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1. Teaching Young Learners

   In: English Teaching Forum 2005, Volume 43, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This author shares her unique approach to teaching young learners. She emphasizes that her approach involves features of communicative styles, the audio lingual approach (AL), and Total Physical Response (TPR), as she believes it is necessary to bring together all three styles of teaching to develop language proficiency. She includes a lesson plan for beginner level students to improve grammar competency.

2. Options for Teacher Professional Development

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

   This article addresses the relationship of high-quality teacher characteristics to student learning and then presents eight elements of development and six models of teacher training. The eight elements are: voluntary participation, mutual respect, collaboration, action and reflection, organizational setting, choice and change, motivation, and self-direction. The six models are: conference planning (set goals before going), peer coaching, action research (how to improve one’s own practice), collaborative study groups, individual development plan, and dialogue journals.

3. A Process Genre Model for Teaching Writing

   In: English Teaching Forum 2005, Volume 43, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   This article considers three different approaches to the teaching of writing: the product approach, the process approach, and the genre approach. After explaining the different approaches, the author uses recent research to suggest a combination of the genre/process approaches in the composition classroom. A lesson plan is provided.

4. Advocacy for Language Teacher Associations

   In: English Teaching Forum 2022, Volume 60, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   Using a case study and inviting reader reflection, Luis Javier Pentón Herrera presents four types of advocacy used by language teacher associations (LTAs) and demonstrates how those types play out in proactive by giving real-world examples; the author also proposes and explains three steps LTAs can take to become advocacy-centered organizations.

5. Reciprocal Teaching: A Useful Tool in Increasing Student-Talking Time

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 2 Format(s): Text

   Reciprocal Teaching (RT) can be used to increase student talk time and improve communicative competence. This strategy uses paraphrasing, reported speech, question formation and concept-checking to promote dialogue. As students move from short responses toward longer conversations (or language for transactional purposes), their fluency and retention increase. These “long turns” provide important practice. The author also emphasizes the importance of prompts for lower-level students. The article includes examples of each strategy as well as several axioms of reciprocal teaching.

6. Teacher Resources

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   Two publications are summarized. First, Controversies in Applied Linguistics, edited by Barbara Seidlhofer, clarifies the issues that are at the center of controversies. The book explores and analyzes the arguments and “subcontroversies” in a neutral manner. The book does not require previous knowledge of the arguments. The second book is Linguistic Genocide in Education—or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. It discusses the dying off of minority languages and the importance of language diversity.

7. Seven Wonders: Bringing Student-Centered Learning into a Teacher-Centers Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2024, Volume 62, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   Authors Adrienne Lee Seo and Tozagul Nasrullaeva brought student-centered learning into their classes in Uzbekistan by introducing project-based learning (PBL) projects; in this article, they present a detailed example of how to use the Seven Wonders (Ancient, Natural, and Modern) of the World in a student-driven project that integrates a variety of skills. The authors offer suggestions for other topics that can be used in similarly productive ways.

8. Alternatives to Current Pedagogy for Teaching the Present Perfect Progressive

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   These researchers collected 250 samples of spoken and written American English from high-level communicators and analyzed the use of the present perfect progressive tense. They compared these samples to five leading ESL and EFL grammar textbooks. This article reviews the research and findings. The five leading textbooks provided good overall structure for teaching the present perfect progressive tense, but the use of the tense was critically influenced by broad context, adverbs, temporal context and the uses of other tenses including the present and present perfect tense.

9. Teaching Reading to Speakers of Non-Romanized Languages

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 3 Format(s): Text

   This article offers tips for teaching reading to speakers of non-Romanized languages. The author explains how initial lessons of the text “Let’s Read: A Linguistic Approach” by Bloomfield and Barnhart can be modified to address challenges that many Asian and Middle Eastern EFL learners face. The lessons address the alphabet, linking letters to sounds, and focusing on vowels in beginning reading. Rhyming and minimal pairs build connections between symbols and phonetic values. The lessons build a foundation for future reading. Teachers of any age group may find this article useful.

10. Spot the Problem! (reprinted from Teaching Pragmatics)

    In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 3 Format(s): Text

    This lesson plan considers pragmatic violations of openings, closings, and requests. These humorous role plays involve continuing a conversation when one person is trying to end it, being overly direct, and providing an overly informative answer to the greeting “How are you?” Textbooks may lack complete openings and closings, so it is worthwhile to spend time on post-openings and pre-closings. Politeness in English may be problematic for EFL learners because of the lack of grammatical forms that mark it.

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