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1. Reciprocal Teaching: A Useful Tool in Increasing Student-Talking Time

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 2 Format(s): Text

   Reciprocal Teaching (RT) can be used to increase student talk time and improve communicative competence. This strategy uses paraphrasing, reported speech, question formation and concept-checking to promote dialogue. As students move from short responses toward longer conversations (or language for transactional purposes), their fluency and retention increase. These “long turns” provide important practice. The author also emphasizes the importance of prompts for lower-level students. The article includes examples of each strategy as well as several axioms of reciprocal teaching.

2. Near-Peer Tutoring in an ESOL Music Project

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 2 Format(s): Text

   This article describes how near-peer tutoring was used to foster a supportive, learner-centered environment in an adult ESOL setting. Students from beginning and advanced classes worked together to learn a song to perform at a year-end ceremony. The task involved vocabulary, pronunciation, intonation, and comprehension. Benefits of the music project included building relationships, breaking the routine, and lowering students’ affective filters. The project allowed the adults to be self-directed, empowered them to critique themselves, and gave them a sense of accomplishment.

3. Morning Discussion as a Communicative Activity

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 4 Format(s): Text

   This article describes freshman university students in China. They started their day with Morning Discussion, a student-hosted discussion of relevant topics. BBC and VOA reports were useful sources. The discussions offered opportunities for negotiation, clarification, and building communicative competence. As students took responsibility for the topics, classroom set up, and participation, their confidence grew. This was very successful, as shown by comments in students’ weekly diaries. Instructors stayed out of debates and did not interrupt to offer corrections.

4. Bright Ideas: A Teacher’s Resource Manual

   Format(s): Text

   Bright Ideas: A Teacher’s Resource Manual offers twenty-six practical teaching strategies and techniques that originally appeared in Ideas Plus, a special series of publications produced by the National Council of Teachers of English.

5. Lesson Plan: Reading, Writing, and Performing Poetry

   In: English Teaching Forum 2006, Volume 44, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This lesson plan contains poetry-related activities that aim to help students read and interpret English poetry, and write their own poems. The activities are introduced in each of the following parts: talking about poetry, understanding poetic devices, interpreting poems, using poetry for language acquisition, writing original poems, performing poetry, and organizing poetry slams.

6. First Road to Learning: Language through Stories

   In: English Teaching Forum 2006, Volume 44, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the benefits of using stories in language teaching and ideas of how to use stories in the classroom. The authors believe that stories can help solve the problems caused by limited resources and are good ways to teach culture. They describe types of stories and how they can be used in teaching speaking, listening, reading, writing, integrated skills, and critical thinking.

7. Classroom Techniques: Communicative Activities for Middle School Classrooms

   In: English Teaching Forum 2006, Volume 44, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   The author states that communicative activities, known to help language learning, can be difficult to use with middle school students. The author offers four suggestions for carrying out communicative activities and presents two activities that are designed to motivate students to use English to express their views.

8. Classroom Techniques: Romeo and Juliet in One Hour

   In: English Teaching Forum 2006, Volume 44, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This article describes the use of drama activities to motivate students, to teach vocabulary and pronunciation, and to enhance cooperative learning. The author describes in five steps the classroom procedure of an activity based on the play of Romeo and Juliet. The author discusses the results of the activity and its implications. Play scripts used in the activity are included.

9. Lesson Plan: Using Journalism Skills in the Language Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2006, Volume 44, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This lesson plan contains four activities based on the theme of newspapers and journalism. It includes a lesson to familiarize students with newspapers, journalistic writing, interviewing, and creating a class newspaper. The activities can be used as individual lessons or a larger project of creating a class newspaper.

10. Create to Communicate: Mixed Media

    In: Create to Communicate: Art Activities for the EFL Classroom Format(s): Text

    Mixed media, an art technique that combines two or more art media, can provide students with many avenues for expression, exploration, and experimentation while using English.

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