Anyway/Apparently/Actually

Recently I have posted my first worksheet on ISLCollective. For those who don't now it's an excellent site with TEFL resources where you can freely download but also share your original material.
The worksheet that I created deals with differences between "anyway", "apparently" and "actually".
I felt the urge to create this worksheet because these words appeared (among others) in a gap fill exercise in the book New Inside Out intermediate( SB, p. 65, informal email). As a way of preteaching I decided to focus on these three adverbs which all begin with the same letter and are of similar length, which might make them difficult to differentiate for students at this level.
I had found the sentences used in the exercise on the Internet and in some cases I have slightly altered them to make the gap-fill as unambiguous as possible.
The worksheet has proved successful and the students didn't have problems doing the exercise after I had put a few similar example sentences on the board and elicited rules summarized at the top of the worksheet: "anyway" (used to change the subject), "apparently" ("obviously", "a rumour I heard"), and "actually" (used for emphasis).

The example sentence for "actually" went something like this:
"A: Are you sad that you failed the test?  B: Actually, I am relieved."

After boarding this exchange it was elicited that "actually" is used for emphasis but also to express contrast. Since this was a class of primarily German speakers I also elicited the translation of this word ("eigentlich") which has a similar usage in German.


The example sentence for "apparently" went something like this:
"Did you hear about Sarah? Apparently she got divorced."

I elicited the function of "apparently" for mentioning something that you're not 100 % sure of but you might have heard in the form of a rumour or a gossip. Then I also elicited the translation ("offensichtlich"), which is the second meaning of this word and is clearly presented with the example sentence 6. of the gap-fill exercise.


I focused on the function of "anyway" as a colloquial word for changing the subject of a conversation.
At this point I didn't want to confuse the students with other possible functions of "anyway" like the one presented in this example sentence: "I didn't like you anyway." I just thought it would be too much for them and this function wasn't needed for doing the exercise in the New Inside Out book. When creating original worksheets like this I tend to focus only on what is needed to do the exercise successfully. I find it very useful to model the pre-teaching part precisely on the exercise that comes after. That way there are no surprises and the students can completely rely on the rules.


This is a link to the worksheet published on the ISL Collective site. I was glad to discover that in only four days the worksheet has been downloaded 16 times so apparently there is a need to differentiate and practice the usage of these three adverbs.
https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/actuallyapparentlyanyway/adverbs/102517