Whenever I start a new year with a new group of adult students, there is always someone that asks me how they can practice English at home, to which I usually respond with "Sure, I can send the whole class lots of homework so you can practice!!". Oh, you should see their faces. The sheer panic.
In this post I will talk about something I usually recommend to practice English at home without it being necessarily 'homework'. It's something that helped me a lot when I was learning the language.
What could it be? Well, I find that people generally enjoy listening to music and watching TV series or films in their free time (like I do), so I recommend taking that chance and focusing on listening to or watching something in English instead of Spanish.
I feel like watching something tends to be easier as they have visual help, and they can also use subtitles. Depending on the level, I recommend using subtitles in Spanish, in English, or no subtitles at all. After all, you can't expect an A1-level student to understand subtitles in English, the same way that subtitles in Spanish would probably even be detrimental for a C1 student as they should be working towards not even needing them in English.
If they make a habit out of it, it works wonders for their listening skills - the more input, the better! And if they have the time and feel like it, they can even pause every now and then and repeat a sentence until it sounds good to them, and they'll be practicing pronunciation and intonation.
It can also improve their vocabulary, and there is a tool to facilitate this! It is called Language Reactor. It is a browser plug-in, and it allows you to do some pretty cool stuff. There are different settings, but the one I usually recommend is an instant dictionary: if you hover your mouse over a word in the subtitles, it shows you the definition, and you can either note it down or save it in your Language Reactor dictionary and just keep watching. It currently only works mainly with Netflix and YouTube, but they are still under construction so I imagine in the near future it will work with more platforms.
And if you still want to use it in class, something you can do with intermediate and advanced students is to have them prepare a mini presentation either telling the class about a TV series or film they love (or hate, that is always fun), or to try to 'sell' it and convince the class to watch it.
And, hey, if they get used to consuming media in English with ease, they might even get into podcasts!
VERY interesting and relevant topic! I totally agree with you. This is something that I have done with my students and also have done this myself. I started practicing my English very early watching series and movies at home and I think this really helped me to improve my English level at an early stage.