Site Search

1. Teaching Vocabulary to English Teacher Trainees

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

   Non-native English-speaking teachers in a foreign context will sometimes experience difficulty with the words used in their training courses. This article presents a six-step method for helping these teachers learn new, relevant vocabulary. The method is effective but does not require a large amount of class time. Once words have been selected, individual students are each given a word for which to create a word profile. Presentation and review follows.

2. Effective Questions

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

   Teachers ask many questions in the classroom, but not all are useful. Questions that the teacher already knows the answer to are known as display questions. These are often asked for the student to display knowledge. Questions where the teacher does not already know the answer are meaning based and known as referential questions. This article explains the problems with relying on display questions in the L2 classroom. This distinction applies to reading comprehension questions as well as oral questions.

3. Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

   In: Sing Out Loud Children's Songs Format(s): MP3, Text, Image / Poster / Maps

   This song in the Sing Out Loud Children's Songs collection is a classic tune using body parts and movement. Poster included.

4. Teacher Resources

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

   In this special section of Forum, four commercial publications are presented. Topics include techniques to help middle school students with reading, student involvement and choice; an introduction to the concept of genre (of interest to ESL teachers, writing teachers, etc., including genre-based assessment and the importance of audience in writing); the use of literature circles with elementary learners to foster discussion and love of literature; and a book of EFL methodology.

5. Promoting Solidarity in Short Interactions

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

   This lesson in Teaching Pragmatics aims to raise awareness of and give practice in using strategies of relexicalisation for descriptive accounts and for promoting solidarity in short interactions. A sub-goal is to provide students with interesting and natural vehicles for vocabulary development, recycling and revision.

6. 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.

7. Teaching Refusals in an EFL Setting

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

   The goals of this lesson in Teaching Pragmatics are: raising awareness that misunderstandings can be caused by differences in performing speech acts between Japanese and Americans; making learners aware of what they know already and encouraging them to use their universal or transferable L1 pragmatic knowledge in L2 contexts; teaching the appropriate linguistic forms that are likely to be encountered in performing speech acts.

8. 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.

9. Being People

   Format(s): Text

   Being People is a collection of short stories and poems that draws upon the multicultural nature of American society.

10. English Grammar and Technical Writing

    Format(s): Text

    English Grammar and Technical Writing is a textbook for international students who are studying science, medicine, or technology.

Pages