A Fun Reported Speech Activity

Problem and Advice- a fun reported speech activity that I talk about on my other blog, ESL Speaking.

Give the People What they Want

Today I was checking out the stats for this blog and people are finding their way here searching for the most interesting of things. In an effort to give the people what they want, I'll round up some of my posts into one super-post. Maybe you'll even find something you weren't searching for. Good luck!

Serial Podcast Lesson Plan

ESL Lessons with the Simpsons

Always Usually Sometimes Never ESL

If I had a Million Dollars ESL Lesson Plan

The Touchstone Series Reviews

Celta Lesson Plans

ESL Teaching Jobs South Korea University

Working in a Korean University

Four Skills Books for General English Classes

It's all about my favorite ESL Textbooks for general, 4-skills English classes. I'm only reviewing books that I've used in my own classes (of course!). For even more of my ESL textbook reviews, check out another site of mine, ESL Textbook Reviews.

The Four Corners Series

If I had only one choice for a 4-skills EFL textbook, this would be it. There are no "throw-away" chapters like in so many of the other books and the activities are interesting and engaging. It's so well designed actually that it's almost impossible for students not to participate. It's communication centered and focuses heavily on speaking, although it does hit the other three skills. Trust me, you won't be disappointed if you choose this book.

The Touchstone Series



I used the Touchstone series a number of years ago and remember hating it: text-heavy pages that were just overwhelming for me, and even more so for the students. However, I'm using it for my conversation classes these days (I had no choice!), but I have to say that they've made the second edition significantly better. There are some solid listening and reading activities, as well as some communicative "free-talking" activities at the back. By book 4, it's serious English so if you have quite high level students, check it out.

The World Link Series

I used this book for about 3 years at my old university and while I was a bit burnt out on it near the end, it really is a solid book. The units are interesting and engaging and are on the simpler side if you have lower-level, or multi-level classes. There just isn't that much text on the page, which is something I appreciate in an ESL textbook. The supplementary teacher's activity book was excellent and I used almost every single activity in it, so make sure you get that as well.
World Link: Teacher's Resource Text Bk. 1

The Smart Choice Series

I used the Smart Choice series a few years ago at my old university for a supplementary program and really enjoyed teaching it. It's grammar, but in a very simple, easy to understand way. It made teaching easy and very minimal prep was required because the book was good enough to just teach straight from it. The students usually seemed to enjoy the topics and it was easy enough to build natural conversations from it.

The Interchange Series



Interchange is one of the most popular 4-skills English as a second language textbooks and for good reason: it's solid. Jack Richards is one of the best ESL textbook writers out there and anything with his name on it is sure to be a good choice. If I was an admin of a program of some kind, I'd look closely at this book.

Grammar Teaching: A Small Rant

So, I'm just preparing a lesson on using Modal Passive Verbs using Touchstone Level 4, chapter 5 and I was searching around online for some resources. I wanted to bone up on my own understanding of the topic since I have a general knowledge of it but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Plus, I checked the videos over on Youtube to see if there was any fabulous explanation of the topic from a teacher better than I since I think that maybe my students get tired of seeing my face only, day after day after day (some of them have me for 6 hours/week).

Here's what I found: so many terrible videos such as this one and various websites which make the same fatal error (thankfully a site like this one does slightly better: BBC World Service Learning English).

While they do do a decent job of explaining the forms and how to convert a sentence from the active voice to the passive voice, they offer no explanation of WHY you would want to do this. In what situation you SHOULD do this. CONTEXT. It's all about the context is what I learned from doing the Celta and Delta courses and sadly, it seems that many people making the videos and doing the websites haven't figured this out.

It is totally, totally useless to teach forms to students without a context for how they can actually use it, in real-life.  Thankfully, Touchstone does quite a decent job of it and for the chapter on passive modal verbs, they have chosen rules and regulations as the topic, which fits nicely together. The students can talk about things such as legal drinking ages and at what age people should get married. It's not often that I have occasion to rant about how English grammar is taught to students who are learning English, but this one makes me feel so distressed. SO distressed. Am I the only one who feels that many teachers are doing a huge disservice to their students?

Grammar Teaching: Student-Centered Style

The Celta and Student-Centered Teaching

Back when I took the Celta (for all my posts about that experience check out this link: My Life! Teaching in a Korean University-Celta), the most valuable thing that I took from the course was their student-centered approach.  I previously had thought that my lessons actually were quite student-centered, but one of my tutors pushed me on that and challenged me to go even further. At the time, I was kind of annoyed because he wasn't as hard on the other teachers in my course in this regard, but I'm actually thankful now because it opened my eyes to a whole new way of teaching, especially with regards to grammar and vocabulary.

Simple and Continuous Verbs: a Self-Discovery Worksheet

The book I'm using for one of my classes is Touchstone Level 4 and chapter one has a grammar section on simple and continuous verbs, which should be quick review for the students at their level (3rd and 4th year university English major students), so I put together this worksheet for them to review the grammar, self-discovery style. I will probably end up refining it a bit before the class but this is the basic framework I will use.

How I Will Use the Worksheet

I'm pretty simple in the way I teach my classes. I'll put the sheet up on the projector screen and tell students to work with their partners. They'll have about 5-7 minutes and then we'll discuss the answers together, going over anything tricky or confusing. Then, they'll do some controlled practice in the form of a written exercise in their book and then a freer practice session activity of some sort (which I've yet to design!)

Where does this fit?

If I had to classify this kind of thing, it would fit into the Test-Teach-Test model perhaps. I'm testing the student's knowledge, teaching when we talk about it together and I give them some information about the difficult parts, then testing again when they move into practice and production, where I will monitor closely for errors.

Using Timelines-Present Perfect Continuous-Present Perfect

In my advanced conversation class, a chapter in Touchstone Level 3 has a section about the present perfect continuous and the present perfect.  It's actually pretty complicated grammar and not something that students can understand that easily.

For example, what is the difference between these two sentences?

1. "I've been watching Survivor since I was in university." (present perfect continuous)

2. "I've watched survivor since university." (present perfect)

Both are talking about repeated activities that happen mostly in the past, but what is the difference?  It's subtle.  In the first case, it's an activity that began in the past, but is still happening now.  In the second case, it's an activity that began in the past, but it's a bit ambiguous whether or not the activity is happening in the present.

To explain this to students, timelines can be really helpful. 

 Present Perfect Continuous

Past-----Present-----Future

Yes-------Yes--------??

Present Perfect

Past----Present----Future

Yes------??---------??

How to Make Writing More Interactive

In one of my lower-intermediate conversation classes, we were studying about "evening routines" using Touchstone 2, Unit 8. 

I did the evening routine listening on page 83, and then followed it up with the writing exercise at the bottom of the page.  In order to make it more interactive, I did the following:

The students had to make 3 or 4 "test" questions based on what they wrote.  Then, they read what they wrote to their partner who had to listen carefully.  Finally, the student asked their partner the test questions.

It was quite useful in making "writing" more interesting than usual and also provided some additional listening, writing (questions) and speaking practice.  The test questions provided a reason to listen.  There were lots of laughs and smiles and good-natured joking when a student couldn't answer their partners questions, or got them wrong.

Touchstone Series: a Short Book Review

I used the Touchstone Seriesyears ago at my previous uni and remember hating it.  Like the pages were filled with all these "speak like a native speaker" sections which were just bizarre, and each page had so much stuff crammed into it that it usually stressed me out.  Maybe part of the problem was the program I was teaching in; I "shared" the book with other teachers and was assigned 1 or 2 pages/class so had to teach the pages I hated instead of just skipping over them like I normally would.

Anyway, it seems like a new edition has come out and Touchstone is not as terrible as it once was.  Plus, I usually just choose 1 or 2 pages out of each chapter and then add in my own material so the I just don't use the pages that I don't like.  I still much prefer a series like 4 Corners or World Link but I don't have any major complaints about Touchstone for a general, 4-skills kind of textbook.

ESL Textbook Reviews

Check out one of my other sites: ESL Textbook Reviews.  It's just updated with a couple new additions.

Smart Choice 2 Sample Lesson Plan

One of my readers has requested some sample lesson plans from the "Smart Choice" series.  She teaches the book in her Uni English classes and has been having a hard time making interesting lessons. 

I've been teaching Smart Choice for the past 3 years in one of the extra programs I teach in at my school, so have plenty of experience with making this book work in the real world.  And actually, I really like this book, even more so when I compare it to what else is out there.  In this program that uses this book, it replaced the terrible "Touchstone" series, which was a nightmare to teach. 

So, last week in class, I was given pages 59 (listening) and 61 (enjoying English) in Smart Choice 2.  My classes are 50 minutes long.  This was my lesson plan:

1. I always start each class with a review.  So, I reviewed the vocab on page 56.  I had the students close the books and gave hints such as, "This can happen if I fall off my bike." Answer=you broke your arm or sprained your ankle.  This takes about 5 minutes.

2. Then I reviewed some of the grammar from page 58.  I got the students to give me 3 examples of "I_________while I was______ing________."  And then 3 examples of "While I was _____ing, I __________."  This took about 5 minutes.

3. Then I did the listening on page 59.  After part 1, I got the students to have a conversation with each other, after I got them to ask me the questions by way of example.  Then, I got each group to tell me quickly what they talked about with their partner.  Then, I did part 2.  This took 15 minutes or so. 

4.  Then, I covered page 61.  I gave the students 4 minutes to choose A/B/C/D and think of a story that they could tell the class.  The had to put their pencils down and not write anything, but just speak, instead of reading off their paper.  For under 10 students, we went around the class and everyone listened to their stories.  I would ask a few more questions to each student.  For bigger classes, I put them in groups of 4 or 5 and they told their group.  Then, they picked the best story in their group and they told the whole class.  This took 20-25 minutes. 

Textbook Selection

Textbook selection is one of those things that perhaps gets undervalued by those who don't teach, but I think almost any ESL/EFL teacher would say that it can make or break a class. By way of example, I teach 2 different types of classes. One is my "regular" job consisting of freshman English, for credit classes. These are mandatory. My university also has a for-credit program that is optional and only for those wanting additional exposure to English. We volunteer to teach these classes.

In the first case, at my regular job, the textbook (World Link, Level 1) is amazing. Each week, there is a wealth of good material to teach, such that I can't cover what I think is decent material just for the sake of time. The teacher's manual is full of good suggestions for additional activities. It also has a whole section about teacher development that is very helpful. There is also a teacher's resource book that comes with an interesting, generally well thought-out activity for each unit. Of the 24 units, I probably used about 15 of them in class. This textbook made my life very easy! For a 2 hour class, I was easily able to do all my prep in under 2 hours. The lessons were easy to make interesting and engaging with not that much of my own additional mental energy or effort.

In the second case, we use Touchstone, Levels 1-3 for the various levels. This textbook is quite bad. They focus upon "real" language but in a way that is just weird for any ESL student to use. ESL students at the beginner levels don't neccesarily need to talk like an American teenager I think. Also, the articles and things they talk about are just not interesting for my students. I'm not really sure if it's a matter of a bad textbook, or just bad for students in Korea. Anyway, it just doesn't work. The students don't like the book and neither do I. I've seen motivation just get lower and lower as everyday they study stuff they just don't care about. I can't blame them. I spend an exhorbant amount of time trying to find (or make) additional things to supplement the material but it's extremely hard to work with what they've given me. I think this program is headed down the path to obsolete if the administrators don't take action on this issue!

So textbook...make it or break it in terms of the overall success of a class.