Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi

Have sent you a private message.

Hi, again. I haven't taught at the power plant for 3 years. I moved from Guangxi Province to Yunnan Province in China and worked for 2 years at one of the universities in Kunming. This year I've just been travelling in the province but in the summer I'll teach at a university in the UK. I don't have...

Hi Sounds like an interesting school and you must need a lot of material to keep yourself sane - nevermind the students! Do you know about the Oxford Book of Engineering (there is a cassette, too)? Can't remember the title properly but it is by someone called Glenndinning (not sure of spelling and t...

Zaneth I cannot be 100% re all British regional accents but the standard is /ju:/ and this is what is taught in the UK. Students should have the opportunity to listen to as many different variations of English as possible to give them an awareness of such variations. Yes, "take off" (phrasal verb) m...

Hi

It's the ONLY choice, unless we're trying to take off the American accent !

Hi I just looked briefly at the site you mentioned - I wish I'd known about it 3 years ago! The engineers were at a Chinese-French power plant so they were involved in various aspects of engineering, and I also ran classes for the admin and warehouse staff. Actually they knew the vocabulary for thei...

Hi! I have just looked at the Building Big site and it looks brilliant. I used to teach engineers in China and still keep an eye open for good sites on this subject in case I need them again. Have you seen http://membres.lycos.fr/jcviel/frame.htm which is EFL Tech France? There might be some ideas f...

Hi This may be too late for you - I haven't logged in to the cafe for ages - but I like the book Conversation by R Nolasco and L Arthur. It's one of the teacher development series by OUP. There's a lot of making your own materials particularly with video clips (bits of soap operas from the TV for ex...

http://www.onestopenglish.com/news/magazine/archive/tefl_literature.htm Hi there I don't know if you ever look at the MacMillan site (you have to register for the free resources but they are free) but there are a couple of articles and some lesson plans for using lit in classes. I haven't read them ...

You might try doing something with newspapers, glue or sellotape and paints. If you have access to large and cheap sheets of white paper that might be more fun for designing, but I don't suppose the kids would mind at all if you used newspaper. They would need supervision with the scissors but speci...

Hi Take a look at www.english-to-go.com based on Reuters news and complete with Teachers' Notes. It used to be completely free but unfortunately not so anymore but they still have some Sample lessons for free. May be more inspiring than just reading for reading's sake. I find the occasional lesson f...

Hi This is not a coursebook, but a workbook called Check Your Vocabulary for ACADEMIC ENGLISH. Author David Porter, pub Peter Collin Publishing (2001) ISBN 1-901659-53-4 It's full of exercises such as word substitution, choose the best word, making collocations. Each unit (there are eleven) follows ...

Last university year I was teaching oral classes of 30 Chinese students (now I only teach writing, I don't like just oral!) and I found the students enjoyed 'debate', particularly if they could prepare in advance. I would select a topic such as 'Smoking is bad for your health', 'Tourism damages the ...

Innovations by Hugh Dellar and Darryl Hocking (pub LTP - Language Teaching Publications) is for intermediate/ upper intermediate learners. I like this because the material is VERY up to date. I've used it in conversation classes with lower learners as the topic areas have interesting language that m...

I think a 'vague' So and so has successfully completed Such and Such a course is pretty standard. It's this format used at a British University summer school at the end of their typical four-week courses.

This way you have not promised anything in the way of capability.

Jane