Teacher Discussion Forums

When students have ranked things in order of importance or preference or whatever (eg the most important things in life are 1:health 2:money: 3:relationships 4:career...) what speaking activities can the students then do with such lists?

Hi Ryan I'm glad to hear you liked this game. Actually I got it from one of my students - she's a teacher herself (Taiwanese). I also had great results with it. I think it's a real gem, but yeah, you've got to really make sure the students don't go around the class showing eachother the pieces of pa...

Give every s a piece of paper. Ask a question. Each s writes their answer on the piece of paper. Then every student swaps with a student who is not sitting near them. Ask another question. Every s writes their answer. Swap again. Another question. Another answer. Swap. Question. Answer. Swap. Etc et...

Thanks Lorikeet. The trouble is I'm following the textbooks (written by Chinese speakers I suspect) which have the pattern I mentioned, which go together with the workbooks and flashcards, so if I do as you mentioned I have to do a lot of crossing out and re-writing. I think I will probably do it an...

Sorry, it's off-topic I know, but I've been trawling through the internet for an hour and I'm still none the wiser. The pair of scissors is on the table. That sounds ok The pair of pants is blue. Sounds strange The pair of gloves is nice. Sounds very strange to my ears. I've got to teach the pattern...

I think the best thing you could do, if you're working full time, is take a part time evening class. However if that's impossible then you should know that it's quite easy to obtain English-teaching positions in many countries without any qualifications at all, schools are so desperate for teachers....

Another nice little activity involves the teacher writing on a sheet of paper, "Once upon a time there was a poor boy and a monkey" (or something like that) and getting the students each to add a sentence and then pass it on. This takes a bit of time so it can be done during a break or when the stud...

Maybe some people don't know this, so I'll just also mention that you can get the lyrics for just about any song from the internet by entering the name of the song and the word "lyrics" in the search field. Donovan's "lord of the dance" is a particularly nice one to do in Asia, because you'll find t...

Here's another nice idea (I think) for intermediate and above. It's basically "Scruples" (I think, although I've never played that game). It can be done as a whole class activity, but I prefer to put students into groups, then they get more time to speak. The groups work/play separately, while the t...

I just recently discovered a good little activity, mind-bogglingly simple but very nice... At some point in the lesson get everyone to stand up, and tell them that they can't sit down until they have answered a question correctly. The questions can be anything, or maybe just read from a text you've ...

I just want to say that your anecdote (Larry) raises the point that lessons which are not challenging are also guaranteed to be boring. It's human nature to want to show others how clever you are, and if you don't give students the chance to do so (ie if you make things too easy for fear of hurting ...

Hi Espita I'm still not sure what you're getting at. Can you see how your posts might be misconstrued? I know some of my students have MAs, PHDs, etc - I wouldn't presume to think I could give them guidance in critical thinking, although perhaps your students are younger learners. Nevertheless, as a...

I'm not sure I understand the phrase "Is TEFL far from our school?" Janey, but good luck anyway.

Hi Espita I'm interested to know what you mean by "deal with"? Do you mean combat? I have experienced a fair bit of anti-American sentiment from students here in Taiwan, but I think you need to distinguish between complaints directed at the American people on the one hand, and criticisms directed at...

In an ideal world I think Larry's ideas would work fine, but as other people have made clear, this isn't an ideal world. Some students are highly motivated, others are forced to come to evening classes by their parents, others (at my school anyway) just want to chat and make friends. If you make les...