Archive for the ‘Photocopiable worksheets’ Category

Hopefully it’s just Mayday bank holiday rather than my lack of effort TEFLtasticwise recently that has seen a sudden drop in my number of views, but if only to make myself feel better I thought I’d give a list of where I’ve been making much more effort elsewhere, with links:

TEFL.net Idea Thinktank

15 fun ways to switch students onto graded readers

15 fun gapfill tasks

15 fun job application practice tasks- CV writing, cover letter, interview practice, HR vocabulary etc.

TEFL.net articles

15 common misconceptions about Business English and ESP

15 cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 more cultural differences in the Japanese classroom

15 criteria for a good cultural training lesson

15 more criteria for good cultural training lesson

15 important cultural differences in the classroom

15 more important cultural differences in the classroom

Onestopenglish (Macmillan) articles

Motivating teachers whose Business English students miss class

UsingEnglish articles for teachers

Why your students overuse their dictionaries- with solutions

70 characteristics of a good grammar presentation- possibly the longest article on this subject ever!

Why your students don’t want to do pairwork- with solutions and some pondering about whether they might not sometimes be right

Why your students still make mistakes with grammar they know well- with solutions and a call to relax when there are no solutions

The advantages and disadvantages of peer observations- with how to exploit the advantages and avoid the disadvantages

Things to put in a Self-Access Centre or Student Library- with tips on how to do it on the cheap

Why do my students question me?- with solutions

Why your students have problems with listening comprehension- with solutions

UsingEnglish.com articles for students (teachers might also want to have a look at what I am writing about them)

Why does my teacher make me read silently?

Why doesn’t my teacher correct all my mistakes when I’m speaking?

Why does my teacher make me learn the phonemic script?

UsingEnglish photocopiable PDF worksheets

Travel English pairwork B and V

Business and technical English easily confused words

CAE Reading Part Two match the quotes

TEFLtastic worksheets (pain in the arse to print out but worth the effort)

English for job applications/ HR worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Requests and offers functional language review

The Roots of Medical English LP and 4 worksheets

And that’s it for TEFL stuff. The other thing I’ve been busy with is my wedding speech for the day after tomorrow, which could well mean that May will be an even less busy month in TEFLtasticland. Anyone fancy writing a guest piece or feeding me a story to keep the 1700 viewers I get on a good day entertained until I get back into the flow? If so, try the “Contact me” link on the right…

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.

“Hi Alex

Just been looking at the worksheets and lesson plans you´ve reproduced.  You´ve certainly been busy, great work I will be using quite a lot of them.  I was checking through to see if you had any specific to Legal English, as I am currently teaching a group of five lawyers in Spain.  If you have anything or know any good links to other websites I´d really appreciate your help.

Thanks very much.

Cheers
Sarah”
———-

“Hi Sarah
 
Thanks for your nice comments. I’m afraid I’ve never taught lawyers (the nearest I got was immigration officers), but do you mind if I post your email to see if any other readers have suggestions?
 
Thanks
 
All the best
 
Alex”
———

“Hiya

Thanks for your quick response.  Yes, you can post my email if you like.

saludos
Sarah”

—

So, any help at all gratefully received by me and Sarah. Please! Pretty please!

callipygian:

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Still ruminating on the details my next big post, which will be “Why you should take the latest TEFL research with several buckets of salt”, but thought I should reassure my faithful reader(s?) that I haven’t abandoned you in the TEFL wilderness in the same week as Katie from TEFLlogue found a good man and hung up her TEFL blogging boots for good.

While I have been maintaining radio silence on TEFLtastic, I’ve been busy working on my two new blogs, JapanExplained (of which the English Words from Japanese explained, Japanese Education Explained  and Japanese Company Names Explained pages might interest TEFLers and other language buffs) and QuoteJapan. I’ve also written loads more new stuff for UsingEnglish.com and put new Medical English worksheets and Business English and ESP games and worksheets here on TEFLtastic, including most as pdf for easy killing of trees with the photocopier.

You’ll be most excited to hear, though, that I will soon be available in your pocket. I’ll let your imaginations go on that one for a while before I give any details…

Talking of the power of imagination, I actually have no evidence at all on Katie de Teflogue’s love life, but the TEFL world needs some good gossip I reckon. I’m picturing her man coming into the English school halfway through class, picking her up and sweeping her out of a life of drudgery like Richard Gere in “An Officer and a Gentleman” (as also featured in the Simpsons episode where Marge takes bowling lessons)…

And there’s more! As much as I complain about TOEIC, it seems to have caused such a creative (?) outpouring that I’d even forgotten I’d written half of these. Think of the articles as my Kublai Khan:

TOEIC FAQs

How to choose a good TOEIC class and TOEIC teacher

100 Ways to Improve your TOEIC Listening

Those are all designed for students, although they could also help teachers give their students the right hints. Lesson plans, game ideas and tips for teachers all in the post below.

It might have just been an excuse to quit my gym session early, but got a sudden urge to sort TEFLtastic out. That means that my new favourite site has helped me convert all the Medical and Pharmaceutical worksheets into easily printable pdf files, and I’ve stuck them in as Word documents so you can correct my spelling mistakes before you use them as well.

Now that you can download Word documents and make all the changes you like, I’ve also started including stuff that is the raw material for a good Medical English lesson but that I didn’t get to make into a good worksheet before all my Medical English classes disappeared:

More words from Greek

More medical word roots

And don’t forget to have a look at my own personal Usingenglish page for new stuff on there:

As people searching for Xmas themed lessons seems to finally be over, here comes the New Year worksheets to ease yourself back into your classes with: (more…)

By a superhuman struggle with the technology that I can not even understand, let alone reproduce, the TEFL.net editor has made it possible to put PDF and Word files on the Worksheets page, and if I can stop myself starting a new blog everyday in the near future I will do precisely that.

The first worksheet available in not one but two formats is the latest Friends video worksheet of mine I believe I have been trying to get you all to use before- Friends Series One New Year Episode (the one with the monkey).

Also a (less personal) thank you to PDFonline, which is an amazingly quick and totally free way of converting Word documents to PDF worksheets that I stumbled on.

Bored of Xmas before it’s even arrived as usual, so here comes with the New Year theme ones instead:

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