Teacher Discussion Forums

Here in Korea there are 3 main reasons to study English. It helps you find a job (or do your job better) is perhaps number 1. Also, reason 2, is that many of my students want to study in America or Canada (so they can learn English and get a good job). The third reason is for tourism. Honestly I'm n...

I don't set out to teach my Korean students idioms. The usefulness of idioms in an EFL context is severely limited so I only deal with students questions when it comes to idioms. If they want, they can go buy a book, but it's very difficult to use an idiom appropriately when you are in Korea... I'm ...

Why use bad authentic writing as an example? Many business letters are unoragnized, but if we can get our students to organize their letters it will do more than help them pass an exam. It will help them communicate their ideas. I had students who work for an American company here in Korea. They oft...

Recently I've been reading about semantics for my MA. One of the items discussed was collocations like "last but not least". It occurred to me that these are probably the types of phrases most worth memorizing (I like Skehans model of SLA where there are two parts of oyur brain, the fast part with m...

I teach college students and adults and I alos have various levels. If you like, e-mail me a list of students over 18 (with their level) and I'll ask my current/former students if they're interested.

I wonder what the reasoning is behind number 1: 1) Make a recording of a few snippets of a song you want to teach (for example, a drum break, part of a guitar solo, the opening of the song, a tiny piece of the chorus, etc.). Ask students to guess what some of the lyrics are and write these up on the...

How many students ahve you got and what age/level are they?

Using example letters is a good diea. Barron's ESL Guide to American Business English is half well written example business letters, and half useless grammar exercises. If anyone knows of a source for authentic business letters please share.

I don't think that the colon is expected. There is a good handout from purdue's online writing lab on accepted American English business letter writing formats. I link to it from my website: www.eslgo.com/resources/ba.html which is a work in progress...