Teacher Discussion Forums

I suggest the MEGA series from Macmillian. It works really well as a self contained source of everything you need, such as communicative activities, vocab, grammar things, and features a kind of interesting narrative about some students and their lives. It's simple to use, relevant, up to date, foc...

Wow, how do you teach the primary sounds first? I have always had at least one bright student who knew the names of alphabet letter and many of the students knew the first few letters of the ABC alphabet song so if I tried to teach the sound first, they were confused and often incensed that I was t...

I've been teaching beginning kids overseas for 8 out of my 12 years of teaching. Depends on the age of your kids, but I use "Get Ready" http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/isbn/1370?cc=global , an outstanding beginners course for 5-7 year-olds. (8 and 9 year-olds can tolerate it, but thematic content a...

I wonder if anyone has links to classical drama for children? I looked at that geocities site and it was all modern stuff, largely anti-classical. As if that weren't demanding enough, another problem is that the language ought to be simplified for EFL kids... I know GINN produced great stuff, but it...

It's 'think FOR yourself.'.

think OF is egotistical

think by is in solitude, isolation

think about is introspection

's 'at help?

I know why, but it would require writing pages and pages here - I haven't written my book yet. It helps to have had extensive teaching exp in both public and private schools across the country and in different countries. But then you also need to not be financially dependent on the public system, wh...

When I was that age, I liked the Chronicles of Narnia . A Horse and His Boy has action and adventure, which the boys should enjoy. All seven books in the series have action and adventure for boys and girls, and the language is not too difficult for the avg intermed pupil. With the films now coming ...

This looks like it belongs in the jobs forum, not this one.

How many folk here know that 'ain't' was originally (artificially) introduced as a contraction for "Am I not?" and failed miserably in that capacity?
"I'm an awesome teacher, ain't?"

I'm not familiar with Round Up. I took a look at Longman's website, and it looks like the series is for older children. What's it like? Does it work for adults? Chris Cotter www.headsupenglish.com Yes, it works fine. Its advantage is (esp on the lower levels) a good balance of # of exercises vs ill...

Take a look at Raymond Murphy's English Grammar in Use. Each "chapter" is two pages: page one has an explanation of the grammar point, and page two has writing exercises. I've used the book before, assigning a page or two as homework. For the next lesson, we practiced the grammar point in drills, a...

Actually, D+J was a huge regression from the McGuffy Reader and other readings that were far more highbrow than D+J. My personal take on that is that D+J was designed more to kill interest in reading than to encourage it. Dr Suess is incredibly lowbrow, too, even though he was touted as 'an antidote...

Thanks a lot!
I'd noticed the negative adv. thing, but it wasn't exclusive to that, so I didn't know how to explain it.

Thanks, Sally!
FTR, Lewis's "The Abolition of Man" is a work that I'd make mandatory reading for people who consider themselves teachers. "The Green Book" is a pseudonym for a textbook that he refers to in the beginning (it was a negative stimulus for his short book).

Also, never, ever force anyone over the age of 9 to sing themselves. Either pick the kind of stuff you know they would want to sing, or satisfy yourself with exposing them to the music.