Find That Perfect Worksheet

I walked into an empty classroom. A teacher desk sat at the front of the room with twelve student desks before it. The walls were blank, intimidating white canvases, the bulletin boards brown ones. As a first year teacher, I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I looked through Mailbox Magazines, desperate for inspiration or at least direction. I agonized over writing a welcome letter to parents who ...

Whether you have a class full of antsy five-year-olds, shy teens, or busy adult learners, they all have one thing in common: they will be together for the duration of the ESL course, and they will work together to achieve their English-learning goals. What better way to start classes than to help them get to know each other? Here are some games and activities that are more than simple icebreakers; they ...

When ESL students don’t do so well on the test, what do you think? That they didn’t study? It’s not that simple. Although no one questions the importance of preparing for a test, success in passing or getting good scores in an ESL test is determined by several factors, most of which come into play way before the actual moment students take the test. Here are the five factors you should ...

This list of 10 creative ways to work with reading texts was kindly shared by Churchill House, and is available for public download on their website www.churchillhouse.co.uk.   The web is a great source of textual information, but if you are like us, you won’t have the time or inclination to spend hours turning pages from the web into complete lesson plans with worksheets, handouts etc. So h ...

With summer weather steadily approaching, now is a perfect time to use sports as a vehicle for your ESL lessons. Not only will it be fun for you, your students will have a ball learning a little more about American sports culture. On Your Mark Get your students thinking about sports with a couple of preliminary activities. Either as a class or on your own before class, brainstorm a list of all the spo ...

Implementing proper classroom management techniques is important. A teacher who knows how to control his or her classroom will have far fewer “crazy days” than one who does not. The majority of your classroom atmosphere is contingent on how you run it, so here are some tips to get you started!

Bad pronunciation is bad news for ESL students. It negatively affects comprehension and so, negatively impacts communication. The problem is compounded by the fact that good pronunciation is often a mystery to ESL students. Why is it that some words with a similar spelling sound the same but others are completely different? Why are some words pronounced exactly the same in their native language but othe ...