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1. Exploring Contexts: A Tense and Aspect Activity for Online and In-Person Instruction

   In: English Teaching Forum 2021, Volume 59, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   The author carefully explains how to carry out a clever but easy-to-implement activity that helps students increase their facility with tense and aspect in fun, collaborative, and creative ways.

2. Real-Life Problem Solving: A Collaborative Learning Activity

   In: English Teaching Forum 2002 (Volume 40, Number 1) Format(s): Text

   This article emphasizes the importance of classroom activities that promote interaction and real-life problem-solving skills. The author describes a real-life problem-solving activity that she implements within her own classroom, consisting of multiple groups of students following a seven-step process. The steps she emphasizes include: state the problem, analyze, brainstorm, decide, think though, identify, and follow up. The author suggests how the activity can be used in a variety of classrooms and age levels.

3. Bringing One Language to Another: Multilingualism as a Resource in the Language Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2011, Volume 49, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   Many EFL students are already multilingual, but they may not realize the strengths they bring to language learning. This article calls on instructors to help students develop language awareness and guide them to find ways to apply what they know about language. The author shows how this process occurred in a sociolinguistics course and includes sample lessons for all ages and a variety of levels of proficiency. Lessons incorporate the students’ language knowledge in such skill areas as grammar and vocabulary.

4. Alternatives to Current Pedagogy for Teaching the Present Perfect Progressive

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   These researchers collected 250 samples of spoken and written American English from high-level communicators and analyzed the use of the present perfect progressive tense. They compared these samples to five leading ESL and EFL grammar textbooks. This article reviews the research and findings. The five leading textbooks provided good overall structure for teaching the present perfect progressive tense, but the use of the tense was critically influenced by broad context, adverbs, temporal context and the uses of other tenses including the present and present perfect tense.

5. Consciousness-Raising and Prepositions

   In: English Teaching Forum 2010, Volume 48, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses consciousness-raising as a way to help students learn English prepositions. This technique, in which grammatical forms are highlighted in some way, can be helpful to teachers, especially when instructors have difficulty finding materials. The author shares her experience using consciousness-raising in a course in South Africa for ESL teachers.

6. Lesson Plan: Be a Good Sport

   In: English Teaching Forum 2010, Volume 48, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This lesson plan, targeted at upper-beginner and lower-intermediate learners, includes listening, speaking, and writing activities centered on the sport of lacrosse. At least two activities are included for each skill, such as a mini-presentation and a discussion of why being a good sport is a good way to practice speaking.

7. Using Progressive I-Can Statements to Promote Learner Confidence in Writing

   In: English Teaching Forum 2010, Volume 48, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   Language learners may sometimes feel shy and unsure of their abilities and may not be able to see what they are able to do. The authors found that writing I-can statements (e.g., I can write the names of foods in English) can be a good way to build confidence. Students use their I-can records to assess their own progress. The authors offer a starting point for teachers by presenting ideas for tasks such as copying words, writing signs, and writing about the weekend.

8. Mind Mirror Projects: A Tool for Integrating Critical Thinking into the English Language Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2009, Volume 47, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   Students often have difficulty 'reading between the lines.' This article suggests the use of mind mirror activities as a tool to improve students' critical thinking and learning skills (e.g., analysis, categorization, clarification, inferencing). The author describes a successful five-day group project from his own classroom that ended in students sharing their work through poster presentations.

9. A Rough Guide to Language Awareness

   In: English Teaching Forum 2008, Volume 46, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the need to focus on form while learning language in context, and names this method of teaching grammar as “language awareness.” It connects this method of learning grammar with the concept of input processing, searching for examples of grammar in context, noticing the linguistic features and themes, deducing a rule, testing it against further data, and finally producing it in short tasks. The article provides teachers with practical techniques on how to teach grammar in a communicative lesson.

10. A Lesson Plan Speaking (and Writing) of Sports

    In: English Teaching Forum 2005, Volume 43, Number 3 Format(s): Text

    This lesson plan offers several sports-related photographs and classroom activities that use the pictures for individual, pair, or group work. The activities include a sentence-combination task, structured writing questions, open-ended writing tasks, a charting task, and questions for a whole-class discussion. The author gives suggestions for making the tasks easier or more difficult for multiple levels.

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