Archive for March, 2008

I mean, really- how many students come to class saying “My priorities are English spelling and practising the alphabet over and over and over”?? You might be thinking that hangman is okay if it isn’t abused, but that’s what most TEFL teachers say about crack cocaine, and they aren’t right about that either. As I will be taking over as TEFL President of the World when Sandy of TEFLtrade finally finishes his long goodbye in a couple of days, my first act will be to ban Hangman in all classes under all circumstances. Any arguments will result in that teacher being sent to teach English in North Korea, as was really advertised a few months ago.

Rant “inspired” by this interview on englishteacherx.

1. Present Continuous picture differences
Students describe their pictures to each other and try to find differences. These can either be a single picture that is changed with Tippex or Photoshop to have differences in it, or two completely different pictures. If the pictures are completely different and so differences are easier to find, get students to compete with other pairs to find as many as they can in a fixed time period.

2. Present Continous picture similarities
If you have two completely different pictures, it is more challenging for students to find any small similarities between them rather than differences as in the game above, e.g. “A man is standing up” (more…)

“Is “becuase”, with its 4,950,000 hits on a famous web search engine, the commonest typo in the English language? (more…)

“even universities do not insist on any proper teaching qualifications but rather MAs and PHds.”

(more…)

As a blogger and writer of articles on the internet whose technical knowledge stops at Word, as usual I feel half chuffed at churning out so many articles, including a good one here and there, and half guilty at creating so much work for those who can name a programming language more recent than BASIC. So, with many thanks to the tech sorts who made this possible and without further ado, here are the new bits and pieces on the web that I’ve been associated with:

The TEFL.net review pages I edit now allow comments on any of the titles reviewed there, which is a fabulous idea which I wish had been mine.

On TEFL.net too, there is a new Idea Thinktank of practical teaching games etc, on which I have about 12 (!) articles including 15 Fun Things to do with a Whiteboard (yes, that’s a whiteboard rather than an interactive whiteboard- showing my age??) and the 15 Most Fun Pronunciation Games.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve also got some slightly more weighty ones up on the rejigged TEFL.net TEFL Articles Page, including Easy Ways to Improve Your TEFL Career.

And on Usingenglish.com in March:

Election- Second Conditionals speaking practice

101 IELTS Speaking Part Two Tasks about sports and hobbies

Why your students speak L1 in class

Why your students don’t do their homework

101 IELTS Speaking Part Two tasks about people, places, actions, things and times

Setting up workshops for teachers

Business English tense review

Business English silent letters and syllables

The language of trends spot the difference

I also had a review of a couple of BULATS books out in MET magazine this month, should you have a copy handy and fancy a look.

“Cosplish”

Think about it for a little while, then have a look at the clues on where it comes from and what it means as an English language school below:

“Suzuki has a background running maid cafes… Initially, he considered dressing up foreign women as maids and getting them to give English lessons in a place he dreamed of calling Maid in English. But… (more…)

“We didn’t have active discussion, active uses of English. … We inertly listened to her [the professor] during the class,”

 You’re thinking it’s from a 3rd world country, maybe one with a non-democratic regime, right?

Think again.

 ”Several students said they felt that the classes were poorly organized, and the wide range of student abilities made learning more difficult.”

Sounds like Japan, all shiny and Western looking on the outside but Confucian chaos on the inside. But no…

So, must be one of those European countries with teacher-led grammar-obsessed English classes like Spain we always forget when contrasting Asia with “the West”. Well, let’s have a look through the round window*…
(more…)

“There are other researchers who have been able to teach animal to tell if someone is speaking Japanese or Dutch” (more…)

“No children, you are not seeing things. This, my little friends, is a schwa!” (more…)

You finally come to the end of students staring at you blankly through the grammar explanation, and introducing pairwork brings on jokes, chat, imaginative use of language, and maybe even some flirting- unfortunately, little of any of it in English! Why do students switch to their own language in an English class, despite your best Basil Fawlty-like shows of displeasure every time they do it? (more…)