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1. Practical Activities for Balanced Listening Instruction

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

   This webinar will introduce activities to develop students' listening skills in all of these areas; these activities can make your listening instruction both easier and more effective.

2. Introduction

   In: American Teens Talk! Format(s): E-book, Text

   The interviews in American Teens Talk! give learners a view into the lives of adolescents in the U.S. Through the written and audio format of the interviews, learners are able to increase their vocabulary, practice their reading and listening skills, engage in discussions, and learn more about U.S. culture.

3. Caleb

   In: American Teens Talk! Format(s): Text

   Caleb talks about his school trip to Disney World.

4. An Integrated Skills Lesson Plan for "A Postcard from America" by Robert Olen Butler

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 1 Format(s): Text

   This lesson plan is based on the feature article, “Postcards from America” by Robert Olen Butler. It is appropriate for high intermediate to advanced students. The lesson integrates the four skills and has five parts: Preparing to Read, Reading the Text, Understanding the Text, Making Connections Beyond the Text, and Integrating Language Skills. The lesson includes group discussion of comprehension questions, scanning for vocabulary, and using the dictionary.

5. Why and How to Teach Collocations

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

   One of the key developments in vocabulary teaching stems from Michael Lewis’s Lexical Approach, which considers language as chunks of words combined for meaning. These frequently occurring word combinations are called collocations. This article points out a number of problems that result from learning words in isolation. Work with meaningful phrases can help improve students’ comprehension and comprehensibility. The article includes reading and listening activities to raise awareness of collocations as well as writing and speaking activities.

6. 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.

7. An Integrated Skills Lesson Plan for "Maps and Legends" by Michael Chabon

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

   This lesson plan is based on the article “Maps and Legends” by novelist Michael Chabon and is for high intermediate to advance students. The lesson includes group and pair work. Students discuss the neighborhood where they grew up. They read the text and identify unfamiliar words, then answer comprehension questions in writing or discussion groups. Post-reading activities include scanning, inferring meaning from context, dictionary practice, and discussion questions. The lesson ends with questions to make connections beyond the text and project ideas.

8. Morning Discussion as a Communicative Activity

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 4 Format(s): Text

   This article describes freshman university students in China. They started their day with Morning Discussion, a student-hosted discussion of relevant topics. BBC and VOA reports were useful sources. The discussions offered opportunities for negotiation, clarification, and building communicative competence. As students took responsibility for the topics, classroom set up, and participation, their confidence grew. This was very successful, as shown by comments in students’ weekly diaries. Instructors stayed out of debates and did not interrupt to offer corrections.

9. Teaching ESL Versus EFL

   In: English Teaching Forum 2005, Volume 43, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   The author argues for different teaching approaches in EFL vs. ESL settings. He points out the differences in student motivation and suggests how to select different activities for the two contexts (with examples of relevant activities). He gives guidelines for the appropriate role of L1 in each classroom, and explains how the two classroom cultures differ (for example, in term of the learning styles of the students). He argues that keeping in mind these differences will help educators make more effective decisions for their students.

10. A Lesson Plan Speaking (and Writing) of Sports

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

    This lesson plan offers several sports-related photographs and classroom activities that use the pictures for individual, pair, or group work. The activities include a sentence-combination task, structured writing questions, open-ended writing tasks, a charting task, and questions for a whole-class discussion. The author gives suggestions for making the tasks easier or more difficult for multiple levels.

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