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1. How to Make Upper-Level University English Classes More Interactive

   In: English Teaching Forum 2009, Volume 47, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   Because of the advanced nature of the work in ESP classes, some students may have trouble keeping up and staying motivated. The author outlines what she did to make her ESP Engineering class more interactive. By incorporating task-based language teaching (TLBT), there were more opportunities for group work and student-to-student communication. A number of activities are available to the instructor using a TBLT approach, including listing, compare and contrast, problem solving, sharing personal experiences, and projects.

2. Week 3 - Making Requests with Modals

   In: Teacher's Corner: Modals Format(s): Text

   In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, students learn the various ways to make requests using modals.

3. English Teaching Forum 2008, Volume 46, Number 2

   Format(s): Text

   This issue focuses on Seattle, the second city on our tour this year. Complementing the feature article is a lesson plan on “Seeing Seattle.” Additional articles in this issue discuss interdisciplinary collaboration, two approaches to student-produced videos, student documentaries as language learning tools, using teacher-developed corpora in the CBI classroom, and building vocabulary and improving writing while developing a tourist brochure.

4. Livening Up College English Classes with Games

   In: English Teaching Forum 2009, Volume 47, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the use of games in teaching college-level English as a second language (ESL) classes. It describes how teachers can use games such as Taboo to change the direction of teaching from being teacher-centered to student-centered. The article addresses problems such as classroom management and the time spent adapting or creating games and presents useful tips for teachers to consider related to the use of games as a teaching tool.

5. Observation Web: A Reflection Technique for Observation

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   The author shows how an observation web can be used to track the nature of activities during a lesson so they can be reflected on later. The observer uses a circular chart to mark if action in the classroom is linguistic, pragmatic, informative, teacher-centered, student-centered, individual, and/or interactive. This marking is done every five minutes. The author provides examples of traditionalist, innovative, and balanced teacher observations webs from real observations of Russian teachers. The best lessons came from teachers with more balanced webs.

6. Integrating Language Skills through a Dictogloss Procedure

   In: English Teaching Forum 2014, Volume 52, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   The co-authors of this article present interactive and student-centered dictogloss activities as alternatives to dictation exercises.

7. Formative Assessments: Part 1

   In: Teacher's Corner: Collecting and Using Data Format(s): Text

   This month’s Teacher’s Corner will examine ways to ensure your students have learned the target content. In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, we look at formative assessments to use in your classroom.

8. "Move and Say" to Build Foundational Reading Skills

   In: Teacher's Corner: Literacy Development for True Beginners Format(s): Text

   In the introduction for this month’s Teacher’s Corner, we defined phonemic awareness as a student’s ability to understand that words are made up of sounds.

9. Week 4 - Breaking the Ice With Modals

   In: Teacher's Corner: Modals Format(s): Text

   Icebreaker activities are great ways to get students talking. Icebreakers are even better when students are both talking and practicing a specific language skill or component.

10. Gossip and Rumors

    In: Teacher's Corner: Reported Speech Format(s): Text

    This week’s Teacher’s Corner uses a variation of the game “True Truths and a Lie” to help students practice reported speech while they learn more about their classmates.

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