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1. Word Bricks

   In: Activate: Games for Learning American English Format(s): Text

   Word Bricks are used for building sentences in English. The Word Bricks have a wide range of words in English written on them: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, pronouns, and so on—all of the building blocks that students need to form complete phrases and sentences in English.

2. Cars, Cars, Cars

   In: English Teaching Forum 2013, Volume 51, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   Cars are the focus of this feature article, which explores such topics as the history of cars in the United States, the national highway system, classic car shows, and the road trip in American literature and film.

3. Module 5: Learner Feedback

   In: Shaping the Way We Teach English: Successful Practices Around the World Format(s): Text, Video

   This Module of the Shaping the Way we Teach English Series contains a lesson plan and accompanying video that is focused on formative feedback.

4. VOA Podcasts: Shows in Special English

   Format(s): Website

   Articles and corresponding audio on American Life and history for English learners. Read the articles and listen online, or download free podcasts.

5. Story 17: Studying English is Good

   In: Why English? Comics for the Classroom Format(s): MP3, Text

   The stories in Why English? Comics for the Classroom – written by teenagers and young adults – will appeal to learners of all ages. These stories provide an enjoyable opportunity to increase vocabulary, reading comprehension, listening, speaking, and writing.

6. Week 4 - Taking a Vacation

   In: Teacher's Corner: Phrasal Verbs Format(s): Text

   In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, students will practice phrasal verbs through a vacation-planning activity.

7. Teaching Jazz Chants to Young Learners

   Format(s): Text, Video

   Teaching Jazz Chants to Young Learners is a video-based teacher training resource available on DVD that presents one compelling technique for teaching English pronunciation, intonation, and sentence stress: the jazz chant.

8. Observation Web: A Reflection Technique for Observation

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   The author shows how an observation web can be used to track the nature of activities during a lesson so they can be reflected on later. The observer uses a circular chart to mark if action in the classroom is linguistic, pragmatic, informative, teacher-centered, student-centered, individual, and/or interactive. This marking is done every five minutes. The author provides examples of traditionalist, innovative, and balanced teacher observations webs from real observations of Russian teachers. The best lessons came from teachers with more balanced webs.

9. Two Writing Activities for Extensive Reading

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

   These activities promote writing fluency and self-monitoring as well as skills such as getting started with writing and skimming. Students demonstrate understanding of their extensive reading. Timed repeated thinking and writing is similar to free-writing. It includes brief cycles of writing and reflecting. In each cycle, students start their writing over. A similar activity involves cycles of skimming, writing, and thinking. For variation, students can start from where their last writing left off or choose the most important point as a starting place for the next writing turn.

10. Teacher's Corner: Media Literacy

    Format(s): Text

    In this month’s Teacher’s Corner, we present a series of activities that help to develop students’ critical thinking and media literacy skills. This week, learn how to help students think about commonly used news sources and characteristics of high-quality news.

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