4 resource books that helped me improve as a teacher

In this post, I'd like to share with you some of my favorite teacher's resource books. Over the years I've worked with a large number of these books. They've been a source of inspiration and showed me new ways to help students learn English. I'd like to mention four of them and describe a sample activity from each title (along with a reflection on how it went over).

1. TEACHING UNPLUGGED BY LUKE MEDDINGS AND SCOTT THORNBURY (DELTA)



This title covers a topic that has created a lot of discussion in the blogosphere, that is Dogme or Teaching Unplugged. Karenne Sylvester has been running a Dogme challenge for several weeks now, Jason Renshaw has blogged numerous times about teaching unplugged and emergent language teaching, and Jeremy Harmer issued a strong critique that garnered over 200 comments.

I first learned about Dogme from an Thornbury article in It's Magazine about 10 years ago. I was highly interested in the ideas behind it, although I was unsure about how to put them into practice. This book explains the principles behind teaching unplugged, as well as providing a diverse selection of activities. I've used several activities from this book and have been very impressed with the results.

One activity I tried:

I was on the topic of films with my university students, and I wanted to get them to discuss the recent movie, Monga, a Taiwanese film that was very popular that year. Here's the movie poster I started off with:



(By the way, that's NOT the cover to a resource book.)

I used the activity "Good Things, Bad Things", which produces a debate first through writing, then speaking. It was quite a powerful lesson. I could really feel that the students were all eager to talk about this film and express their opinions. Some students felt it was a cool movie, others thought it was too violent. Overall there was a strong feeling of engagement with the subject.

2. DRAMA AND IMPROVISATION BY KEN WILSON (OXFORD)



Although certainly not the first book of drama exercises for a language teaching context, this Oxford University Press Resource Book for Teachers has a lot going for it. Fun, clever activities with clear explanations and loads of supportive comments and follow-ups. There is always a laugh riot when I use these in my classes. As Ken Wilson puts it, these activities "are for teachers who want to enliven their classes and refresh students who may be tired or subdued by they way they are asked to learn."

One activity I tried:

I used the "Foreign Expert" activity with my advanced speaking and listening class earlier this month. In this activity, students work in pairs, one as an expert on a subject of their own choice and one as an interpreter. The catch: they make up a language that they translate in and out of English. My students were already laughing when I was explaining the activity. The laughter increased exponentially, as it became clear that two students were quite good at uttering gibberish that sounded like a real language!

3 HUMANISING YOUR COURSEBOOK BY MARIO RINVOLUCRI (DELTA)



Mario Rinvolucri has written (and co-written) an amazing number of resource books for teachers. Humanising Your Coursebook is the one that I use the most. It's kind of a Rinvolucri's greatest hits, suggesting a number of ways to adapt and alter a coursebook to give students more opportunities to practice.

One activity I tried:

"Text All Over The Place" calls for parts of a dialogue to be printed on slips, cut up and placed over every surface of the classroom including desks, floors, walls, ceilings, even the teacher's back. As students arrive, they copy down the bits of language then do their best to put them back into order. A thought-provoking note from Mario at the end of the activity:

Is your class unruly? Don't you dare try this with them? If they are unruly, maybe it is because they hate sitting still. This exercise gets them moving.

I used this activity to add a spark to a conversation class I was teaching at a university in rural Taiwan. I remember it took over an hour to get all the little bits of paper around the classroom. It was worth it to see the look of surprise on the students' faces.

4. ZERO PREP BY LAURIE POLLARD AND NATALIE HESS (ALTA)



I've read several books by Hess and Pollard, and found them to be extremely helpful. As the title indicates, this book gives the reader a wide range of activities that require a minimum of preparation. Similar to Humanising Your Coursebook, this title covers all four skills, followed by sections for grammar (structure) and vocabulary. This book contains a lot of fresh, intriguing activities. It always reminds me that simple is best.

One activity I tried:

I used "Role-Plays" with a group of university students I taught in Hong Kong. This activity asks students to brainstorm some potentially useful utterances before breaking into a role play in front of the class. The energy level of the class picked up as students got into their roles.

I'd like to hear about what resource books you've been using. Any titles you would recommend?

Christmas lessons

We're already in the second week of December, so it's time for many of us to put together a special Christmas lesson. I thought I would add a few links here to some teaching materials that you can use in the next couple of weeks.

Karenne Sylvester of Kalinago English has a brilliant lesson titled Conversations at Christmas.

Sean Banville has many many excellent activities in his Breaking News Christmas Lesson.

Alex Case has a collection of Christmas (and New Year) handouts and lesson plans.

Nicholas Whitley has a superb set of handouts for use with the Run D.M.C. song, Christmas in Hollis.

BBC's Teaching English website has a number of Christmas activities for young learners, as well as a few for the older ones, such as The Office Christmas Party, 25th December and Men and Christmas Shopping.

One Stop English has a Christmas webquest and a reading lesson plan on Santa.

If that's still not enough, Isabel Perez has a huge collection of links to Christmas lessons (readings, songs, worksheets, puzzles, etc.), and Larry Ferlazzo has a list of The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa.

Finally, a lesson idea I like to use around this time of year - Gift Sentences from Dave's ESL Cafe.

Any other suggestions for Christmas/holiday lessons?

a rude stupid and crazy lesson plan

Earlier this month, TESOL-Spain Newsletter published my lesson plan, Rude/Stupid/Crazy Questions, in their Teacher Corner section. You can see a copy of it here:

Rude/Stupid/Crazy Questions

I used this lesson plan with my sophomore Speaking and Listening class earlier this year, and it seemed to be the perfect cure for the end-of-semester blahs.

teaching with a coursebook

One topic I've seen discussed a lot recently is the role of a coursebook in language learning. I have several colleagues who are extremely critical of coursebooks and proudly proclaim "I don't use books!" In my own teaching, I use coursebooks, but will alter the content from time to time and add other material when I think it's necessary.

Lindsay Clandfield created a summary of the pros and cons of using coursebooks over on Scott Thornbury's A to Z of ELT blog in May 2010.

For those who would like some practical teaching ideas for using a coursebook, Marisa Constantinides has a wonderful powerpoint titled Animating Your Coursebook. Also, Ken Wilson has more inventive ideas in his webinar, In The End, It's Only A Book.

Now I'd like to share with you a few ideas from my own classroom. I've used these four activities in my freshman and sophomore university classes in Taiwan. I hope you find them useful.

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1. Dialogue Reading Competition

Before class, prepare a handout with 4 two-line excerpts from dialogues your students have studied before. Make enough copies for half the class. Move three chairs to one side of the front of your classroom.

In class, announce that you're going to have a competition. Choose 3 students to act as judges. They should sit in the three chairs. Tell the other students that they will be reading a short dialogue in pairs for the judges who will decide which pair did the best job. Before passing out the handouts, remind the whole class about areas in which they can improve their performance, such as pronunciation, intonation, speed, volume and body language. Put students into pairs and give each pair a handout. Give them about 10 minutes to practice the first excerpt. Ask for two volunteers to perform the two-line dialogue for the judges. Let the judges make a quick decision, and then tell the class, giving reasons for their decision. Repeat this process once with other pairs. After the second round, ask the judges to find 3 other students to take their places. Get everyone to change partners. Repeat the same process with the two other dialogues.

2. Quizzing Teams

Before class, take a long dialogue that students haven't practiced before and make a copy of the tapescript. Divide it into two sections, and put each section on a separate handout. Make a few copies of each section.

In class, tell students that they will be working in two teams. Their task is to quiz the other team about half of a dialogue that they will only hear twice.

Divide the class into two groups. Explain that each group will get a handout containing half of a dialogue. (The groups will each get a different section.) Each group will read over the dialogue and think of 6 questions about it for the other group to answer. Their questions should include one "dummy" question, a question whose answer is not contained in the dialogue. After 15 minutes, each group will put their questions on the board. Then you will play the dialogue twice. Each group must listen carefully for the answers to the other team's questions. Then the teams will have a few minutes to write answers to the other team's questions on the board. In addition, teams should mark the "dummy" questions with a big X. The final stage is to let the groups grade each other's answers. You can give a prize to the winning team.

3. Extending a Dialogue

Before class, select a dialogue from your coursebook that your class has covered in the past few days. Think of four situations involving one or two of the characters in the dialogue. This might include a dialogue that occurred in the past, in the future, or a dialogue between one of the characters and a family member/friend/stranger. (You can even include the name of someone in your school or class!) Put a clear explanation of the situation on top of a sheet of paper, assigning one role as A and the other as B. Write A and B four times vertically on the left side of the page, representing 8 lines of dialogue between A and B. Prepare a copy of each situation handout.

In class, put students into four groups. Remind them of the dialogue they covered before by briefly reading it out or playing the audio. Tell the groups that they will be writing a dialogue about the characters in the dialogue. Encourage them to make it funny or crazy if they wish. Give each group a handout and ask them to work together to create the first two lines of dialogue. Then ask each group to pass their handout to another group, who will complete the next two lines. Continue until the dialogues are complete. Finally, ask each group to practice the dialogue for a few minutes. Pick a pair from each group to perform their dialogue for the class.

4. Secret Life

Before class, copy the faces of four characters from previous units in your coursebook. Put each face on a separate sheet of paper and add a title such as "The Secret Life of Jim". Add four sentences starters to each page (some examples - One thing Jim's friends don't know about him is . . . or Jim will never forget the day he . . . or Jim hopes that some day he can...) Print these out on large sheets of paper. You should have one handout for each character.

In class, hold up your coursebook and say the names of the characters. Ask students what they remember about them. Tell the class that you're going to give them an opportunity to think more about these people. Put students into four groups, and give each group a handout. The groups will now work together to complete the sentences. Encourage them to be as creative as possible. When they're finished, ask the groups to put their handouts on the board for the entire class to read.

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(For more practical teaching ideas, seek out a copy of my latest book, Provoking Thought.)

What about you? If you're working with a coursebook, what are some interesting games and activities you've developed to give students more practice? Post them here for everyone to read.

Free stuff from publishers

I've been looking over several ELT publisher websites recently, and I've been impressed with the amount of things offered for free. I don't intend to create a comprehensive list here, but just list a few examples.

Many publishers provide book previews. For example, Cambridge University Press offers a few sample activities from their popular handbooks for teachers series, as well as some handouts and activities from their copy collection. Helbling, Delta and Oxford also offer some similar previews. For example, on this page you can try out four sample activities from Daniel Martin's book Activities for Interactive Whiteboards. And here, you can see an activity from David Heathfield's title Spontaneous Speaking. And this page takes you to several activities from Jamie Keddie's Images.

Another free resource is the unique page (or even site) given to a book. Cambridge offers pages for several of their books, including Working with Images by Ben Goldstein, as well as The Internet and the Language Classroom. Macmillan has set up a very impressive site for Lindsay Clandfield's new series, Global. This site features teaching tips, elessons (by It's Magazine editor Robert Campbell, teacher blogs, not to mention a sample chapter from Global Pre-Intermediate. Pearson Longman also has websites for over 70 of its titles. Moreover, they give out lesson plans and practical articles about teaching absolutely free.

Other offerings include blogs from famous names in ELT, author videos, conference handouts and sample chapters. Over at Delta Publishing, you can find a Delta Development Blog, featuring Scott Thornbury, Mario Rinvolucri, among others. The blog currently features Chaz Pugliese, author of the soon-to-be-released Being Creative. Michigan University Press has a series of videos associated with several of their titles. They also provide sample chapters, such as a web-only chapter, Drills, Dialogues and Role Plays, from Tools and Tips for Using ESL Materials by Ruth Epstein and Mary Ormiston. Alta Publishing has a great page of handouts from conferences with a lot of practical activities.

With this many free articles and activities, I look forward to the day when all ELT titles are available online (and at the same time, authors are offered multimillion dollar salaries). Well, maybe I'm dreaming...

I get the feeling I've only scratched the surface here. Anybody out there care to recommend any free resources by the publishers mentioned above that I neglected to mention? Or maybe an ELT publisher that I haven't heard of yet?