Teacher Discussion Forums

Knowing a Word Deeply Like I said, it is not always necessary to know a word deeply. Passive understanding is often enough. Sometimes even just having a vague sense of the word gained through context will get a student through TOEFL reading (I practice guessing words from context). However, there a...

Would your boss notice if you changed one of the reading classes into a focussed vocabulary acquisition class? As for the question of reducing vocabulary time, that leads to the question of how deeply you want the students to know the words. I often divide the vocabulary into words they should have ...

Glenski: Don't panic...if there was ever a course that works well teaching from a text, it is TOEFL. Get a good book and follow along. The CDs are usually included. If you want to supplement, great, but if you are worried about filling it up...well TOEFL teachers everywhere will chuckle. You will so...

Will your students be taking the CBT or the New CBT? In North America I believe that that most cities are switching to New CBT in September. If that is the case, then you (like many of us) are currently out of luck, as there are no materials currently ready...except some stuff available from the ETS...

You've probablly purused the TOEFL aleady, but they have some features that I think are actually interesting, particularily for testing the "bottom-up" items (as oppossed to discourse questions where you can simple have a multiple choice for main idea). I like the 'insert a sentence' questions in pa...

Isn't this sentence just a convoluted form of "How much time do you have to do the homework in?". Here is my semi-educated guess: you = subject do have = main verb in simple present, with auxilliary 'do' to form a question ['Have to' is sometimes classified as a semi-modal, as it substitutes for 'mu...

Hi! Actually, there isn't much out there at the present time, other than what you can order from the official site: www.toefl.org Longman is working on a book, but the release date has been pushed back. Rogers (Heinle and Heinle) won't have a new book ready for a year or so, from what I've heard fro...

Are you talking about teacher burnout or student burnout?

This thread reminds me of George Bernard Shaw's joke when he was petitioning for a phonetic simplification of English spelling. He proposed (ironically, of course) the following spelling - ghoti. Can you figure it out? See below! It's fish! 'gh' from rough, the 'o' from women, and 'ti' from motion!

Hey Fluffy (are you a Captain Underpants Fan?),

I have a little confession to make. I'm not familiar with the term "one-off". Could you explicate? Thanks!

- Piggy

ps. If you do, you are splendoured!

That's okay Fluffy, nice to see even your brain power slows down at times! :wink: Here is the Webster's Third International definition of "splendour ed/ing" as a verbal adjective: to proceed gloriously, radiantly, or resplendently; to endow with splendour (e.g. The winter night is splendoured by the...

What does "to splendour" mean anyway? I splendour; you splendour; he/she/it splendours? There's a usage that's gone by the wayside. I'm going to look it up in my OED.

-Piggy

I'm am strongly in favour of adapting my teaching to student need. In this case, if the student does not need to learn formal essay structure, and simply wants to practice for whatever other reason, then focussing on the unnecessary is a waste of time. You can't teach everything. Remember, also, tha...

Hi Clayton! I guess if I were you, I'd think about what kinds of classes I wanted to be teaching when I finished and model my research on that. In other words, I'd try to make it useful. For example, if I had to go back to my studies (God forbid!) I might do the project on the literature around voca...

Can you be more specific? What kind of literature? Divided how? Do you want recommended texts? Do you want theory? Where do you need to start?