Teacher Discussion Forums

I teach English conversation to retired and semi-retired ESL students. Between 35-50 % of the class touches on communication tools such as vocabulary, phrasal verbs and collocations and the remainder is devoted to conversation activities in the form of table games, Taboo, Scattergories, and the list...

Does anyone out there know of an electronic Scrabble game (not dictionary) for use with English students? Something along the lines of the software sold by the Fédération Internationale de Scrabble. They way it is played in our area (in French) is each player has his own board and letter tiles and...

My classes are made up of retired or semi-retired adults who travel a fair amount. In the past I have used role plays pretty effectively but the classes were smaller then. One of my classes has ± 18 students which I often divide into sub-groups of 4-6 for most activities. The classroom is not neces...

I have been giving classes in English conversation for some time now. I have separate classes for the different levels. Until now, all my classes have been divided into periods with various games (board, card, etc.), theme-based vocabulary exercises in the form of crosswords, clozes, multiple-choice...

I've found an excellent game on the 'Net to practice collocations. There are verb cards and a board with nouns. Ss have to find a matching verb card in their hand to the noun on their spot on the board. I would be using this with 2 or more groups of ± 4 Ss, each with their own board and cards. I wo...

I give 2-hour classes of English conversation once a week to multi-level baby-boomers who have varying levels of knowledge of grammar. We use a lot of speaking activities (role play, board games, pictionary, mystery & alibi games, and much, much more). I also add in exercises to increase their vocab...

Moving her group further away is a possibility; the room is big enough. I do worry (maybe too much) that they may feel targeted. But on the other hand, each group is completely independent except for some things we do as a class (e.g., a game for the entire class, or reviewing some grammatical point...

I teach large English adult conversation classes. Because of the size, I've created groups of 4-6 students: beginners, intermediates and advanced together in their individual groups. Since these are conversation classes, there is a lot of talking and a lot of laughter and this is fantastic. In one o...

I teach English conversation to adults. Among the various activities that I use to generate conversation are card games: in one, the group members question another member who has drawn the card of a well-known person to identify who he is; in another the group members question another group member w...

There are 25 students of mixed ability in my English conversation classes (they are French speakers). They are basically mature adults ranging in age from 35 to 65 with the average closer to 50. The classes are approximately 50% conversation/discussion and 50% written and oral activities including g...