Teacher Discussion Forums

I keep thinking that I know my native language pretty well, but I'm repeatedly stomped, and here's my current question: How do you help a student who uses gonna (going to ) across the board to express the future. I explained that simple future is generally used to express voluntary actions (I'll get...

Thank you for your replies Lauri and Sandy. I just checked out a few adult literacy sites and I found one that has news articles which are extremely toned down. This is a big help. Thank you!

I'm writing because I am having difficulty finding reading material for my students that is not insulting (ie - Dr. Suess, children's picture books, etc). Any suggestions of what's out there or what you use for your classes would be much appreciated. I'm looking for something on maybe a third grade ...

Thank you all -- it makes sense to break everything up the way you all suggested, and Lori, I like your presentation too. I also read somewhere that it helps to teach the negative sentence form in conjunction with auxiliary verbs: exampel: You don't work. Do you work? and even to teach that "do" is ...

Any suggestions on how to go about teaching beginners how to form questions in English - when to use (do, does), etc? It's easy for me as a native speaker, but I'm not quite sure what the simplest way to break it down for a non-native speaker is.

Thank you for any ideas.
Jenny

Just noticed Derewianka seems to be listed under primary school teaching. Are her works applicable to adult education?

Yes , I know you don't need a book to teach. I'm not using a textbook for my class, but it's so nice to steal ideas from here and there. I haven't been teaching ESL for long, and so truthfully I find it so much easier to make lesson plans by reading ideas from seasoned teachers. I just read "Five Mi...

Yes, that would be it! Thank you my dear fluffyhamster!

I remember a little while back seeing a suggested list of materials in a post by Sally Olsen. I can't remember, however, where I saw them, and silly me didn't copy the list.

Can anyone direct me or suggest some of their favorite books: be it grammar, games, whatever.

Thanks!
Jenny

Hi all, and happy new year!! My new year's resolution is to help my students with the troublesome "little words", but I'm struggling with the best way to do it. How in the world do you tackle phrasal verbs when there are so many? Do you do it in literary context, by topic (i.e phrasal verbs having t...

Just wondering if you think that the hokey pokey is OK to use in an adult classroom to reinforce parts of the body, right, left, etc. I know that this is great to use with kids, I just don't want to insult my adults. Opinions anyone? What other simple songs are great for reinforcing vocab? Ah, and I...

Joshua and Lorikeet - Thank you to both of you for your replies. I was actually musing today about doing a journal on tape, and then transcribing the tape to written form for him to read and correct mistakes. I'd do the transcribing as we're not talking but 10 or 20 sentences at a pop. What do you t...

Hey all! I'm writing here because I'm trying to meet the needs of all my students, and I feel that I'm falling short with one. The guy is animated in any class participation, cracking jokes, laughing - excellent language output, but he just almost literally shuts down with any written communication....

Hey there! I'm feeling for you as I've been in a bit of the same situation. I've taken grad courses in second language acquisition and taught both Spanish and ESL, but I'm teaching true beginning ESL for the first time here. I had mixed levels to start, but fortunately they've split them up upon my ...