can be used as a follow up or an introduction to the Right to Repair - you can find the listening activity and read about it here. 

Keywords are: Open Source, Copyright, DMCA, tractors, software, Maker Movement

Example of vocabulary: free (dual meaning), to fix, to build, a tech guy, instead of, unlike, to know how to, to be allowed to, computer chips, sensors, a fine, even, may/might, should, can, unfortunately, sustainability...

I have edited the original video, which was 11 minutes, down to about 4 and a half minutes. The pace is quite fast so it might be a good idea to reduce it slightly (it is very easy to do with VLC and doesn't distort the voice at all).

Debate topics: 

• Should everything be open-source?
• Should farmers have the right to break the digital locks and repair their tractors despite the DMCA?
• Should the DMCA apply to tractor software?

Here is the gap-fill exercise/transcript

Open source tractors

The full video is available here:

Do Makers Propose a More Open Source Future?, Idea Channel, PBS

Posts on how I carry out listening activities to prepare students of the BTS final exam

Right to Repair and Copyright Law: Listening, Reading and Writing Lesson

A Future with Farmers TEDx Listening, Reading and Speaking Lesson

Fixing Tractor Hydraulics: Listening Activity to Learn Mechanical English

Further information on the Maker Movement

Maker movement manifesto

Cécile Sohier 

Memorising Vocabulary Using Visual and Associative Memory

Students practice their memorising skills and learn a new memorising technique which involves their visual and associative memory.

In order to reassure and build up the confidence of the students, I sometimes tell them that learning English is all about memorising. My point is that the grammar being so simple (there is no conjugation like in Spanish, or declension like in German), all they have to do is learn the vocabulary. And if they put the words in the correct order, they should be able to be understood (though it is easier said than done).

Having said that to assume that students will know how to memorise is a fallacy, even if they are 18 years old. As teachers, we cannot but notice that memorising is a real pitfall for students. Where I teach first-year students often have no prior knowledge of the specialised and technical vocabulary of their study field in English, which means they will have to learn it within a relatively short time lapse. 

In this article, I intend to present you some findings and particularly an exercise through which students are taught how to use both their visual and associative memory. 

My understanding is that memory geniuses use more parts of the brain than we do to stock information, notably the parts in charge of visualisation and ideas association. So why not combine them both. There are many videos out there that will teach for instance how to memorise the elements of the periodic table imagining that Helium is hot air balloon that crashes on a cell phone that represents Lithium. The more absurd the better! That led me to conduct a little experiment with the students. 

I provided them with a list of specialised terms (the farm machines and tools for instance) and asked them to choose a difficult word from the list. Then I told them to create a picture that associates the French word (a picture of the machine) with a clue that would help them remember the word in English. Here is the example I gave them: the English word wheel sounds similar to the French word huile so I imagined a wheel covered in oil or a wheel in the middle of a sunflower field.

For this technique to work, it is paramount that the mental image created associates the original object (i.e the wheel) and a clue that points to the English word of that image (i.e. huile). Here are some of the results of that experiment, some creations from the students:

Eventually, I did a powerpoint presentation of all the pictures created by the students and projected to the class. We commented on each creation as some of them needed explaining (and had a good laugh). They were then required to learn all the 30 words or so for a vocabulary test. As expected students had very good grades! 

Cécile Sohier 

100+ Farm Machines and Tools French-English Vocabulary

A comprehensive French-English list of farm machines and tools designed for land-based engineering, farm and Ag equipment maintenance and services students.

After hours of combing the net in a desperate search for such a list, I was left with no choice than to face the fact that I would have to do it myself. Needless to say putting this list together was a rather time-consuming, monotonous, yet instructive process.

So I started up with browsing the big tractor companies US websites such as John Deere or Case IH for example, in order to make a list of farm machines currently used in harvesting, seeding, tilling, milking ... 

But the most difficult part was to find the translations in French. One website which helped me was Machine Finder for second-hand farm equipment, as I was able to look up the equipment in English and it would put up the list of all related items in French. That and spending some time digging into John Deere and Case IH French website, which turned out to be less straightforward than expected as not all US tractors are retailed in France.

Eventually, I presented it to a group of very dedicated apprentices, who know a great deal about farm equipment as they all work in dealerships, and we spent one hour reviewing the translations of my list.

That was the only fun part of the process. Seeing those 17 students so involved, throwing questions and translations at me, discussing, debating and explaining. Plus I think it was very rewarding for them to see that I had taken their corrections very seriously and handed out to them a corrected version. They were slightly less enthusiastic when I told them they were going to have to learn the words on the list. 


Here is the list that we came up with:

Farm Machines and Tools French-English Vocabulary

More vocabulary is available here:

General Mechanical Vocabulary

Farmer Interview - Teaching Farm Vocabulary: Writing and Speaking Skills Practice Lesson

Fixing Tractor Hydraulics: Listening Activity to Learn Mechanical English

Cécile Sohier 

How Recruiters Test your English: Speaking Activity

Students practice their speaking skills in a job interview role-play, learn about questions potential employers might ask them to test their fluency in English and revise basic grammar rules, such as present simple, past simple, future, expressing likes and dislikes... 

If potential employers expect candidates to have some command of English for a position, then they will want to test it during the interview, and they will do so by asking questions, some general, some job-related. 

Job interviews can be very stressful, nerve-racking even, especially for those who have no experience of it and the prospect of having to speak English will often add more stress to it. So I have decided to go through a set of questions that potential employers are likely to ask in English during an interview.

Here are some vocabulary and grammar points that can be revised prior to or during the activity. 

1. Work-related questions

I have listed some elements they will need in order to talk about their work experience and student background:

BTS = a two-year degree 
Bac Pro = a vocational high school diploma
Bac STI2D = high school diploma specialising in technological innovation and sustainability. 
Do an internship / Do a work placement / be an intern
Do an apprenticeship / be an apprentice

2. General questions about their life and/or tastes 

I found that students needed:

•  to be reminded of expressions to express like and dislikes (to avoid the redundancy of saying I like and I don't like all the time).

•  some support for using preposition of time correctly in expressions such as at/on the weekend, on Saturday, in the evening, on holiday...

3. Grammar

• Present simple 

We constantly have to remind the students of the third-person-singular rule. I struggled with this rule myself as a learner until one day it became natural. Moreover, students don't take it seriously, I think, because it is not a mistake that will prevent them from being understood, so they don't really see the point in making an effort. Anyway, I usually emphasise that they will produce a better effect on the listener if they show that their command of English is not only fluent but also accurate. Though, I concede this argument is often not very convincing.

It appears to be even more difficult for them when the 's' is pronounced [iz].

Use => uses [ˈjuːzɪz]

Reduce => reduces [rɪˈdjuːsɪz]

Refuse => refuses [rɪˈfjuːzɪz]

Produce => produces [prəˈdjuːsɪz]

• Past simple 

The pronunciation of the ending -ed:

Want => wanted [ˈwɒntɪd]
Work => worked [wɜrkt]
Study => studied [ˈstʌdid]
Repair => repaired [rɪˈpɛrd]
Fix => fixed [fɪkst]
Decide => decided [dɪˈsaɪdɪd]

Some irregular verbs:

Drive => drove [drəʊv] 
Do => did
Have => had
See => saw [sɔ]
Go => went
The use of 'did' in negative and interrogative form.

• Future

I noticed that some students had completely forgotten how to talk about the future.

So I had to remind them of the difference between the use of will for future predictions (to answer the question where do you see yourself in 10 years?), and Going to for an intention (to explains what they plan to do during their next holidays).

worksheets

How recruiters test your English

Based on the content of this article I also prepared some guidelines that can be provided to the weaker students

How recruiters test your English Guidelines

Cécile Sohier 

Right to Repair and Copyright Law: Listening, Reading and Writing Lesson

Students learn about copyright issues in tractor repair and practice their listening, reading and writing skills for the BTS end of program exam. 

The report focuses on a copyright law (the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998) that tractor companies are using to condone the presence of digital locks on tractor software, which prevent farmers from fixing their tractors themselves. The reporter Laura Sydell interviews two farmers, whose testimony epitomize the unnecessary complications generated for farmers by the tractor companies proceedings and the deadlock farmers find themselves into.

This set of exercises is essentially a listening activity, followed by a reading exercise based on transcript, in which students answer questions in writing. So it is a good practice for the BTS end of program exam.


1. Listen and report

The first part is carried out in the same fashion as the TEDx speech listening exercise, that is 3 consecutive listening without pauses. Then I ask them to write a paragraph on what they have understood in French.

You can read about the pieces of advice I give to students to help them with their note-taking in this article : TEDx Oral Presentations Listening Skills.

It is crucial for students to be able to explain and put forward every single piece of information they have understood. Therefore I encourage them to use expression such as Il est question de..., la personne parle de..., but to avoid making risky connection between isolated words. 

For instance if they understood the word tractor and John Deere, they should write: Il est question d'un tracteur et la personne parle de John Deere. 

But they should avoid jumping to the conclusion that the person is speaking about a John Deere tractor if they haven't heard it. However once they have clearly laid out what they are sure of, they may take a chance and make assumptions which they can add by saying peut-être que... or il me semble que... 

For example: Il est question d'un tracteur et la personne parle de John Deere. Peut-être qu'il s'agit d'un tracteur John Deere. 

When this stage is over, I give them a gapfill exercise. This allows a final detailed listening, during which students simultaneously hear and read the transcript. This is usually the moment when they realize the audio was not that difficult to understand, they just need to train their ear more.

2. Read and write

Finally, in order to get into the details of the text and make sure they have fully understood the situations and the issues at stake expressed in the report, I give a set of questions to answer in English.


Needless to say they are expected to write full sentences, although they'll probably need to be reminded!


Worksheets and audio:

This is the three minute version report that I edited myself with Audacity:

The full NPR report by Laura Sydell can be found at this address:

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/17/432601480/diy-tractor-repair-runs-afoul-of-copyright-law 

You can click on the links below to access the worksheets:

DIY tractor repair running afoul of copyright law transcript gapfill

DIY tractor repair running afoul of copyright law questions


JPEG versions of the worksheets are also available for download below :

Cécile Sohier 

Tractor Buying Facts: Reading Activity and Oral Presentation Skills Practice

In this lesson, students will practice their reading and oral presentation skills for the final exam, as well as learn about tractor features.

The BTS end of program exam is a presentation of 2 or 3 documents (texts or pictures). They have 30 minutes to prepare a 5 minute presentation that is followed by questions for about 10 minutes.

Thus this activity is intended to prepare students for this exam and for future oral presentations.

1. Reading and writing

For this step, I would ask them to work in groups of three or in pairs. There are 3 different texts (see bottom page numbers). They are asked to read the article and prepare a presentation. 

I give them a document with useful expressions to speak about a text that also provide them with a plan to follow:

  1. General presentation of the text(type, topic and source      of document, where, when and intended audience)

  2. Summary / Main idea of the text

  3. Present the different parts of the text and explain what      ideas or elements are developed in each part

  4. Give your personal opinion on the text

That way they should be able to cover the whole text and present it in a clear and structured way. 

2. Note writing and Presenting

I ask them to speak for at least a minute and a half. They can read their notes if they want to but I always stress that it is a good idea to give a glance at the audience from time to time. So it is important that they structure their notes in a way that they don't get lost when they get back to them after looking at the audience.

Therefore they should :

• write their notes every other line, 

• underline key words, and 

• divide into paragraphs (at least 1 for each part).

You can access the handouts needed for this lesson by clicking on the links or pictures below:

Useful expressions to speak about a text

Tractor buying facts worksheet

Cécile Sohier 

TEDx Oral Presentations Listening and Speaking Skills Lesson

A listening activity on a TEDx speech to practise oral presentation skills and learn useful expressions.

TEDx conferences are a great way for students to hear authentic (often American or Canadian) English. They touch upon a variety of different topics. 


See below for worksheet, transcript and follow-up lesson on pronunciation and intonation.

1. Listening exercise


I chose this particular video for its first minute and a half, which is a perfect example of how to start a presentation. Moreover, the man speaks with a Canadian accent but the vocabulary is quite simple, so it is a good way for students to get familiar with hearing this type of accent without being overwhelmed with the vocabulary.

The BTS final exam has a listening part. Students listen to an audio extract 3 times, take notes and then report what they have understood in French. So in order to train them to this exercise, I always start by listening 3 times and I ask the students to take notes of any word they grasp even if they are unsure of how they are spelt or how they fit in the context.

These are the pieces of advice I usually give them:

1. Start taking notes from the first listening (the sooner you start the better).
2. Write down every word even if you are unsure of or didn't understand the context.
3. Write down every word even if you don't know how to spell it.
4. Take your notes directly in English (you will translate later).

The difficult thing is to get them to write down absolutely everything they hear from the first time they listen. Often they will tell me that they need to listen a first time to grasp the general meaning of the extract. And they will also object that there is no point in writing down words if they didn't understand the whole sentence. So it is essential to teach them how to bring out every piece of information they manage to grasp, as well as to be able to grasp the maximum amount of information.

I like to ask as many students as possible (starting with the weaker) what notes they have taken. You can write their notes on the board to pool them as you go around the class. That will usually put some pressure on them and they will make the effort to write down notes. 

Once we have been through the general meaning and the vocabulary of the extract (in English to practice speaking), I would ask them to prepare an explanation in French and in writing of what they have understood as a homework. Then during the next lesson, I would give them a transcript and do a last listening for them to complete the document. (You will also find it at the bottom of this article)


2. Meaning


Then you can ask students to analyse the type of information that is given on every stage of the listening. The first paragraph contains typical elements like greeting the public, saying he is happy to be there, stating his name and some additional information like his job, the name of his company, number of employees and geographical areas.

When I did the transcript I divided the text into paragraphs so you can ask the students to come up with a title for each paragraph or, if you give them the text as one block, to divide the text into different parts and come up with a title for each of them. That will force them to get into the details of the text up to the final questions that can be used as a 'teaser' for follow up activities on GMOs, controversial or state of the art agricultural techniques... As a matter of fact, in the rest of the video, R. Saik advocates for the widespread use of GMOs as the sole way of feeding the ever growing world population and fiercely criticizes organic cultures.  


3. Pronunciation and intonation

As I said the vocabulary is fairly simple, the unknown words should not prevent them from understanding. The real barrier here is the accent. Students are not used to hearing North American accents so words like "internationally" or "scientific integration" may not be understood because of the way they are pronounced.

This audio extract is an excellent occasion to study intonation. Since they had to take notes, it is a good idea to show them that the most clearly pronounced words are also the most important of the sentence. The demonstration can be carried out with the first sentence of the second paragraph. Students should be able to say that the stress falls on (or the man insists on) the words help, coaching and scientific integration because they are the most important elements of the sentence in terms of meaning. They are also the expressions they would have been able to write down. 

The last paragraph also has its fair share of sentences to work on. For instance, the first one with words like question, picture and metaphor, or the last set of questions with believe, agriculture, feed 9 billion people. This is also the opportunity to study the 'discreet' pronunciation of do and can when they are not stressed.

Then you can get the students to repeat after you or the man in the video, or if you are lucky enough to have a language 'labo' - which is usually nothing more than a dozen of computers with headphones and microphones- you can have them repeat and record themselves - which they tend to love, particularly if you tell them that you will be playing their recordings to the class for feedback ;)


You can check the post Listening and Pronunciation Skills Practice with a TEDx talk: How to Introduce Yourself  for a full lesson on pronunciation and intonation, with exercises based on the first minute and a half of this TEDx talk.

Click on the link below to watch the video

Pushing the Boundaries in Agriculture

The worksheet and transcript are available below

Pushing the Boundaries in Agriculture worksheet

Pushing the Boundaries in Agriculture transcript

Cécile Sohier