Job Discussion Forums

[gaijinalways]

Hi all,

I was just wondering, where do you get your most teaching materials/ideas from?

I know I get some from conferences I attend and some from association meetings (haven't been to too many of those recently). A few I get from other teachers I talk to, either sharing material directly that they made/copied/borrowed or the germ for an idea.

Some come from off this forum, some from the news, and other media.

But a lot of mine seem to come off the Internet recently. I will find some things that I use in class directly (I'm in a CALL classroom 2 days a week), but I also find things that I copy and sometimes modify.

How about you? Where do most of your ideas/materials come from?

[surrealia]

I also get a lot of my best teaching ideas from the Internet, from websites such as One Stop English, Teaching English (BBC), Six Things, Humanising Language Teaching and It's Magazine.

In addition, I also get ideas from books, such as the resource books from Oxford, Cambridge, Delta, and Helbling, and magazines such as English Teaching Professional. I also create my own materials, and have had some of them published.

[evolving81]

I've wondered that. I think people with years of experience teaching just have lots of ideas to fall back on. I suppose it's a trial and error type thing. When I try a new activity I have to see how it goes and how to adapt it for next time. My mentor in my MA program has tons of ideas so I'm envious of that.

[tommchone]

I try to adapt to each class; this is primarily for college students. Find out what the common strengths and weaknesses are and proceed accordingly. Usually the same: pronunciation of whatever sounds do not occur in the native language, verb tenses, gender pronouns (THAT'S for the Chinese students!), etc.

[gaijinalways]

I also use a lot of material that I have built up, but sometimes you want to do something different. Like for example, this semester, I decided to have about 250 students do short public speeches. These are not presentation nor public speaking classes, so the students needed some additional training not directly related to the class curriculum in how to do this.

I pulled some of the material from the classes I already teach and added some that I got from a book I picked up at a related presentation. I also looked for some other examples online and adapted a few to show examples for structure, though many of these I didn't hand out (trying to cut down on making copies, (more trees, more time ).

I had to consider how to do it differently as the normal presentation and public speaking classes I recently teach are usually very small, 2-4 people. These other classes I have range in size from 13-34. Also because presentation/public speaking is not the main focus of these classes (they all have regular textbooks), I had to figure out how to pace the material I made for this project (which I graded as 1 quiz, about 11% of their grade).

In other cases I can't use my stock material because I don't know the topic or I am trying to use the newest related news I can. This semester I have students doing group presentations as if they were workers in the Culture ministry. The only extra goal they had was trying to encourage foreign visitors to come to Japan (as well as promoting some aspect of Japanese culture).

I went and dug up a lot of links from the Japan Ministry culture site, contrasted what the French government promotes (since France seems to get a lot more visitors, though some of that is geography), as well as looked at promotion methods/channels (my previous background is in promotions/marketing). Some material I dug up before the class started, some of it as we went along (I'm flexible with some classes, see how students react to the material, etc.).

Note this is a new class, only the second time I've taught it. It's supposed to be a seminar style class with a simulated conference, so students need structural guidelines as well as in planning for discussion questions, etc.. And of course they also need presentation skills, but for group presentations. They cover and do a lot in a one semester class .

Surrealia,,
Thanx for the links, I'll have to take a look at those. I know one stop I did look at before.

[Englishish]

If you're on a hunt for decent ideas and materials, here's a copy and paste of an answer I gave a previous poster:

Here's a website where you can download teaching materials for free - full course books, resource books, grammar books, software, audio files, video, exam preparation materials, dictionaries, audio books, English readers, etc. Unfortunately, Cambridge materials are not longer available due to copyright issues but there are plenty of amazing materials still available - and let's face it - who wants to lug around a load of books when you can have them all on your hard drive? When I think of the old days when I used to sit for hours, downloading individual leason plans one at a time from websites! (I still have them on my laptop but I don't seem to use them so much anymore)

Oddly enough, I don't seem to meet any teachers who have heard of it!

The name of this magical site? englishtips.org

[gaijinalways]

[surrealia]

I agree, Gaijinalways, that "englishtips" website doesn't seem to be more than a bulletin board.

I just thought I'd add a few more sites that have some great ideas that I just haven't gotten around using in class (but would love to):

EFL Clips (activities that involve video clips)
http://www.teflclips.com/

Strictly 4 My Teacherz (somewhat politically incorrect lessons)
http://strictly4myteacherz.wordpress.com

Listen A Minute (short listening activities)
http://www.listenaminute.com

Kalinago English (lesson plans)
http://kalinago.blogspot.com/search/label/lessonplans

[Englishish]

Are you sure you're using the right website? It's englishtips.org NOT .com. The .com one will give you a completely different website which I agree is not magical! (It's an easy mistake to make because I did it myself at the beginning!) Put the name of the book etc in the search engine and download! Or if you're not looking for anything in particular, you can browse the categories on the left; exams, grammar, Business English etc. Let me know if you find it because I guarantee you'll find it useful!

[gaijinalways]

Englishish, no, I went to the right one, nothing special, believe me. I have plenty of books, I toss out catalogs that I'm still getting in the mail. Most of the textbooks have similar exercises to what I already have. Also the searches on the site seem to pull up a lot of Russian sites/examples.

Surrealia, the one minute lstening website looks interesting, though it is more built for teachers. But it includes the worksheets, so that is helpful. I probably will use that this Thursday depending on how long presentations run. There is another similar one that I use, if I can find the link I'll give it to you.

[gaijinalways]

The Tefl clips website also looks interesting, have to see if it's worth using. I already do a lot of the things he's suggesting, often pulling clips from youtube as well.