Look Into My Eyes…and Learn Unforgettable Vocabulary!
Sometimes, you get lucky. A planned activity that you hope will be moderately interesting and instructive turns into a runaway success. Here’s one: Inspired by a recent article in the New York Times...
View ArticleEavesdropping on the Present Perfect
Perhaps no frequently used tense in the English language is as bedeviling as the present perfect tense. Many advanced ESL students still struggle to use it correctly. And plenty of instructors—myself...
View ArticleSpeaking English Outside of Class: When Students Need More Help
In several blog posts in 2013, I explored the ways I have worked with my students to encourage them to speak, read, and listen to more English outside of class and documented their success in doing so....
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Untitled Skull: A Speaking and Writing Activity Using Art
Some time ago, I attended a professional development seminar presented by Patricia Lannes, Project Director of CALTA21, an innovative partnership between museums and community colleges that uses art as...
View ArticleFilm English: An Online Resource for ELT
Watching movies is a time-honored way for students to hone their listening skills, improve their pronunciation, and expand their vocabulary. I consistently encourage my students to watch movies in...
View ArticleLearning English With William Shakespeare
In honor of U.S. National Poetry Month, I wanted to share with you an activity I did with my Level 6 IEP Speaking & Listening students last semester that drew its inspiration from the words of the...
View ArticleAre You a Tech Addict? A Writing & Speaking Activity
Smartphones are now so ubiquitous in adult ESL classrooms that the relationship between students and their phones is always an engaging conversation topic. Even more important, it’s a great way to...
View ArticleWhat Does It REALLY Take to Succeed? A Speaking Activity
At the NYS TESOL Applied Linguistics Conference at Columbia’s Teachers College earlier this year, much was made of Bloom’s Taxonomy and the importance of giving ESL students ample opportunities to...
View ArticleLearning the Ropes: A Project-Based Speaking Activity
Group oral presentations are a staple of many ESL classes. While students get a lot of speaking and listening practice during these projects because they are working in and outside of class with...
View ArticleStudent-Generated Grammar Rules
As ESL instructors, we often learn at least as much from our students as they do from us. But that truism was borne out in an unexpected way recently in my beginners’ evening ESL class as we wrestled,...
View ArticleBusiness English and an American Football Star: Focus on Improvement
Hello, ESPers worldwide! What is the connection between the learners in a business English class in Japan and the accomplishment of an American football star? In this TESOL Blog post, I will tell you...
View ArticleSmartphone Addicts: A Project-Based Learning Activity
In an earlier blog post, I challenged my students to turn an online quiz about technology into a series of questions they could pose to their classmates to gauge the extent of their obsession with...
View ArticleA Roomful of Quotes: A Communicative Activity
I often find that changing what’s on the walls of my classroom changes the energy in the class. Recently, I decided to challenge my intermediate-level adult students to a new speaking activity by...
View ArticleESPers as Active Learners
Hello, ESPers worldwide! As an ESP practitioner, how often do you find yourself in the role of a student? In this TESOL Blog post, I will focus on the ESPer’s role as a learner based on some of my own...
View ArticleUSA Learns: A Web-Based Tool for Self-Directed Learning
Many students like to be able to log into a computer program on their laptop, tablet, or smart phone to practice their English online outside of class. Here’s a free resource that every ESL teacher...
View ArticleCraigslist and the Art of Asking Questions
In a blog post last summer, I described a mnemonic device one of my students invented to help her classmates master the ability to pose grammatically accurate questions in the simple past. Here’s...
View ArticleSpeed Paraphrasing
Learning how to paraphrase is a crucial academic writing skill. Teaching paraphrasing is also a great way to teach critical thinking skills, because the struggle to write a succinct paraphrase forces...
View ArticleGuest Writer: Technology in an Adult Ed ESL Program
Realizing that readers of the TESOL Blog teach in a wide variety of contexts, I invited a colleague, Darrin Hetrick, whose students are very different from my own, to share his experiences with...
View ArticlePlaying With Pronunciation
In many intermediate and advanced ESL classes, it’s common to assign a novel for students to read for class. Less common is the assignment of a work of nonfiction. And rare indeed, in my experience,...
View ArticleLowering Affective Filter to Teach Adults Pronunciation
Rob Sheppard, director of adult education at Quincy Asian Resources, member of the community advisory council at First Literacy, and curriculum consultant at Boston Global Institute, has joined the...
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