Advanced Search: Resources

1. Houseboats

   In: English Teaching Forum 2007, Volume 45, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This lesson uses a text about the houseboats of Kashmir to give students practice with descriptions, compound words, and participles. The lesson plan could be adapted to tourist destinations familiar to the students. Students are asked to write a description of their homes and create a tourism brochure for their own cities or towns.

2. An American Poetry Project for Low Intermediate ESL Adults

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the author’s poetry unit, developed to expose her ESL students to American literature. Students wrote journals about poems they read and were assigned a poem about which to write a composition. The author required her students to memorize and perform one poem. While teaching the unit, the author and a colleague kept a dialog journal of their experience and insights. Both the student reactions and their dialog journals yielded positive results, allowing the author to make several recommendations for using poetry in the ESL classroom.

3. Language & Literature in Tertiary Education: The Case for Stylistics

   In: English Teaching Forum 2002, Volume 40, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the lack of quality in students’ literary criticism in degree English courses, suggesting that students have difficulty understanding literary texts in English. It recommends stylistic analysis, the analysis of structures and vocabulary, as a way that learners of English as a second or foreign language can develop a more active and independent approach to understanding and critiquing literary works.

4. Tips for Reading Extensively

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 4 Format(s): Text

   This article describes how instructors can help their students benefit from extensive reading. Ten tips cover the basic guidelines of extensive reading. Extensive reading can improve learners’ fluency, confidence, and motivation in addition to expanding vocabulary and increasing reading speed. Students should read for overall comprehension and avoid turning to dictionaries with each new word. Modeling extensive reading and reading aloud with enthusiasm may also encourage student interest.

5. Everyday Conversations: Learning American English

   Format(s): Text

   This resource can be used by teachers and learners. Students can listen to and/or read dialogues in English.

6. Reading to Speak: Integrating Oral Communication Skills

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

   Although students want to practice speaking English, they do not have many opportunities to do so in the Chinese EFL system. This often results in something called 'mute English.' This article suggests a greater integration of skills through reading to speak activities. The author includes activities for reading to act, reading to debate, and reading to interview. These activities move students away from a focus on form, allowing students to be creative and build fluency.

7. 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.

8. From Passive Participant to Active Thinker

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

   This article discusses how, through materials development, teachers can help students think critically and feel comfortable enough to be active participants in class. The author suggests adapting materials to be more relevant to the interests and needs of students in a particular context. Another suggestion is to create materials that help students connect their thoughts and feelings to the language they are learning. The author includes techniques to promote critical thinking and learner autonomy.

9. A Tale of Two Animals

   In: English Teaching Forum 2007, Volume 45, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   An Indonesian fable is the theme of this three-part lesson for young learners. Students practice with the past-tense verbs used in the fable. By listening, reading and ordering the sentences, and copying a paragraph of the story, students become very familiar with the fable. The lessons finish with homework to write a play based on the fable. Students may select and perform the best play from their group.

10. Creating and Adapting Materials for a Multilevel Class

    In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

    This session, "Creating and Adapting Materials for a Multilevel Class," focuses on how to help students of all levels learn by means of motivating and engaging activities.

Pages