Classroom English

Many textbooks contain a Classroom English section devoted to useful words and phrases that are often used during an English lesson. You can find them usually at the beginning or ending of a textbook and they may be titled something other than “Classroom English”. One of the benefits of using the classroom English in a textbook is the fact that students have access to the textbooks whenever they want and therefore have no excuse not to use classroom English.

Please adopt some of these phrases into your everyday speech in the classroom and encourage your students to do so as well. A student should not be saying わからない (wakaranai), instead they should be comfortably using “I don’t understand.”

The use of classroom English is a good beginning step for encouraging students to feel comfortable in a foreign language and for them to begin to “think” in that language. The more times they use the phrases, the comfortable they will be. The goal is to get students to react in English, rather than in Japanese.

Below are a list of good classroom English expressions. Feel free to use these or other that you find. You do not need to use every expression listed. You can begin with a few expressions and gradually increase the number of expressions you use in your class.

Before the Lesson

Greetings

Good morning, everyone.

Good afternoon, class.

How are you this morning, Mikako?

Mikako, how are you today?

Do you have a cold?

What a lovely day!

What a rainy day!

Isn’t it warm this morning?

It’s a humid day, isn’t it?

Today is very cold, isn’t it?

Role call

Hiroshi? Yes / Here

Is Yukiko absent today? No, she is coming. Yes, she’s absent.

Where is Mikio? He is absent. He is in the office.

Beginning the Lesson

Please sit down, everyone.

Let’s begin today’s lesson.

It’s time to begin, please stop talking.

Let’s quickly review the last lesson.

Try to answer my questions.

Right / Correct / Nearly Right / Close / Almost

Let’s start on page 60. Let’s start at line 10.

Turn to page 12.

Please look at the blackboard.

Look at your textbooks.

Now open your textbooks to page 33.

Come to the blackboard.

Write this down in your notebooks.

Pass back these sheets/handouts.

Reading

Please listen carefully (to me).

Repeat!

Repeat after me.

Kenichi, you read Bill’s part.

Read this out loud.

Keiko, begin reading at line 5.

Okay, stop there, thank you.

Next, Masaki.

What is the English/Japanese word for . . . ?

How do you say it in English?

Please summarize the first paragraph.

What is the paragraph/section/story about?

Let’s do some translation work.

Questions

Any questions?

Do you have any questions?

Now I’m going to ask you some questions.

Who knows the answer?

Raise your hand.

Please raise your hand if you don’t understand.

Try to answer by yourself.

Try again.

A full sentence, please.

Use a full sentence please.

Make a sentence.

Say it in a loud voice.

Louder, please!

Again, please.

Do you understand?

(I don’t understand.)

(I don’t know.)

(Please say it again.)

(Once more, please?)

Ending the Lesson

There will be no homework for today.

For homework, please do the exercises on page 9.

Today’s homework is . . .

Please read pages . . . to . . . for homework.

Tomorrow, we’ll study Lesson 6.

There’s the bell.

That’s all for today.

The lesson is over for today.

We’ve run out of time.

Goodbye, class.

See you on Friday.

Have a good day!

Have a nice weekend!

See you next week.

Good job today.

　

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