Archive for the ‘IELTS Speaking’ Category

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:

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.

Another wake up call from the world of sumo for anyone feeling nostalgic for the good old days of samurai when the Japanese respected their elders:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2177780,00.html

I guess the fact that the wrestler tried to run away gives us some hope that the younger generation is not going to put up with this kind of bullying anymore. Unfortunately, their chief escape seems to be one into unreality and infantilism.

I know at least five Japanese women in their thirties who have had enough of the bullying and bitching at work and quit. Unfortunately, rather than quit to set up their own business, they have quit to move back in with their parents, spend more time on their flamenco dancing etc. etc. Not that this is unheard of in the UK and the rest of Europe, of course, but then again that is another region in terminal decline…

My last little anecdote to show why “the new generation that is changing Japan” stories faded away as quickly as they came. While doing IELTS practice speaking tests with one class of 21 students, mainly 18 to 21 year olds who are planning to study abroad next year, 4 of them told me of their plans to become a “dolphin trainer”. Either by some fluke I had Japan’s entire year’s supply of dolphin trainers in one IELTS class, or this country’s decline is due to continue for quite some time…

Sorry that it’s all worksheets worksheets worksheets recently, but what can I say- that’s exactly how I’m starting to feel writing them all…

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-sports-verbs-play-do-go-go-to/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-subject-questions/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-tense-review/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-ielts-speaking-work-prepostions-nounprep-collocations/

As well as practising the exam, the worksheets are all designed to fit in with the syllabus of Face2Face Pre-Intermediate, which is a textbook I hate much less than any other I’ve used recently!