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1. Increasing Student Talk Time in the Online Classroom

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

   This session, "Increasing Student Talk Time in the Online Classroom," discussed benefits of increasing student oral language use in virtual environments, and explored routines, activities, and tools that gave students a voice in their online classrooms.

2. Effective Assessment Practices for Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning in an Online Environment

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

   The American English Webinar and Facebook Live sessions are hosted by the U.S. Department of State’s Office of English Language Programs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

3. Alternatives to Classroom Debate

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

   This session, "Alternatives to Classroom Debate," explores the limitations of the traditional classroom debate format and introduces several alternatives ELT educators can use to cultivate the 21st-century skills their students need to discuss challenging topics.

4. Activate Games for Learning English - Guess What?

   Format(s): Text

   Guess What? cards can be used for a variety of games in the classroom to provide an opportunity for students to practice making descriptions in English and to learn English vocabulary.

5. 'Hey Kids! Let’s Put on a Show!' Theater in the English Language Classroom

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

   This webinar, "Hey Kids! Let's Put on a Show! Theater in the English Language Classroom,” focuses on how to use theater in the classroom--from developing short, theater-based activities to putting on a student show.

6. Classroom Activities

   In: English Teaching Forum 2014, Volume 52, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This section presents three stand-alone English language-learning activities related to fish.

7. Winter Scenes

   In: English Teaching Forum 2012, Volume 50, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   ʺWinter Scenesʺ is a series of photos with captions. The pictures can be used as writing or discussion prompts.

8. 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.

9. A Judicious Lesson: A Whole-learning Reading Activity

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the use of whole-reading activities in a university level reading and speaking course. The author used a magazine article about a murder and a trial to develop a four-week unit in which students investigated ideas about crime, punishment, rhetorical strategies, idiomatic language, and the United States' judicial system. Through the use of this unit, the author advocates for readings and activities that challenge students to move beyond comprehension of a text.

10. Information Gap in Communicative Classrooms

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

    The author argues that exchanges in the classroom must go beyond display questions and should be based on the information gap that occurs when one speaker does not know in advance what the other is going to say. The author provides examples of information gap activities to promote a communicative classroom. Activity types include practical situations, guessing games, role plays, opinion gap activities, and reasoning gap activities. The author argues that these activities have real communicative value.

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