Archive for the ‘Teaching materials’ Category

Positive messages to chant to yourself in front of the mirror or record on your iPod include:

1. “I will make my students love English so much that they cry when they can’t come to class”
2. “Having no money is good for my karma and the environment”
3. “I am totally psyched about teaching adverbs of frequency”
4. “The Present Perfect Continuous is all part of God’s great but mysterious plan”
5. “I was put on the planet to correct dependant prepositions”
6. “Everyone must find their own purpose in life, and I have found mine in teaching collocations”
7. “Connected speech is beautiful, and so am I”
8. “It is my life’s mission to protect the apostrophe from abuse”
9. “There is no such thing as a student who can’t pronounce th”
10. “Nothing is impossible, not even teaching every phrasal verb that could come up in the Cambridge Proficiency exam”
11. “Every day in every way, my knowledge of adverbs is getting better and better/ my speaking speed is getting slower and slower”
12. “A good warmer is better than sex”
13. “If someone moves my cheese, I’ll just steal their lesson plans”
14. “Time spent with Jeremy Harmer can never be wasted”
15. “If I can just make my students feel the passion that I feel right now for correct punctuation, nothing will be able to stop me”
16. “The quest to become more like John and Liz Soars starts with a single step”
17. “If someone has moved my cheese, I’ll just take it as part of a mingle activity”
18. “If I can do this humanistic language teaching warmer without dying of shame, for the rest of my life I will have nothing to fear”
19. “Reducing my self esteem with the use of mime and slapstick humour in class is another step towards satori”
20. “Teaching Headway/ the Present Simple/ with PPP again is like the wax on wax off in Karate Kid- tedious-seeming but essential training for the sudden appearance of TEFL superpowers”
21. “Every new edition of Headway is like a new chapter in my life”
22. “Today is the day when I’ll understand the difference between ‘going to’ and ‘will’”
23. “No two lessons about Seamus Mc Sporran- The Man with 13 Jobs are really the same, just like you can’t step in the same river twice”
24. “If I can finish today knowing that I taught some 3 year olds animal noises in English, I will be able to die a fulfilled and happy man”
25. “Da da daaaa, da da daaaaa, da da daaa da da daaa, da da daaaa, da da da da da da” etc.
The last one obviously being the theme tune from Rocky, which you can even have playing as you come into class if you like. The rest of them you can combine with jazz chants practice by saying them over and over while jogging round the park or doing circuit training in the gym.

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

More bits and pieces that I didn’t know, had never thought about or had doubts about from The Cambridge Grammar of English:

- The reason why you don’t double the p in “developing” is because the previous vowel isn’t stressed. Ditto for “delivered” and “opener”, but lots of words ending in -l in BrE and others such as handicapped and programmed don’t follow the rule
 
- Doubling consonants when adding -ed and -ing is part of a more general rule when “a suffix beginning with a vowel is added”, e.g. -ish, -ence and –er

- The “i before e except after c” rule only counts for the /i:/ pronunciation like “brief”, so most of the “exceptions” are because other pronunciations are spelt “ei”, e.g. neighbour, weigh, reign, leisure. Real exceptions include financier, species and examples of -cy changing to -cies, e.g. democracies.
 
- The final e making the preceding stressed vowel long, e.g. hat/hate, also works for -le, hence able, fable, bible etc.
 
- The plural of bus can be buses or busses. Ditto with biased/biassed, focusing/focussing, gases/gasses.

“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…)

I’m continuing to learn from and ponder on the information in the Cambridge Grammar of English, and as before testing the matters I’ve been chewing on against your native speaker intuitions would be appreciated (sorry for the very unpleasant mental picture from that metaphor first thing on a Monday morning!)

The (modern?) name for & is “and” (not ampersand)
{ } = chain brackets (they’ve always been squiggly brackets to me!)
< > = diamond brackets
 
American English uses commas before and or but more frequently than British English
 
“Subordinate clauses can be separated by a comma from a preceding main clause, especially when the relation between them might be obscured because the clauses are long.” (pg 842), so “We can get there for around six, if there are no problems with the traffic on the motorway” is okay with or without the comma, despite being in the reverse position of the usual first conditional with a comma
 
Colons are used to indicate subtitles, and to mark a clause in which reasons are given: “We decided against it: it wasn’t lightweight enough”
 
Single quotation marks are becoming more widespread in direct speech
 
Colons may be used to introduce direct speech when it is particularly long
 
There are apostrophes (becoming optional) in “for goodness’ sake” and “for appearance’ sake”
 
In informal writing multiple dashes may be used:
 
“Just got back from Mallorca— we really loved it.”

If punctuation is your thing, or really isn’t you or your students’ thing but should be, here are some links:

Wikipedia on the ampersand

Info on Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss- a funny book on punctuation!

A whole list of punctuation books on Amazon

Punctuation worksheets on ESL Printables.com

And that is all I could find of interest. For classroom activities, one thing that works well, especially with FCE and CAE classes, is for students to take a text that is correct and add spelling and punctuation errors for another team to find.

Another good game is to put a text on the board including punctuation and get them to read out the whole text (including punctuation) over and over as you delete it one word or punctuation mark at a time until they can no longer remember it or the whole text has disappeared.

The game above works well with kids too. A more physical game for kids on the same point is to write up a sentence with one piece of punctuation missing in large letters on the board, and get them to take turns throwing a sticky ball (= sucker ball) at the place they think the punctuation mark should be.

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”

I’ve been reading through the new Cambridge Grammar of English. Not something I usually do for pleasure (honestly!), but got a free copy for TEFL.net reviews and so felt like I ought to examine at least some parts in detail- and now I am reading it for pleasure!

Maybe the most interesting thing is that the use of corpora rather than just common sense (otherwise known as native speaker intuition) means there are bits on almost every page where you go “Really?” Below is a list of the “Oh yes, I suppose so.” and “No, I really don’t think so” moments so far based on British and American English. Most good science throws out counterintuitive things like this. Unfortunately, so does most bad science, so I’d appreciate it if you would comment on how the things below match with your own experience and instinct- there are a few I have doubts on myself.

- In AmE, the score in “The Seattle Sea Hawks beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-O is pronounced” “seven nothing” or “seven to nothing” or “seven zip”
 
- “Four from nine is/leaves five” is okay in BrE
 
- The form in “Eleven hundred pounds” (rather than “one hundred one hundred”) is more popular in AmE than BrE

- “isn’t” (rather than ’s not) is many times more frequent in BrE than AmE

- Interrogative tags are about four times more frequent in BrE than in AmE
 
- The “do” in reduced clauses with modal verbs
“Are you going?”
“I might do”
is only used in British English
 
- She lives on/ in Leonora Street is a Br/ Am thing

- “Must” is much more frequent in BrE than AmE
 
- “Had better” is six times more frequent in BrE
 
- “Going to” often used for direction giving (finding your way) in AmE: “You’re gonna go two blocks…”
 
- “I suppose” is much more frequent in BrE

If you ended up here wanting to find more more traditional stuff about British and American English, try:

Wikipedia (of course) American and British English differences

The American’s Guide to Speaking British English

BBC America British American Dictionary

If you are interested in worksheets for classroom use on British and American English, look here:

How British is your Financial English?

ESL Printable British and American English page

British and American English elesson from the (recommended) textbook Inside Out

British and American: The main differences from the (equally recommended) vocab book Word for Word

And if you’d like your own shiny new TEFL book hot off the press for free, see here.

All that TEFL International stuff below is not only depressing, I’m starting to think it is actually quite pointless. For example, if we compare the number of teachers who have paid money to TEFL International, let alone the number of people who felt unhappy afterwards, how does that compare to the number of teachers who need some new games for the Present Simple? One percent? Less? Not forgetting of course that 99% of English teachers in the world are not native speakers and have never heard of the CELTA or any of the “equivalents”.

Luckily, I have found time between training to be a TEFL boxing referee to continue writing some practical ideas that anyone should make teachers’ lives easier. You can find them here:

Usingenglish.com (which seems to be active again after going veeeeery quiet)

Business English Present Continuous Sounds and Mimes- contrasting with the Present Simple, and with loads of useful office and other Bus Eng vocab

Why does my teacher skip exercises in the textbook?- article for students, but could also help teachers answer their questions and think through their classroom activities

TEFL.net Idea Thinktank

The 15 stages of using pre-school English songs

The first 15 stages in using worksheets in pre-school English classes

15 ways to personalize your young learner classes - also suitable for very young and very low level learners

15 criteria for a good kindergarten English song- how to choose and use them

15 techniques for calming down a pre-school class

15 variations for large pre-school classes- the best games with small classes and how to make them work with 50 or more kids

15 fun sit down activities for pre-school classes- to save both your energy and theirs!

15 flashcard activities for any pre-school English class- simple, cheap and exciting!

TEFL.net TEFL Articles

15 criteria for a good TEFL workshop

TEFL.net Reviews

Teacher Language Awareness book review

Telephone English (Macmillan) book review

Lessons from good language learners book review

If that ain’t enough for you, here is the same for new stuff in May:

New Worksheets and Articles May 2008

If the amount of new stuff I learnt from the new book “Academic Vocabulary in Use” by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell is anything to go by (a book for students from “good Intermediate level”, not for teachers!), the answer about whether I should be teaching English for Academic Purposes is a resounding “No!”, although several things make me feel better about that:

- I detest universities as institutions and don’t want to work in one anyway
- I studied Physics, so the longest thing I ever had to write was 1500 words and no one expected me to have basic human communication skills, yet alone a grasp of academic prose
- With authors like those, I was hardly going to know everything they know
- Ditto with the Cambridge International Corpus, and anyway the whole idea of a corpus is that it is supposed to give counter-intuitive results

With those provisos to make you feel better about your results, without any further ado here is the “Should you be teaching EAP?” quiz.

Answer the questions below to see whether you should be getting into or out of the world of EAP. My own score was very nearly zero (which is why I picked them, but the first question is an easy one to get you started), so good luck. Answers in the comments section. Only the answers from the book are acceptable, so if there are several possible answers you will need to think of all of them before turning to the answer key. One point per answer, total possible score is 38.
The “Should you be teaching EAP?” quiz

Collocations

1. Pick out the two collocations that are not given in the book “Academic Vocabulary in Use” and so are presumably not common in academic English

“gently fondle”,  “intermittent contact”, “animated debate”, “excess energy”, “recent phenomenon”, “conflicting role”, “efficient way”, “conflicting role”, “break off contact”, “with the fashion sense of a physics grad”, “differentiate the elements”, “emerging phenomena”, “strengthened roles”, “important difference”, “major point”, “enormous amount” and “widespread assumption” are common collocations in academic English

British and American Academic English

2. List 20 verbs that always take -ise (and therefore never –ize) in both British and American English.
 
3. Give four words that are spelt with ae in British English but e in Am Eng
 
4. And two with oe/e

5. How many words can you think of with a -our spelling in British English but a -or spelling in American English? (you only get points if your answer includes the one word that from the book that I didn’t know)
 
6. How many words can you think of with an -re spelling in British English but a –er spelling in American English? (you only get points if your answer includes the one word that from the book that I didn’t know)

7. Can you explain when we use the spellings “humor”, “honor” and “glamor” in British English?

8. Can you explain when we use the spelling “meter” in British English?
 
9. What’s the difference between the British and American meanings of (exam) rubric?
 
The original meanings of words

10. Sophomore comes from the Greek for…
 
11. What did the “hyper” in hyperrealism originally mean?

12. What did the “quasi-” in quasigovernmental originally mean?

13. What did the “-ant” in “coolant” and “accelerant” originally mean?

14. What did the “-cy” in “accuracy” and “literacy” originally mean?

15. What two meanings does “-ism” have?

16. What did the “-ics” in “genetics” and “electronics” originally mean?

Abbreviations

17. What does e.g. stand for?

18. What does “i.e.” stand for?

19. What does “et al” stand for?

20. What does “ibid.” stand for?

21. What does “cf.” stand for?

22. What does “q.v.” stand for?

23. What does “LLB” stand for?

24. What does “FRS” stand for?

25. What does “CUNY” stand for?

26. What does “FAAFP” stand for?

27. What does “MRCS” stand for?

28. What does “AMA” stand for?

29. What does “ACA” stand for?

30. What does “FASB” stand for?

31. What does “AICPA” stand for?

Formal and informal English

32. What are more formal versions of recap, be based on, deal with, promise, write about, almost

33. What’s a formal way of saying ‘although’?

34. What’s a more informal way of saying ‘nevertheless’?

Misc

35. Why do the words “discipline”, “underline”, “solid”, “generate”, “turn”, “confirm”, “identify”, “character”, “pose”, “nature” and “focus” all appear in the same section of a book on academic English?

36. Rewrite the sentence ‘Radiation was accidentally released over a 24-hour period, damaging a wide area for a long time’ in a more academic manner and identify the general feature of academic grammar that it illustrates.

37. Rewrite the sentence “Marx’s contribution is very significant” in a more academic manner and identify the general aspect of academic English grammar that this illustrates.

38. What other expression does the book give instead of “mind map”?

For those of you who haven’t been on the Worksheet pages yet (although surely no one would waste their time reading the blog when they could save planning time by using the worksheets??) and the many more of you who are going to end up here after the error messages because I’ve shortened lots of html names (because good names are good apparently), here is where the worksheets are now:

Medical and Pharmaceutical worksheets

Business English and ESP Games and Worksheets

Telephoning Games and Worksheets

Technical English and Numbers Games and Worksheets

EFL Exam games and worksheets- IELTS, TOEIC etc.

Travel English, Tourism and Study Abroad worksheets

Writing Games and Worksheets

Vocabulary Games and Worksheets

Functional and Social English Games and Worksheets

Video worksheets

Song worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Grammar games and worksheets