Advanced Search: Resources

1. Implementing Humor Instruction in English Language Teaching

   In: English Teaching Forum 2021, Volume 59, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   The authors demonstrate the importance of understanding kinds of humor that differ across cultures and offer clear suggestions for teaching three kinds—verbal irony, memes, and satirical news—with examples that can help students develop humor competency and enhance their twenty-first-century skills, including digital and media literacy.

2. Finding New Messages in Television Commercials

   In: English Teaching Forum 2002, Volume 40, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the use of television commercials to help build English vocabulary and cultural awareness for students who are preparing for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in an English as a foreign language (EFL) environment. It presents activities as well as a general outline for teachers to show how these activities can be used.

3. The Cotton Club

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 2 Format(s): Text, Image / Poster / Maps

   This one-page piece details The Cotton Club, one of the most glamorous dance and music clubs in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. The Cotton Club was located in Harlem, which in the 1920s was an African-American residential and cultural business center in New York. The club had 30 to 50 chorus girls who danced and sang and were only hired if they were beautiful and very tall. Although the singers and dancers were almost all black, the audience was almost all white, which was a sign of the racial American society at the time.

4. Great Nicknames of Jazz

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   The last of a three-piece article describes many of the nicknames that leading American Jazz musicians had. A nickname is a name that a person earns in addition to their given name. For example, Edward Ellington was called “Duke” by his friends and family when he was a child because he acted like a member of a royal family. Musicians like Lady Day, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie were leaders in the Jazz music culture.

5. The Lighter Side of TEFL: Folk Wisdom

   In: The Lighter Side of TEFL, Volume 1 Format(s): Text

   This section of The Lighter Side of TEFL focuses on folk wisdom from different cultures around the world. This section has an audio component.

6. FORUM City Poster Show (Set 2, 4 posters - Forum Covers)

   Format(s): Image / Poster / Maps

   These poster sets are a great, flexible classroom resource for information and discussion—each set of three posters corresponds to a city spotlighted in Forum vol. 46 and the feature article about that city, available online.

7. Wordscapes

   Format(s): Image / Poster / Maps

   Wordscapes is a collection of ten full-color illustrations of American landscapes, including the forest, plains, desert, and more.

8. Helping Metaphors Take Root in the EFL Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2013, Volume 51, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article explores why metaphors challenge learners and presents ways to incorporate metaphors into EFL instruction to help learners understand figurative speech.

9. Activate Games for Learning American English: Picture This

   Format(s): Text

   Picture This cards are a set of cards that can be used for a variety of conversation and word games in English classes.

10. Horses—Haulers, Racers, and Healers

    In: English Teaching Forum 2014, Volume 52, Number 2 Format(s): Text

    This feature article looks at the history of horses in North America and showcases American breeds of horses.

Pages