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1. Using Graphic Organizers to Promote Students’ Academic Language Production

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

   This session introduces the graphic organizer as a tool to help students understand difficult concepts and produce related, meaningful academic English.

2. Engaging Students as Tutors, Trainers, and Leaders

   In: English Teaching Forum 2015, Volume 53, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   While starting a tutoring program may seem like a daunting and time-consuming task, it does not have to be. The best way to approach the creation and development of a tutoring service is with a list of clear objectives. In this article, I describe the process I used to create a tutoring program with my English as a foreign language university students.

3. Empowering Your Students with Media Literacy

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

   This webinar, "Empowering Your Students with Media Literacy," explores activities that help students ask key questions about the messages found in news and social media.

4. Empowering Students to Solve Local Problems: Adapting Materials with Service Learning

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

   This session, "Empowering Students to Solve Local Problems: Adapting Materials with Service Learning," introduces participants to the concept of Service Learning as a teaching strategy that promotes meaningful experiential learning through community service and reflective classroom activities.

5. Encouraging Student Voices in a Chinese Classroom

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

   The author shares two activities she developed to promote student participation and encourage candid feedback. The first strategy involved having a student "facilitator" play the role of the teacher in small group discussions, providing an alternative to teacher-centered classrooms. To receive candid feedback from students, the author developed a system called no-fuss feedback. Students drew a large circle on a piece of paper and, as they listened to a list of class activities, they wrote the name of the activity in the circle if it helped them, and outside the circle if it did not.

6. Student Documentaries: A Language Learning Tool

   In: English Teaching Forum 2008, Volume 46, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article describes the reasons for project-based learning and how it better motivates students in an EFL classroom. It illustrates this topic by presenting a documentary film project that was carried out in a high-intermediate EFL class in Saudi Arabia. The article summarizes the theoretical support for communicative language learning and project-based approaches. The author then describes the documentary film project in detail and presents an evaluation of the project based on Simkins et al.’s (2002) framework of evaluation for multimedia projects.

7. Keep it Moving: Ideas for Fun, Active Classroom Activities

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

   During this session, Regional English Language Officer Kevin McCaughey shares his approach to a dynamic classroom space: The Movable Class. Kevin explains how this approach will help you to use more group work, design student-centered activities, and become a more confident classroom manager, all while you and your students have more fun!

8. Morning Discussion as a Communicative Activity

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

   This article describes freshman university students in China. They started their day with Morning Discussion, a student-hosted discussion of relevant topics. BBC and VOA reports were useful sources. The discussions offered opportunities for negotiation, clarification, and building communicative competence. As students took responsibility for the topics, classroom set up, and participation, their confidence grew. This was very successful, as shown by comments in students’ weekly diaries. Instructors stayed out of debates and did not interrupt to offer corrections.

9. Language and Civil Society E-Journal: Civic Education

   Format(s): Text

   The content in each volume of this e-journal is related to an aspect of building or maintaining a Civil Society - topics that affect students' personal or professional lives on a daily basis. The topic of this volume is civic education. Through the exploration of topics related to civic education, language teachers can help their students master English and simultaneously become more knowledgeable citizens of the world.

10. Process Writing and the Internet: Blogs and Ning Networks in the Classroom

    In: English Teaching Forum 2011, Volume 49, Number 2 Format(s): Text

    This article presents a student-centered technique for teaching writing to ESL and EFL students who are familiar with Internet-based technology. There are two classroom lessons which use blogs (an Internet-based diary tool accessible by many) and Ning networks (an Internet-based network created for small groups for a small fee). A process-writing concept focuses on students’ social relationships and interests. Step-by-step directions are included for teachers and students who may be less familiar with these two technologies.

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