There have been many great silent animated cartoons throughout history, but which ones are the best to write dialogues and interventions? Here’s my selection of 5 best silent cartoons ever made.

Felix the Cat - Feline Follies (1919)
Felix the Cats first appearance as Master Tom. Master Tom is lured away from his job of protecting the house from mice by the charms of "Miss Kitty". While he's gone, the mice trash the house. 

Steamboat Willie (1928)
This cartoon is notable for being Mickey's debut. Mickey Mouse, piloting a steamboat, delights his passenger, Minnie, by making musical instruments out of the menagerie on deck.
​

The pink panther show (1969-1976)
The Pink Panther is a heroic, moral cartoon cat with pink fur and the manners of an English aristocrat.
​

Mr. Bean The animated series (2002)
Mr. Bean The Animated Series is a British-Hungarian animated television sitcom.
​

Larva (2017)
It’s a computer-animated television series made by TUBA Entertainment in Seoul, South Korea. This cartoon shows two larvae as its main characters.
​

Single question surveys work well with lower level classes. Each student has only one question which they have to ask each of the other students in turn. One advantage of this method is that you can give weaker students an easier question and stronger students more complex ones.

​Lower level questions

• Do you like cats?
• What is your favorite food?
• What types of music do you like?

 
Higher level questions

• What was your most memorable birthday?
• Where is the best place to eat in your town? Why is it so good?
• What are some of the benefits of traveling alone?
• Have you practiced extreme sports?

5. What do you have in common?

1. T writes on the board “What do you have in common?” and asks Ss to ask questions to each other to learn more about themselves.
2. Ss have to find five things that they have in common with the other people in the class. Ss take notes.
3. When Ss finished, T asks volunteers to read their list of things in common.

 
Alternative: Use categories of things that they all have in common. This can include anything from favorite sport to least favorite food. This works better with teams.

Purpose
The goals of an educator using Bloom's taxonomy are to:

• Encourage higher-order thought in his/her students by building up from lower-level cognitive skills.
• Promote the development of a new skill, knowledge or attitude.
• Discuss and exchange learning and assessment methods.

1. Remember
Action verbs
Arrange, define, describe, identify, label, list, match, memorize, name, order, recognize, recall, select and state.
Purpose of the level
Recall or recognize information and ideas.
Questions prompts

• What do you remember about…?
• What happened after...?
• Where is/are…?
• Who was/were…?
• When did…?
• What does it mean?
• How would you define…?
• Why did…?
• Which one…?
• How much…?
• How many…?

Sample activities

• Students name the main characters in the story.
• Students identify the irregular verbs in the paragraph.
• Students list the steps to use a blender.
• Students label the images.
• Students match the classic tales with the settings.

 
2. Understand
Actions verbs
Classify, compare, describe, discuss, distinguish, explain, give (examples), paraphrase, predict, recognize, summarize and translate.
Purpose of the level
Understand the main idea of material heard, viewed, or read. Interpret or summarize the ideas in own words.
Questions prompts

• Can you give an example of…?
• Can you choose the best definition of…?
• What would happen if…?
• Can you explain…?
• Can you read the graph?
• What could have happened next?
• Can you clarify…?

Sample activities

• Students describe the characters in the story.
• Students classify the list of words into nouns, verbs and adjectives.
• Students give examples of natural disasters.
• Students compare their answers with others.
• Students predict what the story may be about looking at the illustrations.

 
3. Apply
Actions verbs
Apply, change, choose, complete, demonstrate, dramatize, illustrate, interpret, modify, practice, produce, show, solve, use and write.
Purpose of the level
Provide opportunities to use ideas, theories, or problem-solving techniques and apply them to new situations.
Questions prompts

• Can you illustrate…?
• What factors would you change if…?
• Who do you think…?
• What was the main idea…?
• Why does… work?
• How would you solve…?

Sample activities

• Students illustrate the steps of the experiment.
• Students use the clues to complete the crossword puzzle.
• Students show a map of the city.

 
4. Analyze
Actions verbs
Analyze, calculate, categorize, contrast, discriminate, examine, infer, model and test.
Purpose of the level
Examine concepts or ideas to break them down into basic parts.
Questions prompts

• What’s the relationship between…?
• What’s the main idea of…?
• Which events could not have happened?
• How is … similar to …?
• What are some of the problems of …?

Sample activities

• Students infer the meaning of compound words.
• Students categorize facts included in an argument.
• Students calculate the circumference of a variety of wheels.

 
5. Evaluate
Actions verbs
Argue, assess, conclude, criticize, debate, judge, justify, recommend, rate, support and evaluate.
Purpose of the level
Use standards and criteria to support opinions and views.
Questions prompts

• What is the most important…?
• What would you suggest…?
• What criteria would you use to assess…?
• What data was used to evaluate…?
• What choice would you have made…?
• How would you determine the facts…?

Sample activities

• Students debate pros and cons of the death penalty.
• Students rate public services.
• Students recommend online resources for the topic.

 
6. Create
Actions verbs
Create, compose, construct, devise, design, generate, imagine, invent, plan, propose and write.
Purpose of the level
Assemble parts of knowledge into a whole using creative thinking and problem-solving.
Questions prompts

• What alternative would you suggest for…?
• What changes would you make to revise…?
• How would you generate a plan to…?
• What could you invent…?
• How would you improve…?

Sample activities

• Students design the human body chart.
• Students write their own autobiography.
• Students create a new character and explain how that character would fit into the storyline. 

Teaching vocabulary is very important in the language learning process. Indeed, it’s more important than grammar in communicative purposes, particularly in early stages. The linguist Wilkins argued that: “without grammar little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”.

Teaching vocabulary plays an important role, if the students know or remember the meaning of the words, they will be able to understand what they hear and read, and they will express correctly when they speak or write.

Memory triggers help student to remember the meaning of a word. These memory triggers could be:

1. A visual reminder such as a picture or diagram.                    
2. The sound and rhythm of the word.   
3. The inclusion of the item in a sentence.
4. The translation.

In English, like in any other foreign language, some words are easier to learn than others. However, it depends on many factors:

• Meaning.
• Similarity to L1.
• Similarity to English words you already know.
• Part of speech.
• Pronunciation.
• Spelling.
• Connotation (negative or positive).
• Collocations.
• Relation to others words (synonyms, antonyms and lexical sets).
• Affixes (prefixes and suffixes).
• Register (Formal, neutral and informal).

When we teach vocabulary, it usual to introduce:

1. The “easy” words before the “difficult” ones.
2. The concrete before the abstract.
3. The most frequent before the uncommon.

Ways to present vocabulary:

• Asking for the word translation in L1.
• Using visual aids (object, photographs, flashcards, and videos) of concrete words (pencil, city, big, etc.)
• Matching word-definition, word-illustration, word-pronunciation, etc.
• Miming action verbs.
• Using synonyms and antonyms.
• Contextualizing the meaning of the word giving examples.
• Using drilling activities.
• Using gapped example sentences.
• Categorizing words.

Do not spend the first part of the class simply taking attendance, checking homework or making announcements. Instead of doing that, set the tone for the class and helps students to know what to expect. For learning to be effective, you should hook the students with creative activities and establish the aims and objectives of the class. There are 3 guidelines to start the class:

1. Set the class purpose

• Use the Bloom’s taxonomy to define action verbs.
• Use a single, clear action verb for each learning outcome.
• Avoid verbs that are unclear and cannot be observed easily like “know” and "learn".
• Establish the content or topic to be learned.
• Indicate the kind of performance expected.

2. Review or assess prior knowledge
A great tool for helping students learn something new is activating what they already know.
Here is a list of techniques to assess prior knowledge:

• Brainstorming to generate ideas.
• Eliciting vocabulary and language forms.
• Using concept map or word map.
• Using 3-2-1 charts (3 things you already know, 2 things you’d like to know & 1 question related to the topic).
• Using KWL charts (What I know, what I want to know & what I learned*).
• Answering trivia quizzes and games.

3. Use a lead-in to capture students’ interest and engage them in learning.
The students are engaged by:

• Labeling images.
• Matching or grouping items of information.
• Identifying something.
• Guessing something.
• Sharing personal information with others.
• Doing something non-verbally (Miming, drawing & obeying)
• Describing something.
• Ranking items of information.
• Remembering something and then communicating what he or she has remembered.
• Making a story.
• Writing a poem.

​Other ways to grab the student’s attention is by starting the class with:

• Learning games.
• Songs.
• Video clips.
• Role-playing.
• Hangman.
• Puzzles.
• Demonstrations.