Archive for the ‘Materials’ Category

… are exactly the same as Xmas ESL ideas 2007 (haven’t written any special lessons on seasonal shopping in a worldwide depression yet, although I could use my grandfather’s story about his pet rabbit being served up for an East End Xmas lunch if I did), but at least that means this year I can get all the links out of the way in one post and so not repeat the TEFL equivalent of 6 weeks of nonstop Xmas carols like we had here in 2007. And here all the articles, teaching ideas and photocopiable worksheets are- a veritable Xmas feast, stuffed stocking etc etc to bring seasonal cheer to the last few weeks before the holiday without the need for sipping brandy between classes:

Articles and teaching ideas

Christmas vocabulary you can mime

Combining Xmas with a young learner syllabus

Doing something with Xmas songs

Putting the grammar back into Christmas

Games and other photocopiable worksheets

Future Perfect New Year predictions

New Year action and state verbs

New Year resolutions adverbs of frequency - going to for plans and learner training

Xmas first conditional superstitions bluff game - a classic, hopefully not ruined in my version

Christmas Adverbs of Frequency- Present Simple and lots of lovely (not stereotyped) cultural information

Christmas traditions passives bluff game

Xmas guess the country modals of deduction

Christmas Present Simple and Continuous mimes- contrasting routines and things happening now, with lots of nice Chrimbo vocab

Christmas Past Tense mimes - Past continuous when they finish miming and then tense review as they talk about their own experiences of those things

Will for future predictions Xmas

Xmas trivia number pairwork - good for Business English, Technical English and other ESP classes

Business English Christmas cards Do’s and Don’ts - imperatives and important cultural information

Describing Xmas foods bluff game - good for students who want to explain food from their own country to foreign guests, e.g. Business English students who often entertain clients

Going to Xmas mimes - for predictions with present evidence

Xmas party negotiations - the best ever game for the language of meetings and negotiations, as there is a clear winner, and some good Xmas vocab

Video Worksheets

Friends Series One New Year episode

Edward Scissor Hands- cute, seasonal, the easiest film in the English language, and full of lots of lovely reference expressions

The Life of Brian - as mentioned on a recent Dave’s ESL Cafe thread, only for veeeery high level and open-minded students

Xmas Song worksheets

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

The Christmas Song (”Chesnuts roasting on an open fire” etc)

White Xmas song correct the mistakes

As I haven’t said for a while, the real purpose of this blog isn’t pontificating on all things TEFL (not sure how I started doing that, maybe Wordpress is haunted by a malevolent spirit?) but to give links to my articles and worksheets. And here are some more:

15 more ways to bring lucky chances into your classroom and lesson planning

Yet another 15 ways of boosting your teaching confidence

And there is so much new stuff on my worksheet pages that I can’t even remember what it all is, but I seem to remember most of it is in my grammar games and worksheets section, mainly about reported speech, Present Perfect Continuous and modal verbs.

Might I also suggest New Stuff November 08 Part One, which was obviously written when Xmas was much further away as I actually got round to tracking down individual worksheets and putting links to them.

… is pants! Based on a dubious theory and with everything based on that theory rather than interesting content or things tying together properly, I haven’t seen anything this bad but commercially successful since (old) Cutting Edge. If you are cursing the fact that you have to use it too, your luck is about to change. New on TEFLtastic is a page of worksheets, games, lesson plans and such like to help you and your students survive this book, available here:

Natural English worksheets, lesson plans and ideas

And in case my ten word review of the series above hasn’t convinced you, here is my review of Natural English Int and Upper for Modern English Teacher magazine from a few years ago.

Anyone else used these or thinking about it?

Finished reading the Experience of Language Teaching a week or two ago, and here are some of my favourite quotes:

on continuous enrollment

“like teaching on a moving bus, or in the middle of a railway station, with people coming and going all the time” pg 232

on working under a permanently temporary contract

“There’s very much feeling that… if you speak out in any way, even if it’s because you want to improve the lot of students, then you’re likely not to be employed the next month” pg 233

“Casually employed teachers tend to teach casually” pg 59

on games

“Our students are used to disciplining themselves to learn. They’re used to it, they expect it, and some of them actually believe that if they’re having fun they can’t possibly be learning anything” ‘one teacher’ pg 184

on things that work great in one class and then bomb in the next

“You can only do some things with some of your classes some of the time” pg 151 (more…)

I’ve been very busy deep in the dark chaotic depths of the TEFLtastic Worksheets pages, and have also found time for a few of the usual articles. If useful stuff that makes your life easier is not your thing, will be back to the usual trivia here on the main page soon…

Articles

15 ways to start an adult lesson

15 ways to finish a preschool English lesson

15 more ways to boost your teaching confidence (as promised- not often I actually write something I planned to…)

Worksheets and lesson plans

A much expanded Market Leader worksheets and lesson plans page

Business Past Continuous and Personality Accusations game (THE classic Past Continuous game- not my original idea, but don’t know any other online or Business English versions)

Business English Needs Analysis ranking task

Crime Vocabulary storytelling game

Complaints roleplays

Pingu Will for predictions video worksheet 1 (3 more available on the Video Worksheets page, but can’t be bothered giving each link)

Passives guess the country game

Active/ Passive True/ False quiz

Trends and conditionals discussion and grammar presentation

Rules and regulations pictionary (mainly passive forms)

Second conditional chain writing (consequences) game

Passives disasters storytelling

Second conditional supernatural error correction and discussion

Supernatural modals of possibility discussion

Special occasions reported speech cultural differences guessing game and discussion

Talking of TEFL jargon (as I was two posts ago, the brief aside in between is apparently technically called an “insertion sequence”, fnaah fnaah), am I the only one to notice that since Scott Thornbury wrote “An A to Z of ELT” his other books have suddenly become full of more jargon than you can shake a dictionary at? Has he discovered a marketing method that is even better than the recent tendancy of textbooks to “just happen to mention” graded readers and dictionaries from the same publisher?

I’m presently enjoying the feast of jargon that is Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy, a book you can read a surprisingly large amount of by clicking on the top link on this Google search page.

“I sweated blood over my master’s degree, and now here I am lumped together with all those youngsters who don’t even know what a preposition is” (more…)

“Sole Mates” from “The Grammar Activity Book”

Tie words that go together (such as collocations) to different students’ shoelaces. They then walk around putting their feet next to each other to try to match them up. If they make an incorrect pair, they have to take off their shoes and put them in the “lost soles” pile until (at that point I stopped reading…) Also useable (?) for dependant prepositions, verb patterns etc.

This was by far the nuttiest idea in the book, but certainly not the only one that made me go “What??” On the positive side, there are few ideas in the book that you would have seen anywhere else. On the negative side, there are at times very good reasons why no one had written those ideas down…

Continuing my occasional series (as occasional as reality coming into TEFL theory):

“…it is relatively rare for language teachers to negotiate overall learning goals with their classes at the beginning of courses in an open, direct manner. However… it is commonplace for language teachers to adjust their lesson goals in accordance with student needs in a subtle, ongoing way.”

The Experience of Language Teaching pg 164

Thank the Lord (and Lady Rose M Senior of TEFL) for this book, which is turning out to be more readable than the “popular” linguistics book “Lost for Words” by John Humphreys. 

The question that a whole book of TEFL reality checks has posed to me more than any other is, why does the DELTA take none of this reality of what good teachers do into account? Understood with the CELTA as it’s all about basics, but if most experienced teachers don’t stick to lesson plans and rely on instinct, how is one supposed to put that on a Diploma lesson plan?? And looking at it another way, what is the chance of them saying “Yes, your impeccably planned lesson to produce self motivated learners was fine in theory, but if you were a really experienced teacher you just would’ve been slipping that in as the best times came up”?

Backwards dialogues

Students write a dialogue and then read it out starting with the last line, then the second to last line and last line, then the last three lines etc- working their way towards the beginning of the dialogue until the other students in the class guess what the situation of the conversation is, e.g. who the telephone conversation is between or which kind of shop it is taking place in.

 ”Borrowed” from Clockwise Upper Intermediate Teacher’s Resource Pack, where it is explained much more clearly than this. Not much else to recommend that book (although the textbook is okay and the lower level teacher’s resource packs seem better), so keep reading here instead as I rip off every book in my new teacher’s room library and write up all the highlights here.