tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50844902108371132862012-01-16T00:32:51.695+08:00A specially selected collection of good ideas and explanations about Teaching English as a Foreign Language from experts around the world.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.comBlogger2411100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-41639880735446694612009-10-17T15:24:00.000+08:002009-10-17T15:28:34.817+08:00

By Ken Smith - Kaohsiung, TaiwanEvery Tuesday night ("Tuesday's with Mr.Smith"?) at the college I teach at in southern Taiwan a group of students called "Book Travelers" gets together for a group discussion about books. It is based on Mark Furr's work with Reading Circles, but I've also added elements from the Robin Williams film "Dead Poet's Society". Although we don't use graded readers with

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By Warren Ediger - California, USA "One of my early mentors told me that leadership is "knowing what needs to be done, knowing why that is important, and knowing how to bring the appropriate resources to bear on the situation at hand."Helping my adult ESL students in the classroom and online tutoring students (mostly professionals) understand "why" has paid rich dividends.Trelease, Krashen, and

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By Dick Tibbets - University of Macau, Macau, ChinaThis is a fascinating study and so much rings true that I go along with all that I've managed to read so far.On the Chinese side there is the view of education as the ingesting of information and lack of emphasis on the synthesis of information to create and advance. There is the xenophobia that assists the belief that one can teach a neutral

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-24753997157672648492009-04-22T22:35:00.003+08:002009-04-22T22:35:01.109+08:00

By Jennifer WallaceAnhui Gongye Daxue, Ma'anshan, ChinaLots of us are trying to develop tests appropriate for the situations we're teaching in. One document I'd recommend, because I've found it enormously helpful, is the Council of Europe Frameowrk, which is on the Internet, as a downloadable pdf file (for which you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your machine). I like the document for

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By GeorgeTo accurately test my students, I give them oral exams which are recorded on tape. These exams have two parts. The first part is Q&A covering things we have covered in class. They almost always have a memorized response for the basic questions. I tend to ignore these. I focus on their responses to the followup questions. For example, I've told them that we might discuss their

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By Jennifer Wallace - Anhui Gongye Daxue, Ma’anshan City, Anhui Province, ChinaWhen I came to teach here, although I‘d been a speaking test examiner for more than 10 years (for UCLES exams) I‘d actually never had to set an oral English exam before. I’d taught always in situations where the students were either taking no exam or were working towards an external exam. So if I did have to set

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By Erlyn Baack - ITESM, Campus Queretaro, MexicoHere are two of my recommendations, both short essays, four pages and three pages.For many years, I've used TWO essays for every advanced composition class I've taught (first semester, university level). I cannot remember a time when I haven't used them, actually. My classes are for Mexican students who are supposed to have 550 although some have

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By Dick Tibbetts - Macau University, Macau, ChinaIt might be worth consider- ing what Scrabble can teach and what Scrabblers can learn.Players can learn vocabulary from their peers and peers have to define words when challenged. I'd ban dictionaries for finding words and use something reputable like the advanced learners dic. as an authority for judging.Scrabble games with NS are used to aid

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"Examinations are approached as if the pupils were enemies who must be attacked by surprise. All this discourages young people from energetically taking charge of their own moral, intellectual and physical education". Mao was also greatly concerned by the health of school pupils. Immediately after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, he wrote twice to the Minister of Education, Ma

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By Bob Gilmour - Programme Manager for In-Sessional English Language Programme, INTO Newcastle University, EnglandI read this, Teacher Most Likely To Succeed, with interest. Having not seen the New Yorker article before, it is interesting to see that they identified the same points as us.Two years ago I took over the In-sessional English support classes here at Newcastle University (roughly about

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By Karen Stanley - Central Piedmont Community College, North Carolina, USAkaren.stanley.people.cpcc.eduGuessing meaning from context is a valuable skill to develop, but so is how to use dictionaries properly. I feel there is a place for bilingual dictionaries, learners' monolingual dictionaries, and native speaker monolingual dictionaries. Of course, just as you may need to teach the skills for

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By Maria Spelleri - Manatee Community College, USAI want and encourage my students to use a dictionary. At the lower levels, I like them to use a bilingual dictionary, and at intermediate and above, I prefer them to use an Eng-Eng dictionary. I get annoyed when students are assigned to read something short for homework, and the next day I ask them "Who looked up what X means?" and not one

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By Erlyn Baack - ITESM, Campus Queretaro, MexicoA teacher asked about "Listening/Speaking exams to assess low intermediate students if they are ready for high intermediate level and then high intermediate students if they are ready for advanced level of ESL. Putting an emphasis on better academic preparation, in Listening we stress listening to lectures and note-taking, and in Speaking, we stress

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By Karen Stanley - Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA- provide a list of interview questions, and have students use them to interview each other; better still, have the class generate questions (with your guidance) on a particular topic, and have the students interview each other using them (one example theme: questions related to the person's carbon footprint).

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-63052105052508909982009-01-15T00:40:00.000+08:002009-01-15T00:40:01.434+08:00

By Kenton Sutherland - Emeritus Professor, San Mateo (California) Community College District English Language Specialist, United States Department of StateA teacher in Beijing states that "in China, many English learners will learn words directly from a vocabulary book by remembering the form and one or two Chinese translations of that word" and then goes on to ask if there is a more effective

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By Maria Spelleri - Manatee Community College, Florida, USAOne way to get a sense of structure with the evaluation of student oral production is by using a rubric. Here's an example of a speaking rubric for an ESL program in a US elementary school system: RUBRIC and here's a site with programs to help you develop a rubric: DEVELOP RUBRIC To create a rubric for a speaking activity such as

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By Anthea Tillyer - City University of New York, USAI am a little surprised by how concerned some teachers are about "comma splices". It seems to me that this is a tiny, tiny (and very insignificant) problem that second language writers have in English. In fact, if my class of second language learners had this as their biggest problem when writing English, I would consider them (and me) a huge

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In Beijing, there's a man called "Dawei" who established a small-scale movie-theatre in his house and invited a group of special viewers, the sight-impaired, to "watch". The way he used was telling. Each time his small cinema put on a classic Chinese or foreign movie, he let the audiences know about the movie by telling its scene. He tells almost all the necessary details from an actor's gesture

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By Dick Tibbetts - University of Macau, Macau, ChinaMake sure the learners know the language learning objective(s) of the game but there is a bigger problem here that may negate even this approach.The problem is that the institution does not really value spoken English and does not value the teacher of spoken English. Consequently, the learners don't either. You therefore need to use motivating

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By Nik Bramblett - UCF, Orlando FL, USASometimes we need to evaluate L2 socialization skills using an alternative assessment and not a paper test.Here's what I would do:(a) Work with students (using appropriate combination of whole group, breakout small-group, and/or individual/paired strategies) to develop a rubric for a role-playing activity. Discuss what "socialization skills" means and how

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By Noriko Ishihara - University of Minnesota, USA / Hosei University[An excellent way to test students language abilities is in a realistic setting. But how can that be done? Noriko Ishihara explains.]How to do a scenario-based assessment of socializing skills. In my view, it's very close to assessing sociolinguistic/pragmatic ability, which has usually been done with a situational approach.In

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Guy Brook-Hart, author of the Cambridge University Press Business English book, Business Benchmark, came to China and talked to teachers about how to teach listening. Dave Kees also interviewed him. To hear the interview and some excerpts from his talk as well as talks by Jack Richards and David Nunan, go to the Insights Into TEFL podcast site.

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Here are some ideas for do-it-yourself games with Scrabble letters. You can find a set of Scrabble letters here.By "Peg" Margaret Orleans - JapanBoggle - Have students draw sixteen (or twenty-five) random letters and place them in a 4 x 4 (or 5 x 5) square. Give them a reasonable length of time to write down all the words of three or more letters they can find. All letters must be connected

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"Peg" Margaret Orleans - Japan[These are games you can buy or make.]1. Would You RatherDraw one of the 40 questions cards and read one of the five questions on it aloud. Choose how you would answer the question and secretly put the answer chip (1 or 2) in your fist. Each player guesses your answer, after which you reveal your answer by showing the chip. Each correct guesser gets one card. Discard

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By Dick Tibbetts - University of Macau, MacauI've just been reading Letters (Burbidge, Gray, Levy, Rinvolucri) in the resouce Books for Teachers series and it seems to have some rather good ideas. Written in 1996, it tells how mario collected his letters unopened for a few days, brought them into class and gave them to students. He explained that he'd been to busy to open his mail and asked them

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By Mert - Dr.M.L.Bland, Arlington, VA, USAA teacher wants some tips on teaching vocabualry without translation.Well, this is, of course, less of a problem for TESL teachers who deal with a class of students from many nations than for TEFL teachers who usually deal with a classroom of students from the same language base.Comprehension means building what I call concept pods for each item. In the

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By Anna - Beijing, ChinaI think showing movies to the students is one of the best ways to teach English (if not the best). There's almost everything in the movies. Everything is authentic. Students at all levels need to watch movies as much as they can, provided time and money affordable. Like in my school, which has primary and high school students, we have different movies for the students. For

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By Margaret "Peg" Orleans - ChinaSome games that students with very little vocabulary may be able to play and enjoy:1. A Visit to Grandma Students sit in circles of four to six. The first one starts with a pattern sentence like, "I'm going to visit my grandmother. In my bag I will take" and names an item (no matter how ridiculous--no need for it actually to fit in a suitcase) that begins with

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By Betty Lee - Shengda College, Zhengzhou, Henan, ChinaThere is a game called Celebrity Heads - or something like that. In its original form the names of famous people are used and the object is to discover which celebrity you are. It is usually used by teachers as an end-of-year activity. I have used a modified version of it in all sorts of classes - maths, science,... even oral English in

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By Dick Tibbetts - University of Macau, MacauWe try to teach ESP to low level students and beginners and it doesn't work. Employers and administrators demand results. They have students with little English and they need English users who can conduct business in English or get degrees etc. and so they give them to us. If we tell them that NSs have a vocabulary of 20K word families and that in real

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By Chuck in ChinaI was helping a teacher who was grading some papers she was not sure about. She gave me the two papers and I quickly did a Google search and located both papers on the Web. She was shocked at how quickly I sniffed out the plagiarism. So she went back through all of her papers and all night she has been coming to my room and dropping off papers. Not all of them, just the ones that

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By Daniel T. ParkerI have a Korean professor friend who is perfecting his English this by watching movies on DVD. He watches at least one DVD per day and follows this formula: (1) play a few minutes of the DVD and try to transcribe everything he hears; (2) replay the same segment and try to correct any mistakes he made or add anything he left out; (3) replay the same segment again with English

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By Steven McMath - Guangzhou, China"I live in a harmonious family..."Apparently Chinese people actually say this in Chinese. I suppose it is similar to China's harmonious society. A Chinese friend expressed surprised that it wasn't good English. I suppose we just like to call a spade a spade more often."My home town is very beautiful, is very famous and the food is delicious... ""Today I want to

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By Dick Tibbetts - University of Macau, MacauI have been thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of being a NS or NNS teacher. I started to make a list but pretty soon found that neither group is homogeneous and you can't make many blanket claims. In many cases you can't even say "a majority of ...." and i had to fall back on "some".Here's my list. Perhaps people would like to add to

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By Mario RinvolucriFor myself and for the kind of teaching I do with Europeans I can think of nothing more absurd that a text book. I do not take a "dinner conversation manual" with me if you invitee me for a meal.However, the coursebook is part of capitalist reality just as much as making sure most Westerns live in debt is, so it is here to stay. This is why I wrote HUMANISING YOUR COURSEBOOK

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By Lesley Woodward, MA, M.Ed. - Cleveland State University IELP, Cleveland, OH USAI have found that occasionally taping my own classroom teaching sessions was invaluable in determining my own amount of teacher talk. It's hard to overcome both our own and students' preconceived notions of what is good and bad teaching, and subjective evaluation is a skewed perception. By unobtrusive taping of

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By Maria Spelleri - Manatee Community College, USA Building a learning community in an asynchronous course is a challenge but worth the effort. Of course face to face meetings at the beginning, middle and end of the course are great community-builders, but not practical for true distance learning courses where students can be miles away from the class center. Some ideas from adult classes I have

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By Richard TurnbullAt our school, we use a red card/yellow card system like in football if the students speak their mother tongue in class. A red card means a 50p donation to our charity pot - this rarely happens, but the "threat" works and the students play along well!

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By Daniel T. ParkerA neat little trick I've tried before is to give your students little pieces of paper to put in front of their mouths as they practice making the f/v, p/b, d/t sounds. If you have a room of students making the sounds at the same time, you can't possibly hear who's doing it right or wrong, and it's time-consuming, and possibly intimidating to the student to have them do the

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Daniel T. Parker: It's possible that I've entirely lost my mind, but I just happened to land on this website tonight -- Dictionaraoke -- and I'm becoming more and more convinced that I can actually use it in listening comprehension lessons, by making tapes of the songs and taking them into class. But I'm not sure if I can quit laughing long enough to actually teach!Dick Tibbetts: Great. Yes, I

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By Terence EganBeing of the "fluency first" school and having students with quite a low level of English (and motivation), I let many errors slip by in my first term at this school. I didn't ignore them completely, but allowed conversations to flow as best the communicator could manage.At the beginning of second term, I feigned great horror at many of the common errors that students make in

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By Pete MarchettoThis is an idea I've come up with; if anyone else wants to follow this as a blueprint then go ahead. I should be interested to know how you get on.I set up the 'English Naturally' idea in the first instance with printed sheets giving a broad outline of the idea for circulation amongst the students; if they email me this is what they get in return:ENGLISH NATURALLYTwo English

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By Ruth McAllister - Guangzhou, ChinaOne teacher said on working in China: "...the best you can do is let go of assumptions and expectations and just go with the flow, even when it feels as though you should swim against the current!"I think it is also important to not be taken advantage of in China or in any other job anywhere else. For example, if the school suddenly says you MUST teach 10

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By Jennifer Wallace - Anhui Gongye Daxue, Ma’anshan, Anhui, ChinaIn my first year in China I was really disappointed in how my students (mostly college freshmen) were doing group activities - or not doing them! I was stumped as to how to manage the classroom to achieve anything better. Various people gave lots of suggestions, and I want to say thank you again for all the help.This semester all my

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-35350140444168218612008-04-30T09:22:00.004+08:002008-04-30T09:29:08.946+08:00

By Don YD Chen - Liuzhou, Guangxi, ChinaI have been working with foreign teachers working in Chinese institutions for many years and have alway been in good terms with them. I, as a Chinese teacher of English, fully understand their situations in this vast land, where the culture is so diverse that one can hardly avoid continuous shocks such culture shocks, food shocks or shocks of whatever one

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By Leslie Sirag/R.L."Seth" Watkins - Olympia, WA, USAThe first and most important thing we learned about China in our first year of teaching there is that everything we thought we knew was wrong. I don't think anything can really prepare you--the best you can do is let go of assumptions and expectations and just go with the flow, even when it feels as though you should swim against the current!

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By Karen Stanley - Charlotte, North Carolina, USAI work with students teaching them elision on a regular basis right from the very beginning. Most listening-speaking books and pronunciation books include lessons on at least recognizing elided sounds starting with the lowest levels. It is possible to introduce it in an organized way, focusing on different parts of the whole system of elision.

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By Joseph LeeThere is an old word board game called Probe, made by Parker Brothers. I don't know if it is available in stores now. The game is for max of four players, eight if two sets are used. Each player has a stripboard of 12 spaces. Using alphabets on cards, each player forms a word and puts them in the right order hidden (upside down) on the strip. Each space has a different number of

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By E. SnaderMy students, sophomore English majors, enjoy TABOO. We make the rules fit the level they are at. If they are very low, they use the words provided on the card. In a class, we divide the group into three teams and become competitive. In my home, as many students as want to can join our circle and participate. The fun is in learning new words, not in keeping score for them.The UNGAME is

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By Jennifer Wallace - Anhui Gongye Daxue, Ma'anshan, ChinaLots of us are trying to develop tests appropriate for the situations we're teaching in. One document I'd recommend, because I've found it enormously helpful, is the Council of Europe Framework, which is on the Internet, as a downloadable pdf file (for which you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your machine). I like the document for

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By George - To accurately test my students, I give them oral exams which are recorded on tape. These exams have two parts. The first part is Q&A covering things we have covered in class. They almost always have a memorized response for the basic questions. I tend to ignore these. I focus on their responses to the follow-up questions. For example, I've told them that we might discuss their

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Dick Tibbets - University of Macau, MacauIn my part of the 'training' and 'qualifications' postings on this list I've been concerned to say that it is the knowledge that is important and that organised courses are probably the easiest way to get some of this knowledge. The letters, well, they're just for the CV.If you take a course then you are accepting someone else's syllabus and, to some

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By Patricia Hedden - Winchester Public Schools, Virginia, USAAlmost every professional development workshop I've attended in the last few years has made use of Kagan structures, suitable for children or adults. A specific game (not Kagan) I picked up from a recent workshop was a hit with the adult workshop participants and has been a hit with my elementary ESL students. It's based on the 25,000

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By Lesley Woodward, MA, M.Ed. - Cleveland State University IELP, USAI have found that occasionally taping my own classroom teaching sessions was invaluable in determining my own amount of teacher talk. It's hard to overcome both our own and students' preconceived notions of what is good and bad teaching, and subjective evaluation is a skewed perception. By unobtrusive taping of segments of my

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By Scott MilesSome grammar teaching advocates referred to the Norris & Ortega survey of the effectiveness of explicit grammar instruction, quoting the abstract:"[T]he data indicated that focused L2 instruction results in large target-oriented gains, that explicit types of instruction are more effective than implicit types, and that Focus on Form and Focus on Forms interventions result in

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By Betty AzarIn reference to recent discussions: Keith Folse, Karen Stanley, and Michael Swan understand what it means to "teach grammar" -- a concept that too often seems to get twisted to mean something other than what we who teach grammar mean when we talk about it.When students ask "Why?" they are really asking "How does this work?" -- and they deserve an answer if they feel that this grammar

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By Michael SwanAs the leader of a small team working on methods of teaching grammar at the Notker Balbulus Language Institute in Edinburgh, I have been following various contributions to the recent debate with considerable interest. In most respects, they characterise our practice with remarkable accuracy. We do indeed require our students to learn grammar rules by heart; and we not only make

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From Mark Richards - James Lyng Adult Education Centre, Montreal, CanadaDr. Sid Butler wrote an excellent book called "LifeWriting" which uses stimulating ideas to inspire students to write about their own experiences. Here's one example. Students brainstorm lists of their "first times": first time I drove a car, first day in the army, first time I kissed a girl, first time I met my wife/husband,

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"If anyone is likely to have accurate insights/judgment into the impact of particular techniques on a language learner, let us hope it is language teachers about their own past learning of other languages."Shouldn't teachers have some special insights into the learning process derived from their own experience studying a language?No.In fact, this experience can be very harmful.Some students are

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Michael Hughes has made an interesting point. "Having been in the teaching of English game for nearly three decades and having used and seen a number of methodologies, I can't really say that any of the methods I used actually failed to teach English to my students. One could say certain methodologies are more boring (repetitive), enjoyable or useful in certain circumstances, but by and large

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Self-correction, except for typos or some "absent-minded" errors, is very difficult for students because if they knew it was wrong they wouldn't have done it in the first place. Peer-correction isn't fun and it is difficult for students to fully trust their partner's evaluation. The question that puzzles many teachers is what is the best way to help students to improve in areas where they make a

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Maria Spelleri - Manatee Community College, Florida, USAI have used developmental reading texts with EAP pre-college students with success. These books are written to teach L1 students who have tested and placed as “weaker” readers. These books focus on becoming an active reader, using a method like SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) annotating strategies, and text book attack skills

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-52572255738285560432007-08-28T10:20:00.000+08:002007-08-28T10:23:39.863+08:00

By Erica Hughes - Tallahassee, FloridaIn my opinion giving a participation grade is basically a way to motivate students to speak in class. It's a way to encourage informal, spontaneous speech and give students "credit" for it. I have started a system in my more advanced classes where the students receive a page of about 15 or so little squares that say "I participated" on them. The write their

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By Dick Tibbets - University of Macau, MacauA teacher asked: "Did anyone find their background prepared them well for teaching in China - especially for the first time?"It is the knowledge that is important and organised courses are probably the easiest way to get some of this knowledge. The letters [MA, Phd], well, they're just for the CV.If you take a course then you are accepting someone

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-46383608499539326152007-08-25T21:15:00.001+08:002007-08-25T22:57:11.878+08:00

By GeorgeTo accurately test my students, I give them oral exams which are recorded on tape. These exams have two parts. The first part is Q&A covering things we have covered in class. They almost always have a memorized response for the basic questions. I tend to ignore these. I focus on their responses to the follow-up questions. For example, I've told them that we might discuss their

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-921453607706904532007-08-25T20:29:00.001+08:002007-08-25T21:13:36.562+08:00

Tony Lee - Shengda College, Zhengzhou, Henan, ChinaMy marking of the first half semester exam last year was a disaster of sorts. Totally inexperienced, I was far more subjective than I should have been but the kids seemed satisfied with their placings. The marks were not a problem because another techer with zero grading experience of any sort scored the whole class between 90 and 100 so to make

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Tony Lee - Shengda College, Zhengzhou, Henan, ChinaMy marking of the first half semester exam last year was a disaster of sorts. Totally inexperienced, I was far more subjective than I should have been but the kids seemed satisfied with their placings. The marks were not a problem because another techer with zero grading experience of any sort scored the whole class between 90 and 100 so to make

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-32552368055584306112007-08-07T11:21:00.000+08:002007-08-07T11:39:01.451+08:00

By Simon Gill - Olomouc, Czech RepublicAt the IATEFL Conference in Edinburgh in 1999, the opening plenary was given by Mike Wallace, who told the story of the origin of the Berlitz method. I may have got the details wrong but it went something like this. Charles Berlitz, who was trilingual, was on the verge of opening his school when he fell seriously ill and had to employ a stand-in teacher, who

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-30413178801977620392007-08-07T11:14:00.000+08:002007-08-07T11:18:43.956+08:00

By Charles SchroenHere are some thoughts to add to the discussion of ESL students in college, with apologies for length.More years ago than I care to admit, I started teaching in EFL in the Peace Corps. The last 12 years of my teaching career I have been affiliated with an ESL program that is part of a two-year college. For the last seven of those 12 years I have been teaching full-time in that

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Martin McMorrow - Massey University, New ZealandThere have been some interest in the historical subjects of Direct Method and BASIC English over the last week or so. A good source for information about both of them is Howatt's History of ELT. Howatt points out among other things that BASIC stands for "British American Scientific International Commercial" and it's intended to be a kind of language

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By Ross McBride - CanadaWe created an academic prep ESL class for career colleges. We took our ESL students and had them audit classes in the program they would enter after the prep class within the first 2 weeks. The students had a real in-class experience where they had to take notes and then report backto the ESL class.All the ESL students were shocked at the speed, vocabulary, amount of

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By Maria Spelleri - Manatee Community College, USI teach at a community college and often have some of my former students who are now in mainstream college courses stop by my office to complain about their classes. They complain that the teachers talk so quickly, that they have so much reading to do, that it’s hard to work in groups with native speakers, that the teacher tells jokes they don’t

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By Jennifer Wallace - Anhui Gongye Daxue, Anhui Province, ChinaWhen I came to teach here, although I‘d been a speaking test examiner for more than 10 years (for UCLES exams) I‘d actually never had to set an oral English exam before. I’d taught always in situations where the students were either taking no exam or were working towards an external exam. So if I did have to set tests, they were

Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10503105418344773336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5084490210837113286.post-31562001184434197502007-07-24T13:26:00.001+08:002007-07-24T13:31:15.743+08:00

By Tony GilbertBefore we came to China, we spent quite a lot of money to buy ESL books in Australia as lesson/teaching resources. Feel like a bit of a fool now! Today we visited the Xin Hua Bookstore in Nanning and found some of the same Cambridge series books for about 15% of the price we paid in Australia. And lots of other books besides. For an investment of A$25 (a quarter of what we spent in

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By Karen Stanley - Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, North Carolina, USAOne effective way of having students ask questions, I've found, is to sit down/stand in the corner, not saying anything, and simply wait for the students to say something. This is often after I've explained something a bit complicated, and expect that it will take students time to absorb what I've said before

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By Daniel T. ParkerThis probably won't work for every class, but I recently rediscovered a solution to a problem I have about not getting questions from my college students.No matter how many times I ask for questions during a lesson, I rarely receive any questions, even when I can tell that one or several students are puzzled by something. I understand that part of it is shyness concerning

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Jennifer Wallace - Anhui University of Technology, Anhui Province, ChinaThis week I'm going to finish off the activity in progress which led to individuals coming to the front of the class to speak - but that may be the end of it for this class. Last year I had one group that was so bad at group work - they'd sit totally silent! - I ended up giving it up completely with that class.However, in

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By David Tillyer - Westchester Community College, New York, USAFor the past few semesters I've been having my Level 4 class create their own vocabulary lists each week. Their assignment from Monday to Wednesday is to come up with two or three words that they have encountered in the past week.On Wednesday they each put their words on the blackboard. I try to limit it to 20 words as more would seem

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By Lida Baker - Los Angeles, California, USAA discussion about the Direct Method takes me back more than 25 years, when I was a graduate student in Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. We were required to study a language we hadn't learned previously, and I picked French. The text, written by Pucciani and Hamel, followed a grammar syllabus and employed the authors'

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Maria Spelleri - Manatee Community College, Florida, USAUsing a crossword program is a convenient way to generate vocab practice from student-selected words. I really want to add student-selected words to the prescribed academic vocabulary that comes in our text books, but my problem has always been coming up with enough practice material to make it worthwhile. A crossword program is fairly

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By Brian GroverRefreshing target vocabulary hardly takes the fun out of langauge learning. Doing so goes to the very heart of what language learning is all about, activating language and turning language into experience. Flash cards and frequency lists? You're kidding, right? Refreshing targets can be quite simple and enjoyable. Take for example the expression "pick up". Say that it was

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Terry Pruett-Said - English for Academic Purposes, Macomb Community College, Michigan, USAIn my extensive/academic reading class, students have to hand in a short book report each week. As part of that book report, they have to write down 4 new vocab words with its definition, and the sentence it came from in the book. Advanced students have to also find another example sentence and write a

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By Steve Kaufmann - The Linguist Institute, West Vancouver, CanadaIn my experience, deliberate vocabulary review is a support activity to the main task of exposing oneself to massive input through reading and listening. Any words I study come from my reading and listening, which I have chosen.I would find it annoying to sit through a class where a teacher is providing me with his/her examples,or

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By Eve Ross - Beijing Institute of Machinery, ChinaWhen I created my syllabus at the beginning of the term, I wrote down that I'd do a lesson on "embarrassing moments" today. I don't know what kind of brain spasm caused me to forget that the face issue would probably interfere with the free exchange of personally embarrassing experiences. So this morning I hurriedly tried to come up with a way

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Eve Ross - Beijing Institute of Machinery, ChinaI've been having good success teaching circumlocution with riddles. I start out with one of my own: "What is small, round, green, and has tiny hairs all over it?"When students have made a few guesses, I pull a tennis ball out of my bag.Then it's the students' turn to create their own riddles. I tell them to start with "What is..." and use

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By Daniel T. ParkerI had a graduate school professor who taught "Teaching College Writing", among other (non-TESOL) courses.He continually reminded us about the "affective triangle", i.e., the classroom chemistry formed by the mixture of teacher, students, and materials/methodology. His usual point was to remind us not to put too much faith and/or dependence upon a particular textbook... but

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By ChuckThere is a Chinese proverb for this (of course):Sha Ji, Jing Hou. "Kill a chicken to scare the monkeys".Another tactic that I use that when doing groupwork is require each group to first choose a captain (or chicken). Then I tell them that the captain's job is [here insert whatever leadership duties are necessary for the task]. Finally I tell them that the captain's MOST important duty is

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By Daniel T. ParkerOne thing about classroom "chattering" during other students' work... I make a point to step to the corner of the room farthest from the student/students speaking. Why? Because so many Koreans speak very loud in Korean and very soft in English, I make "voice quality" a part of my grading criteria... and I tell the rest of the class that if they're talking during the

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By Molly MersonIf you want the students to pay attention, something that has worked for me and other teachers in the past has been to do two things:1. Give a quiz after every five or so presentations on what the people said and some points that you think are important about their topic. Then give an exam at the end including all presentations.2. Require that every student must ask one question to

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Eve Ross - Beijing Institute of Machinery, ChinaWhen my students exhibited poor audience behavior during their classmates' oral presentations, I lectured them about respect, made the presenter stop until everyone was quiet, gave quizzes on the content of the presentations, wandered silently about the classroom quelling conversations, and then I finally asked myself, "Why am I working so hard to

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Jennifer Wallace - Anhui Gongye Daxue, Anhui Province, ChinaLast year I had 2 classes using them in a systematic way. We built up a list of new vocabulary at the side of the blackboard in the course of the lesson. After the lesson, for each word, the students had to add 5 things: pronunciation, grammar [e.g. countable noun], dictionary definition, example sentence [not one from the dictionary],

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Eve Ross - Beijing Institute of Machinery, ChinaAt the university where I teach in Beijing, I asked a student in private why he chose to major in English, since he apparently doesn't enjoy learning English. He said it wasn't his choice. His score on the English portion of the university entrance exam just happened to be higher than his score on the other sections, so he had to either major in

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By Eve Ross - Beijing Institute of Machinery, China At a National TESOL Conference in one of the workshops we were shown 10-15 minutes of a movie with no sound. Then we were asked to sum up the story and to guess in which country it had been filmed.It was amazing just how much information you glean without using words. I recalled having read that 85% of communication is non-verbal and this

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By Margaret OrleansThe game involves lots of different stages called Bullseye Round, Face-Off, Feud, and Fast-Money Round, but the basic premise is that past audiences have been surveyed and 100 answers have been arranged in order of most common. The contestants, who compete as two five-member families (the numbers can easily be adjusted) take turns trying to guess these answers for points/

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By Pete MarchettoI think the central problem with the teaching of English in China is that it's an examination subject and the examinations here seem to have precious little connection with natural use of the language focusing instead on relatively or purely academic aspects. This is what I meant when I said that a solid grounding in grammar, language history and so on are all well and good but

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By Daniel T. Parker, KoreaKnowing or not knowing all the technical mumbo jumbo doesn't necessarily mean that one will or won't teach well.Teaching requires several elements, one of which is a necessary amount of knowledge about the subject taught. How much is necessary depends largely upon the level of the learner. I teach university students in South Korea, and most of my students are in the

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By Tsc Tempest - Tuha Petroleum Foreign Language School, ChinaThe following FAQ addresses some commonly asked [or considered] questions relating to the setup, operation and development of English Salons, English Corners, English -Club, Teahouse, Tea Garden, Lets Talk, etc.Q: What is an English Salon?A: An English Salon or Corner (or any other of a myriad combination of names) is an organized

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By Margaret OrleansA game that my more advanced students like is called Taboo. A vocabulary word is written on a card. The student whose turn it is cannot say the word. Besides the word itself being banned, five common collocates are also banned.Students then try to get a partner to understand what word they are talking about. (Actually, we play in groups of four--one gives the explanation, one

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By Margaret OrleansDave and Jane Willis (authors of the CoBuild series) suggest for a pre-reading activity having students skim a new passage and identify a limited number of words (say five) that they think are the most important for them to know before reading the passage more carefully. This can lead to fruitful discussion among small groups of students, sharing explanations of words that

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By Margaret Orleans [In reply to a teacher who is planning to use movie, The Sound of Music, with her students.]I haven't taught the movie to students that age, but I would suggest that rather than having students try to re-enact scenes they've just watched, it might be better to stop at key points and have them act out what they think is coming later in the movie (if they really don't know the

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