Site Search

1. Profits or Preservation?

   In: Teacher's Corner: Integrating Global Affairs into Your English Lessons Format(s): Text

   Using role-plays in your English language classroom is a great way to get students talking. In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, students role-play a scenario about deforestation.

2. Teacher's Corner: Making Meaningful Assessments

   Format(s): Text

   This month’s Teacher’s Corner focuses on making and designing meaningful assessments to use in the English language classroom. We will begin the month by examining what makes a meaningful assessment and then offer a series of assessment ideas that you can use and adapt to fit the needs of you and your students.

3. Week 3 - Engineering: A Career For All

   In: Teacher's Corner: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Format(s): Text

   In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, students learn about the work of women in engineering and math by researching and giving a presentation.

4. Week 1 - Thinking Critically about News

   In: Teacher's Corner: Media Literacy Format(s): Text

   This week’s Teacher’s Corner will focus on starting a discussion in your classroom about the importance of thinking critically about the news.

5. Week 1 - Responding to Job Interviews

   In: Teacher's Corner: Teaching Business English and Entrepreneurship Format(s): Text

   In this month’s Teacher’s Corner, we present a series of activities that help students to develop their language skills in Business English. During week 1, students prepare for job interviews.

6. Week 4 - The Elevator Pitch

   In: Teacher's Corner: Teaching Business English and Entrepreneurship Format(s): Text

   Show students how to develop and perform an elevator pitch for a company idea in this week’s Teacher’s Corner.

7. Generating Ideas for a Service Learning Project

   In: Teacher's Corner: Service Learning in the Language Classroom Format(s): Text

   Every community has its own set of successes and challenges. Where you live, the needs of your local community, and the interests of your students will determine the focus of your service-learning project.

8. Writing for the World: Wikipedia as an Introduction to Academic Writing

   In: English Teaching Forum 2010, Volume 48, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article outlines a unit in which students write an article for Wikipedia as a way to learn and practice academic writing. Students learn how to use secondary sources in their writing as well as master a new genre with appropriate conventions and word choice. With this activity, students are encouraged to build academic writing skills in an interesting and public way. The author provides an explanation of Wikipedia as well as a step-by-step lesson plan with sample assignment sheets.

9. SWELL: A Writing Method to Help English Language Learners

   In: English Teaching Forum 2007, Volume 45, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   Social-interactive Writing for English Language Learners (SWELL) is collaborative writing based on Topping’s Paired Writing Method. The method was changed to meet the needs of English language learners. In both methods, pairs are formed according to proficiency, pairing a more advanced student (a Helper) with a less advanced one (a Writer). The author describes the steps of generating ideas, drafting, reading, editing, best copy, and evaluating. Features of SWELL include using students’ linguistic knowledge (L1), balancing fluency with mechanics, and promoting explicit teacher instruction.

10. Using Letters to Tell Stories in the EFL Classroom

    In: English Teaching Forum 2011, Volume 49, Number 4 Format(s): Text

    This article discusses how letter writing can be used as authentic language use. An activity for beginners involves an exchange of letters of introduction between the instructor and students. This serves a socially meaningful interactional purpose. The second activity is the construction of an story, one in which the plot is expressed in a series of letters. The writer suggests using letter exchanges for this creative writing project after using books such as The Color Purple. Letter writing is one way to enable and empower students to tell their own stories.

Pages