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1. Try This: How Was Your Weekend?

   In: English Teaching Forum 2015, Volume 53, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   This activity is a kind of mingle. In a mingle, students move individually from classmate to classmate, usually with a question to ask or specific information to find.

2. Communicative Curriculum Design for the 21st Century

   In: English Teaching Forum 2002 (Volume 40, Number 1) Format(s): Text

   This piece looks at Communicative Language Teaching, or CLT, for teaching EFL. The author discusses the history, the focus, and the future of CLT. The article describes how to shape a communicative curriculum and the five components that it is composed of: language arts, language for a purpose, personal English use, theater arts, and beyond the classroom. The article emphasizes the variation of CLT within each classroom.

3. Fast Food World: The Hamburger Comes of Age

   In: English Teaching Forum 2002 (Volume 40, Number 1) Format(s): Text

   This article presents the history of the hamburger and the debate about who invented it as well as how it has become an icon among foods, spreading to a variety of other countries. The author shares the marketing strategies used by multiple businesses in order to attract customers as well as the franchising and growth that has come from such a simple product.

4. Transforming the Whole Class into Gossiping Groups

   In: English Teaching Forum 2002 (Volume 40, Number 1) Format(s): Text

   This article discusses various communicative purposes displayed by speakers of a language, including focusing on the topic of gossiping as a universal language function and exploring ways to exploit our human tendency for gossip to provide language fluency practice. The author provides two different interactive gossip activities that can be used in the classroom to help students speak more fluently. Included are step-by-step details for each lesson plan and each activity.

5. A Case Study of Reflective Journals in a University Level Writing Course in Hungary

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article is about the author’s experience using learning logs and in-class journaling for her college-level ESL writing class in Hungary. Her purpose was to gather information on the students’ writing experiences, both before and during the class, and to address issues raised in the logs and journals. She taught the class with a reflective-teaching, learner-centered style and a process-learning curriculum.

6. Helping Professionals Prepare Presentations in English for International Conferences

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This English teacher in Argentina describes how she helped a local doctor prepare for a presentation made in English at an international trade conference held in the United States. The article discusses how the author prepared to work with the specific topic, ophthalmology, the use of cognates in the specialized field, tips for helping the physician with his pronunciation, and the outcome of the presentation.

7. Written Peer Response in L2 Writing

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article argues that peer reviews of student writing should be done in writing and orally, as opposed to only in writing or only orally. Peer reviewing usually addresses the organization and style of student writing. The author discusses eight advantages to managing a peer-review process this way.

8. Motivating Students by Modifying Evaluation Methods

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This author identifies three key elements to student assessment—overly critical correcting, expectations, and competitive scoring—that prevent success in the ESL environment, based on the typical Chinese educational structure. The article discusses several techniques, mostly learner-centered, that a teacher can use to provide effective assessments while also creating an environment of trust, confidence, and fairness, where a student feels safe to take risks.

9. Nasreddin Hodja and the Importance of Context

   In: English Teaching Forum 2002, Volume 40, Number 3 Format(s): Text

   This article introduces the tales of Nasreddin Hodja, a 15th century Turkish folk character and uses them to illustrate the importance of context, the need for multiple perspectives, and the role of the teacher. The author looks at various aspects of context, such as social, cultural, and historical contexts. The idea of multiple perspectives is explained with the current multiple intelligence theory. The author addresses the role of the teacher in terms of teaching style.

10. Helping Students Develop Coherence in Writing

    In: English Teaching Forum 2002, Volume 40, Number 3 Format(s): Text

    This article discusses the need to bring coherence in writing from an abstract level to a concrete concept that can be described and taught. Teachers need to teach coherence by sharing its metalanguage with students. This can be done for example by using more specific comments such as “unclear reference” or “inappropriate conjunction” instead of vague ones such as “the essay lacks unity.” The article offers a coherence checklist for students to self-edit and to review their peers’ writing.

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