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1. Authentic Video in the Beginning ESOL Classroom: Using a Full-Length Feature Film for Listening and Speaking Strategy Practice

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 1 Format(s): Text

   Using film in the classroom can be effective with beginning English learners. A full-length film offers continuous context to discuss humor, culture, and language functions, real-life communication with images and non-verbal cues, increased retention due to activating the right hemisphere of the brain, and the lowering of students’ affective filters. The authors include a lesson based on their experience teaching listening and speaking skills using the movie “What about Bob.” Assessment techniques and potential problems are considered.

2. Techniques for Students New to the Language Lab

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   This article presents techniques that can be used in the university language lab to improve listening and speaking skills. The article describes several tasks for pairs and groups. Lessons begin with a popular English song and a warm up activity. Materials expose students to the formal and informal language of native speakers and fluent non-native speakers. Drills, stories, songs, and conversations make the language lab a beneficial resource. An initial session highlights the unique aspects of spoken language.

3. From Passive Learners to Critical Thinkers: Preparing EFL Students for University Success

   In: English Teaching Forum 2010, Volume 48, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   This article explains how the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee (BRAC) revised their curriculum to best prepare EFL students for English-speaking universities. After completing a needs analysis on how to best serve their students, the committee decided to make a more interactive classroom environment in which teachers integrated the four skills, used critical thinking activities, taught grammar in context, and used various methods of assessment. Feedback showed that both the students and the teachers responded positively to the changes.

4. Using the Telephone to Teach Pragmatics

   In: Teaching Pragmatics Format(s): Text, Video, Website

   This lesson in Teaching Pragmatics aims to help students learn to make requests, extend invitations, and offer congratulations (or other speech acts) and to learn how to open and close telephone conversations when leaving a message.

5. Polite Ways of Correcting or Contradicting our Conversation's Partner's Assumptions

   In: Teaching Pragmatics Format(s): Text, Video, Website

   This lesson aims to raise learners' pragmatic awareness towards an important conversational function and to help them to be aware of the negative impression brought about by the non-use of actually (or other softeners of contradiction or correction) and for students to learn to produce corrections or contradictions prefaced by actually.

6. The Children's Response: TPR and Beyond

   In: English Teaching Forum 2005, Volume 43, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article describes a technique called The Children’s Response, which can be used to teach young EFL learners. The technique is based on Total Physical Response (TPR), which actively involves children from kindergarten to beyond third grade. The article offers three lessons that provide practice with the form and function of the present and past tense as well as prepositions and imperative commands.

7. The Lighter Side: Fishy Fun

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

   There are two games. The first has five tongue twisters, each word missing a letter which the student must complete. The second game is a matching game, but the words are missing letters which the student must fill in before he/she completes the match. The games help with vocabulary and spelling.

8. Teaching ESL Versus EFL

   In: English Teaching Forum 2005, Volume 43, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   The author argues for different teaching approaches in EFL vs. ESL settings. He points out the differences in student motivation and suggests how to select different activities for the two contexts (with examples of relevant activities). He gives guidelines for the appropriate role of L1 in each classroom, and explains how the two classroom cultures differ (for example, in term of the learning styles of the students). He argues that keeping in mind these differences will help educators make more effective decisions for their students.

9. "Imported" Communicative Language Teaching: Implications for Local Teachers

   In: English Teaching Forum 2005, Volume 43, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This article criticizes the rejection of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in non-Western contexts. Teachers sometimes avoid CLT because it includes ideas (such as autonomy and choice) that do not always fit with the educational, social, and cultural perspectives of their areas. The author defines CLT, considers the issues that come with importing this teaching method, and offers suggestions to help EFL teachers adapt CLT to their contexts to create genuine communication.

10. 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.

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