Teacher Discussion Forums

I am surprised to read that someone suspects a FT to "scare" their Japanese English students with their too-serious approach... How come? How can an FT "scare" their students this way? Japanese students are very comparable to Chinese ones; diffident, fickle, bookishly dedicated to study but not endo...

gongqin, I think you are Chinese, right? Why don't you take your idea to the China Off topic discussion forum in the Employment section? That's where it belongs. Apart from giving you this pointer, I am not sure why you think it is a good idea to set up a new training centre in China. Do you know th...

I see some very passinate attacks on the 'wrong' use of language, 'natives commit a lot of mistakes and you can be better than them in English' is the stupid motto some teachers have here, as a José Well, mate, it wasn't necesssary to elevate yourself above the rest of us by being churlish. This ru...

zhuangzi: you boasted you learnt 9 languages and are now into your tenth; would you care to elaborate on how well you acquired these lingos? There are many out here that speak several languages - including myself - and that still arrive at views that in parts are opposite to yours. You claim, for in...

I am glad others see the benefits of reading too. First thing: yes, it reinforces the familiarity of the learner with the sentence structures of the target language as the language becomes virtually "visible". The reader can pause, reflect and continue at his lesiure. He can check any reference mate...

Interesting replies, especially the one about the janitor speaking the children's first tongue. The problem I have with stances like this, and the opinion so common in China where locals feel they only understand explanations given in their native tongue is this: this presupposes that the learner UN...

Thank you, atreju, vfor your detailed reply! There is a lot of food for thought for a while yet!
Anyway, I have for a long time been a proponent of the idea that English literature/reading for secondary students in China. You are lending me valuable extra ammunition, I mean arguments!

atrevu, I am interested to acquaint myself nwith this new approach but already I do feel some apprehensions about it. I laud efforts at interesting young learners in reading; in fact, I do feel our students read the wrong things, and they read English texts for the wrong reasons, and there should be...

I am glad so many of you agreed that "...hasn't a ...(insert noun).." is acceptable though slightly odd. In fact, purely empirically speaking, I come across it rather often. BUt the OP might care to know that the verb "HAVE/HAS is a full verb that requires an auxiliary verb as soon as the negative "...

Maybe you should look at lesson plans in a long-term perspective: you won't cover the past tense in questions only, right? Where does this lesson plan meet with other grammar issues? DOes it border on past tense negative statements, for instance? Or does it form a continuum with other tenses such as...

And where would you like to teach? Which language? Your answers will determine where you can go. Apart from that, I would like to tell you proficiency at other languages always is an asset. The TEFL world is slightly different from the professional foreign language instruction concept dear to Europe...

Replace the semi-colon before 'e.g.' with a coma - to make sense!

As correctly pointed out in the previous reply, you need to supply more details. I for example teach i n CHINA, and my students range in age from 20 to 22. Can I ever discuss political issues??? Good question. Sometimes I can. Sometimes it's tactful to steer clear of such topics. In any event, I wou...

Xui, you chose the word "Routine" in the phrase "Routine on yesterday", and this noun - routine - annoys me! Can you adopt a "routine" on one day, and discontinue it for the rest of your time? A routine is an ongoing action or habits that continue. There is no routine on one day and not on the rest ...

Hi Xui! Your dilemma is due to some misunderstanding! WHile YESTERDAY is a marker of something in the past, what actually determines whether you may use the simple past tense or another tense is: the VERB you are using. For instance: Yesterday WAS Saturday! Saturday ended at midnight before Sunday b...