Archive for September, 2008

What elements of your dreams tell you about your TEFLing future:

Suddenly realising you have no clothes on - you will realise halfway through your next improvised grammar explanation that it doesn’t make any sense
 
Water - You will desperately need to go for a pee halfway through your first lesson the next day
 
Falling and falling then waking up - you will be rescued from a difficult question by the end of lesson bell
 
Doing the same thing over and over - your school will again refuse to switch to New Headway next year, even though the rest of the world is on the Third Edition
 
A cold wind - you will walk into class with your flies open

Being chased - one of your housewife students (more…)

15 fun ways of using pre-school storybooks

15 ways of preparing for ELT management

15 variations on a grammar auction

15 common complaints about TEFL workshops (and how to respond to them)

15 things to find out about a TEFL certificate course

15 criteria of a good needs analysis

How’s that for a minimalist blog post! To make up for the lack of text, here are even more links:

157 articles and worksheets of mine on UsingEnglish.com

onestopenglish.com (the Macmillan website, where you usually have to pay to see most of my stuff but which has some kind of special offer on at the moment)

New stuff in August, for those who have recently joined us (welcome!)

And brand new worksheets etc actually on TEFLtastic:

Business English rotating revision board game

Complaints sentence expansion game

Dealing with complaints guess the situation

Dealing with complaints pairwork- Amusing and odd excuses

Email and internet abbreviations

Email language definitions game

Email rules business meeting

Formal and informal email errors

Telephone and email spot the difference pairwork

“Punishment“- Passive voice and tense review

Table manners Present Simple and Continuous mimes

Describing people workshop

English for Telephoning/ Negotiating double book review

Innateness hypothesis- The theory that studying English is inherently boring, so why bother with games. See also “Inaneness hypothesis”*

Input- The theory that the language we expose students to should be as carefully chosen as when programming a computer or doing data input, although most experts agree that the metaphor works best if we picture the teacher trying to type with a couple of sledge hammers

Input enhancement- Using a gold plated jack on the classroom tape recorder

Intercambio de Lenguas- Spanish for “exchanging tongues”, often involving conversation exchange and its more literal translation

Interface- Also known as “innerface”, the internal cringing (more…)

Updated, expanded and with many more links here:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets/telephoning/

Read the Korean and my attempt to turn it into a picture based on the closest English sounds, see if you can guess the English meaning and then scroll down and check. Hopefully worth a look for people who are learning other languages and want to check this method out too, and a few of them are amusing (or at least amused me, which is the main point when I am learning vocab!) I’ll be putting some tips on how to use this method at the end of the posts too. Some of the Korean words are repeated, which is tip 1- do as many versions of each one as you can.

chongmaek - if you CHOMp on someone’s arm you will MAKE this bleed =
—–
—– (more…)

45. ”Our incompetent teachers will make you feel better about yourself”
46. ”Certificate of achievement for all students who are actually still around at the end of the course”
47. ”Guaranteed students who are a much higher level in each class to explain anything the teacher can’t”
48. ”To guarantee an English-only class, we only employ teachers who have been here for years without learning a word of the language”
49. ”Guaranteed smaller class sizes by the end of term 1″ (more…)

Have done a bit more tedious reorganisation so that you don’t need to do so much tedious searching, and you can now find all the links to my stuff on said topics elsewhere on the internet as well as my exclusive TEFLtastic stuff here:

Teaching exam classes-articles and tips for teachers

and here:

EFL exam worksheets, lesson plans and tips for students

Comments or tips for other good sources welcome here:

With this little collection of vocab have a look at the expression in Korean, then my effort to make an image/ sound combination that will make it memorable and see if you can guess what the meaning might be before scrolling down to find the answer. See what you think of it as a memory technique, and then we’ll discuss it at the bottom:

ajumma - she’s the same AGE as YER MA =

(more…)

I’m starting to pack to go to Korea, and the lack of CDs is a godsend. Books, however, are going to be a problem…

If you are in Japan, my loss could be your gain. If you are interested in any of the books below, I will send you a copy and even include one of the freebies listed at the bottom, in exchange for writing a review for TEFL.net reviews, as explained here. Please note, however, that I am paying postage out of my own pocket and will be rather miffed if good intentions does not turn into an actual review, so only volunteer this time if you are sure you can do it. When the publishers are paying postage like usual, however…

If you are in Korea, I might also be willing to add it to my box of books to take and send it from there, so you might be second choice but still, volunteer away!

If anyone is interested, please use the Request to Review for TEFL.net box on the Reviewer’s Guide page (a vital read for everyone who is interested), leave a message here, or email me using the Contact Me button on the main page of the blog.

Books available:

Oxford University Press
Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics

Activities Using Resources- Heather Westrup and Joanna Baker (Oxford Basics)
Vocabulary Activities- Mary Slattery (Oxford Basics for Children)
Listen and Do (Oxford Basics for Children)
The Oxford ESOL Handbook
Creating Songs and Chants- Carolyn Graham

Summertown Publishing
Success with BULATS

Marshall Cavendish Education
Achieve BULATS

Cambridge
The TKT Course

Delta Publishing
Challenging Children

The English Company
The English Course 3rd Edition (Gary Ireland, Kevin Murphy, Max Woollerton)

Already been reviewed, but will give away to people who volunteer to review titles above:

Oxford
Form Focused Instruction and Teacher Education

A History of English Language Teaching

1. “Officially the blondest teachers of any school in Japan/ China/ Taiwan etc”
2. “We’ve never changed because we are perfect”
3. “Come and see the new batch of teachers, fresh off the plane”
4. “The youth of our teachers makes up for the age of our building/ methodology/ technology/ wallpaper/ receptionists etc” (more…)