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1. Haley

   In: American Teens Talk! Format(s): MP3, Text

   Haley is on the school swim team and also coaches a swim team. She talks about her busy schedule in this interview.

2. Adapting Songs for Beginning Learners

   In: Teacher's Corner: Adapting Materials for Students' Levels Format(s): Text

   During week 2 of this month’s Teacher’s Corner, learn a fun way to adapt a song activity for beginner-level students.

3. American Rhythms

   Format(s): MP3, Text

   The Sing Out Loud American Rhythms CD includes a variety of musical genres from many different artists in the U.S.A. These songs will appeal to teens and young adults. This "hybrid" CD also contains a teacher's guide to using music in the classroom.

4. Total Physical Response (TPR) and Miming with "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe"

   In: Teacher's Corner: Listening Format(s): MP3, Text, Image / Poster / Maps

   This meaning-focused listening activity uses the song “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” from Sing Out Loud-Children’s Songs.

5. The Conversation Class

   In: English Teaching Forum 2012, Volume 50, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses conversation classes, drawing from the author’s experience teaching Persian ESL. The author offers eight guidelines for effective teaching: cultivate a relaxed atmosphere (with six suggestions for doing this), be alert and foster alertness, be enthusiastic and engender enthusiasm, be patient, be sensitive, think, listen, and make corrections. The article finishes with a number of suggested topics and activities for promoting conversation.

6. Information Gap in Communicative Classrooms

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   The author argues that exchanges in the classroom must go beyond display questions and should be based on the information gap that occurs when one speaker does not know in advance what the other is going to say. The author provides examples of information gap activities to promote a communicative classroom. Activity types include practical situations, guessing games, role plays, opinion gap activities, and reasoning gap activities. The author argues that these activities have real communicative value.

7. Encouraging Student Voices in a Chinese Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   The author shares two activities she developed to promote student participation and encourage candid feedback. The first strategy involved having a student "facilitator" play the role of the teacher in small group discussions, providing an alternative to teacher-centered classrooms. To receive candid feedback from students, the author developed a system called no-fuss feedback. Students drew a large circle on a piece of paper and, as they listened to a list of class activities, they wrote the name of the activity in the circle if it helped them, and outside the circle if it did not.

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