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1. Mind Mirror Projects: A Tool for Integrating Critical Thinking into the English Language Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2009, Volume 47, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   Students often have difficulty 'reading between the lines.' This article suggests the use of mind mirror activities as a tool to improve students' critical thinking and learning skills (e.g., analysis, categorization, clarification, inferencing). The author describes a successful five-day group project from his own classroom that ended in students sharing their work through poster presentations.

2. Animating Your Instruction: Using Comics and Graphic Novels in the English Language Classroom

   In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

   "Animating Your Instruction: Using Comics and Graphic Novels in the English Language Classroom" explores the popularity of illustrated stories among teachers and students alike and offers suggestions on how to use them to “animate” your classes.

3. Building Fluency through the Repeated Reading Method

   In: English Teaching Forum 2011, Volume 49, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the success of Repeated Reading (RR) within EFL classrooms, illustrating three techniques of RR that can be used to develop students’ fluency, comprehension skills, and reading self-esteem. After providing a background on the RR method, the author explains the techniques step by step and suggests activities. The techniques include classic oral repeated reading (ORR), Paired repeated reading (PRR), and Reader’s Theater (RT).

4. Using Teacher-Developed Corpora in the CBI classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2008, Volume 46, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article argues for the use of teacher-generated corpora in content-based courses. Using a content course for engineering and architecture students as an example, the article explains how a corpus consisting of texts from textbooks and journal articles helped students learn grammar, vocabulary, and writing. The article explains how the corpus was compiled and presents examples of how students learned to analyze language use using corpus tools and dictionaries. The article ends by emphasizing the advantages of corpus analysis for self-directed learning.

5. Health and Fitness

   In: English Teaching Forum 2007, Volume 45, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   The theme of health offers a variety of language-learning possibilities. This three-part lesson plan for young learners can be adapted to other audiences. It includes a reading, a dialogue, and a listening script. The first lesson asks learners to analyze lifestyle choices and give advice. The second lesson takes students to a sporting goods store, where they consider the language they need to talk with a sales clerk. The third lesson is about food choices, including ways to prepare foods. A follow-up activity researches how a famous athlete stays healthy.

6. Using Letters to Tell Stories in the EFL Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2011, Volume 49, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses how letter writing can be used as authentic language use. An activity for beginners involves an exchange of letters of introduction between the instructor and students. This serves a socially meaningful interactional purpose. The second activity is the construction of an story, one in which the plot is expressed in a series of letters. The writer suggests using letter exchanges for this creative writing project after using books such as The Color Purple. Letter writing is one way to enable and empower students to tell their own stories.

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