Teacher Discussion Forums

I have a higher level class beginning in August (not higher level university type, but higher level adult education type). I was going to do something in Internet scams and phishing, and was looking for more material, if you still need testers and if August isn't too far away.

This is from Wikipedia: "The word pound comes from the Latin word pendere, meaning "to weigh". The Latin word libra means "scales, balances" and it also describes a Roman unit of mass similar to a pound. This is the origin of the abbreviation "lb" for the pound." I usually use "6 feet tall" and "5 f...

I don't teach elementary school, but I don't see why this would have to be the case. If you are the one setting up the "gifts" you can do it anyway you like. You can have the whole class work in groups and have an objective that can only be reached when everyone participates. Maybe the "gift" would ...

Could you give some examples? You might give some examples here so we can see what you mean. You should give some examples here so we can see what you mean. (If those are like the ones you are thinking of, I'd say the first is a suggestion with a possibility, and isn't very strong, while the second ...

I think teaching is an art and a science, if you will, and I have seen my share of teachers in forty years of teaching. You have to have a Masters degree in teaching English as a Second Language to teach in my school now (or an equivalent in education and experience). Despite the efforts of some Mas...

What did you do in your listening classes? Why didn't you like them? What kind of English do you speak?

Oh, how interesting. I always thought you were supposed to capitalize the words in a title, except for articles and conjunctions too.

I'm not sure where you got the Nasreddin story, but in case you didn't use this website, there are some online here: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/ ... /index.htm

Sigh. I have always had trouble trying to make sense out of things that seem nonsensical. I thought I understood a stop. It's really easy, in my dialect, where the final "stop" ends with the articulation, and without a release I guess. But "stops" to me don't linger, like mmmmmmm can. Color me hopel...

That makes sense, and I wonder if it is worth talking about degrees of aspiration (with the French P in mind!). By the way, the Korean forum guy didn't like saying "stops" because that can include nasal "stops", but if non-aspirated stops don't actually stop either then that becomes a pretty confus...

For example, take the minimal pair writer/rider . British English speakers would think of the distinguishing feature as being t or d . However, in American English, voiceless sounds are voiced between vowels (an alternative analysis is that the voicing isn't "switched off"), so the middle consonant...

Does anyone seriously teach their students that vowels are longer before voiced sounds, for example? Absolutely! It removes a lot of difficulty for Cantonese speakers, for example, who tend to pronounce cap, cab, cat, and cad the same, or back and bag, for example. It is such a fundamental aspect o...

As a matter of fact, I have to explain to my students that sbin is not English spelling, whereas spin is. If I wanted to teach an English speaker to make an unaspirated /p/, I'd have them say something like spin, and then drop the /s/. Woodcutter, I've had a lot of Chinese and Spanish speakers who c...

I wonder which learners of English have trouble with voicing, if we look at it in the way I have argued? I zaw a cat. I velt bad. Does anyone make these kinds of errors? Actually, the errors are more "I want to sip the sipper." I have never heard someone correctly make the voiced and not make the v...

Well I will certainly admit to teaching "voicing" by having students put their hands over their throats, but I do it with the sounds /s/ and /z/, /f/ and /v/. A lot of students are able to make the voiceless but not the voiced of one of those pairs, and can carry it over to the second pair. I tried ...