March 31, 2009
· Filed under general · Tagged EFL, English Teaching, ESL, lists, TEFL
Evidently the Workshop Gods got together and decided, in their infinite wisdom, to go along with the cliché advice to “always save the best for last” for me in this whirlwind round of workshops I’ve been privy to this past week or so.
The best workshop of the three being that given by Mr. Lindsay Clandfield, the brains behind the blog Six Things, and author (or co-author) of books such as The Language Teacher’s Survival Guide, Dealing with Difficulties, Straightforward Elementary and Straightforward Beginner (among other things). Read the rest of this entry »
March 27, 2009
· Filed under general · Tagged Business English, EFL, English for Business Life, English Teaching, ESL, Ian Badger, TEFL, workshops
So, Wednesday was the second TEFL workshop I’d been to in less than a week.
Now, I’ve yet to set foot in a TEFL conference, but this workshop was what I imagine them to be like: people trying to sell you a book all the while trying hard not to seem like they’re selling a book.
The presenter was Ian Badger, author of Everyday Business English, Everyday Business Writing, etc., and his topic was “Business English in a Changing World”. And the book, or rather series of books rather, which he was hawking was English for Business Life. Read the rest of this entry »
March 23, 2009
· Filed under general · Tagged EFL, English Teaching, ESL, one to one, TEFL
Spring is in the air, and a TEFL teacher’s thoughts turn to…workshops, apparently.
Apart from taking in the odd college basketball game, I’ve been gearing up for my big week of TEFL workshops. Three workshops in seven days. How you like them apples?
The first one was last Wednesday, on Teaching 1-to-1. Presented by a fellow by the name of Marc Bain, a pleasant fellow with one of those Britishy accents that I can’t quite place. Basing his presentation almost entirely on Peter Wilberg’s book One to one: A Teacher’s Handbook, he presented five suggestions for making one-to-one classes easier and more effective. Read the rest of this entry »
March 16, 2009
· Filed under general, pairwork · Tagged comparative adverbs, EFL, ELT, English Teaching, ESL, superlatives, TEFL
Nothing really special to comment on here.
A couple of pairwork activities which may or may not be useful for certain classes of an elementary or pre-intermediate level.
One is a dice-game for making sentences with comparative adverbs. I’d suggest filling in the boxes for people, verbs, and adverbs as a group and then distribute the dice and what not. Click on the link below for the worksheet.
comparative-adverbs-dice-game
The other is for practicing superlatives. Students fill in a chart and discuss their opinions on who is the most famous football player, which is the most beautiful city, etc. etc. Then they create their own chart based on the first one and play a sort of “secret choice” game.
superlatives-pairwork
Gotta get back to work, hope this comes in handy for some of you. Peace!
March 11, 2009
· Filed under general, kids' lessons, pairwork · Tagged EFL, English Teaching, ESL, past continuous, past progressive, past simple, pictures, story game, TEFL
In a previous post concerning using the story of the Titanic to teach past continuous, I mentioned an activity at the end that used cards and pictures of little stickmen doing various activities and actions and things.
The idea was to provide visual input for students to develop sentences and mini-stories and in so doing so practice the past continuous / past simple distinction: by giving them one hand pictures showing actions which can clearly be done over a period of time, and on the other hand actions or events that clearly happen in an instantaneous fashion, students will practice and to some degree begin to internalize the distinction.
And since, in some other classes, I’ve been having to work at this distinction with various groups of various ages, I’ve made some pictures for this very purpose. I thought I would be a good idea to share so, here goes:
Read the rest of this entry »
March 8, 2009
· Filed under listening, reading lessons · Tagged Breaking News English, EFL, ESL, ESP, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Falling, TEFL, The Guardian, The Onion
level: intermediate, upper-intermediate
aims: practice debating, listening for gist and detail, introduce / practice adj.+ prep. + obj. + “to” + inf. and verb + obj. + “to” + inf.
materials:
(right click on the link and go to “Save Link as…” on the menu)
(Scroll down to see the Lesson Plan below.)
(Note: If you like, you can omit the Listening by skipping Stage 3, going directly from the lead-in debate in Stage 1 to the reading in Stage 3.) Read the rest of this entry »
