Teacher Discussion Forums

Theo, If you have some students who are absolute beginners and others who have some language abilities, then group work sounds like your best bet. Get the higher level students working on activity and then you will have time to give the lower level students extra attention. And encourage higher leve...

Theo, Multilevel classes are very common in adult basic education in the U.S. In addition to the grouping techniques mentioned above (same ability together, mixed abilities with higher level helping lower level, partners, etc) you can also do open ended activities that allow students to work at thei...

Are you willing to pay for the tests? I know of a couple, but they are expensive and require formal training before you can purchase them.

It is one MA in both TESOL and linguistics. I didn't have too much trouble finding a job, but I did have challenges finding one full time job. There isn't a lot of funding for adult basic education, so many programs can only hire a few full time teachers. A new teacher has to stick with a couple par...

It sounds to me like the issue is not just connected speech. It could also be word and sentence stress. You could try some exercises that help them practice stressing the important words in their sentences. The important words should be louder and have longer vowels in comparision to the other funct...

I can't really say what it is like in Canada, but I can say that I made a living with two part time jobs teaching ESL to adults. It was not ideal, but I certainly learned a lot by working in programs with different approaches, sizes, etc. I also had a couple colleagues who did the same thing--put to...

I train volunteer adult ESL teachers and I am looking for bilingual materials for the new citizenship test (the one that begins in October 2008). I'd like to be able to tell volunteers about these materials so they can use them with their students. Does anyone know of any? Materials in Spanish, Soma...