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1. The Lighter Side of TEFL: Shaggy Dog Stories

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

   This section of The Lighter Side of TEFL focuses on shaggy dog stories, which are long-winded tales that gradually work up to a surprise ending. This section has an audio component.

2. The Pragmatics Action Maze

   In: Teaching Pragmatics Format(s): Text, Video, Website

   This lesson aims helps students navigate requests by identifying pragmatically appropriate language.

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. Poems About Places

   In: Poetry Format(s): Text

   Learn about places – cities, provinces, villages, countries – that are special to the students who wrote poems about them. Read the poems or download the PDFs.

5. Poems About Places

   In: Poems About Places Format(s): Text

   Learn about places – cities, provinces, villages, countries – that are special to the students who wrote poems about them. Read or download the poems!

6. Into the Garden

   In: American Rhythms Format(s): MP3, Text

   This song is an example of folk and Americana music, which has a broad range of musical influences - from folk, country and blues to rock & roll and bluegrass.

7. Using the Telephone to Teach Pragmatics

   In: Teaching Pragmatics Format(s): Text, Video, Website

   This lesson in Teaching Pragmatics aims to help students learn to make requests, extend invitations, and offer congratulations (or other speech acts) and to learn how to open and close telephone conversations when leaving a message.

8. The Wit of Porportuk

   In: To Build a Fire and Other Stories Format(s): Text

   In this story from To Build a Fire and Other Stories, an old and ill chief has a large debt and cannot find the means to pay it. The lender, Porportuk, offers to have the debt waived if the chief gives away his daughter.

9. The Law of Life

   In: To Build a Fire and Other Stories Format(s): Text

   In this story from To Build a Fire and Other Stories, an old and blind Alaskan Native man listens to the sounds of his tribe preparing to migrate to find food and thinks about the law of life: all things must die.

10. New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment

    In: English Teaching Forum 2009, Volume 47, Number 2 Format(s): Text

    This article introduces students to the history, cultural diversity, art, landscape, and symbolism of America's 47th state, New Mexico. It offers a special section on the art and life of Georgia O'Keeffe and small sections are included on the pueblo peoples, the state's Spanish heritage, the transition from Mexican to U.S. Territorial rule, farming and keeping animals, and New Mexico's abundant natural resources.

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