Archive for the ‘TEFL reviews’ Category

… 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?

“She… reported that her self-esteem was raised when her [MA in TESOL] assignments were returned with comments that revealed, in her view, a degree of closed-mindedness on the part of the tutors who had marked them.”

From pg 72 of The Experience of Language Teaching, a book that is still highly recommended and I’m more than halfway through (in under a week!)

By complete coincidence, I’d been writing about boosting your teaching confidence just before starting the this book, and here is my effort:

15 ways to boost your teaching confidence

More articles on that coming up (as I have lots of experience of losing mine!), and in the meantime here is my other recent article::

 15 ways of starting a preschool English class

And that is it for this month, because I’ve been too busy eating kimchi to write and anyway I did loads earlier this month, which you can find here:

New TEFL articles October 2008

Heartbreak:

“One teacher reported that she had been the least nervous of all the people on her course - attributing this to the fact she already knew what it felt like to be deeply hurt…”

The Experience of Language Teaching page 40

I can see her passing on that tip now- “So, a couple of months before your TEFL course, make sure you pick a real bastard to go out with and then introduce him to your slapper sister…”

(more…)

Doesn’t last of course, especially the initial thrill of being in the chaos of a third world city or in the chaos left for you by the last person who had that DoS job, but if having some kind of career plan gets you out of the bed in the morning with more motivation than I had six months ago, wth- got to be a good thing!

Whether your next plan is/ will be how to become a teacher trainer, an ELT author, a better teacher or just someone who is making an active effort to fight the boredom, we at TEFLtastic have the article for you on our totally updated page right here.

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

Updated, expanded and with many more links here:

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

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

As mentioned in a comment or two below (and in every other sentence in my real life conversation), I am off on my reasonably well deserved hols from Friday and won’t even be looking at a computer screen for the next 10 days. For those of you who can’t live without an opinionated TEFL rant until I get back, I’m sure there must be something in my 458 posts over the last 14 months that you must have missed, so have a little trawl through the archives here- I’m sure there must be something there to entertain and/ or offend you!

For those of you still here for the serious stuff that I was supposed to have set this blog up for, here are the links to bits and pieces I have been involved in elsewhere in the world on TEFL. The top two are my own particular favourites from the last few months:

15 ways to help your students forget

15 ways to help your students dream in English

15 games for the language of describing people

15 real life situations for the language of describing people

15 typical textbook activities you can personalize

15 difficulties in teaching the language of describing people

15 ways to write a TEFL review

Office vocabulary compound noun stress

Why does my teacher make us work in pairs?

Talking about your job and company first class

Business English prepositions

Present Simple/ Continuous and Tense Review Guessing Game

Complaints prepositions practice

“While many teachers may attend to the questions ‘Do you like this language? Do you like this class?’, perhaps the more fundamental question for a student is ‘Do I like myself in this class?’”

(more…)

My first surprise was introducing students to the piece of ELT jargon “speech acts”, something I only vaguely remembered from my reading for my DELTA myself, but more about that when I get round to reviewing The Cambridge Grammar of English…

Some of the above were some I had never thought about, some are ones I still doubt, and the rest are just vaguely interesting (something that is worth celebrating when you are reading your way through a grammar book!) Any comments after testing these against your “native speaker intuitions” (also known as “TEFL teacher prejudices”) gratefully received:

“You must” and “you’ll have to” are often used to give non-specific invitations
 
“And you must come down to Barr at some stage or another”
 
“You’ll have to come round for a coffee”
 
What if…? is used for How about…? in “standard British and Irish English”
 
“What if I set the table?”
 
“What if we had it here?”
 
How’s about…? for How about…? in informal contexts in standard British and Irish English

Informal lexis softens a speech act:
“pop in” instead of “visit”/ “wee” in “a wee favour”
 
“Please” is usually used at the end of a question, but children often put it first:
 
“Please can I have some more bread?”
 
“so” and “then” are common in declarative clauses functioning as questions
 
“So you had a good day at work then?”
 
“Didn’t it just!” is part of a general pattern of interrogative structures used as explanations, like “Was I exhausted!” and “Hasn’t she grown!”

“Would you mind if one of our representatives comes and gives you a free demonstration?” Would you mind + present

“You want to sound-proof your room with egg boxes”- “want to” for advice in “standard British and Irish English”