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1. Laugh and Learn: Thinking Over the "Funny Teacher" Myth

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   The author in this article presents laughter and fun as an important part of a language classroom. The author suggests that when you laugh you learn better. Humor is introduced as a way to increase motivation and decrease anxiety. The author defines the “funny teacher” as a serious professional who uses humor to provide students with an enjoyable journey through learning. Activities are suggested for increasing fun and learning in the language classroom.

2. Integrating Reading and Writing for Effective Language Teaching

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses an integrated reading and writing course for first-year college EFL. The author of the article developed this course to address student difficulty in balancing multiple issues in writing. The course aimed to teach writing as a process. The author shares key components of the course such as reading and writing requirements and in-class activities.

3. Rules and Laws

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article presents a lesson that gives students the opportunity to explore aspects of rules and laws. The goal of the lesson is to help students learn vocabulary and concepts associated with the topic, practice their English language skills, and develop an understanding of the role of rules and laws in civil societies. The article shares three activities for a fifty-minute lesson plan, but the authors state that teachers may modify the lesson for their own contexts and student needs.

4. Unpublished

   Women in Sports

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article outlines the history of women in sports. It includes a discussion of important female athletes, female participation in the modern Olympics, and Title IX in the United States. The piece concludes by giving sketches of the accomplishments of several important female athletes-- "Babe" Didrickson Zaharias, Wilma Rudolph, Joan Benoit Samuelson, and Jackie Joyner-Kersey.

5. Adapting Authentic Materials for Language Teaching

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article looks at how to adapt original materials for language teaching, using an intermediate-level text for business as an example. The discussion is organized into four sections: semantic, lexical, syntactic, and discourse elements. The author argues that the process is the same for teaching each of these four elements. Teachers can adapt authentic materials for different classroom uses, depending on their students’ ages and proficiency levels.

6. Misconception Analysis: A Necessary Complement to Foreign Language Teaching

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article draws on findings from cognitive psychology that emphasize learners and their learning needs. The author proposes a solution for dealing with language learning problems, called misconception analysis (MA). The article explains MA, its usefulness, and language classroom applications. The author classifies misconceptions about language learning into four groups: misconceptions about the goals of language learning, the nature of language, the processes and strategies of language learning, and language elements.

7. A Judicious Lesson: A Whole-learning Reading Activity

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the use of whole-reading activities in a university level reading and speaking course. The author used a magazine article about a murder and a trial to develop a four-week unit in which students investigated ideas about crime, punishment, rhetorical strategies, idiomatic language, and the United States' judicial system. Through the use of this unit, the author advocates for readings and activities that challenge students to move beyond comprehension of a text.

8. Meeting Learners' Academic Needs

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article suggests that language teachers can learn from the ideas of educators who work outside the field of language teaching. The author examines learner needs and discusses how the they can be met in his teaching context. The learner needs addressed in this article are the need to feel secure and important, the need to understand the learning goals, the need for time to integrate learning, the need to understand the learning process, and the need to receive feedback.

9. Earthquakes

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article about earthquakes is appropriate for intermediate to advanced learners, particularly those with an interest in earth sciences. The article discusses the basic science of earthquakes, how they are measured, global earthquake zones, significant earthquakes in recent history, and tips for surviving an earthquake. Additional websites of interest about earthquakes are provided as well.

10. An Investigation of the Effectiveness of Teaching Pronunciation to Malaysian TEFL Students

    In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 3 Format(s): Text

    This article examines the benefits of pronunciation instruction for young adult language learners. It reports findings from a study in which pronunciation training was implemented into a university-level EFL speaking and listening course. The study found that students claimed to have benefitted from both the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach. This article endorses the value of pronunciation training using both segmental and suprasegmental instruction, and addressing oral production and aural comprehension.

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