This article addresses key issues and considerations for teachers wanting to incorporate spoken grammar activities into their own teaching and also focuses on six common features of spoken grammar, with practical activities and suggestions for teaching them in the language classroom. The hope is that this discussion of spoken grammar and its place…

Pre-service teachers around the world face a unique challenge: bridging the gap between traditional teaching focused on grammar translation and receptive skills, and communicative teaching aimed at well-rounded communication skills. Many new EFL teachers learned English in a traditional context that emphasized memorization and grammar, but after…

In this article the author shares two ways in which letters can be used to tell stories with different groups of learners, beginners and advanced, and in so doing develop their English language learning. Based on some theoretical concepts that connect English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning with authenticity and communicative competence, he…

Many educators know that studying and composing literature and poetry helps English learners develop their own voice and sense of audience, and to express important social ideas in the process. Poetry, in particular, offers special challenges, but one type of poem that is manageable for the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom is "haiku,"…

According to Ur (1996, 120), "of all the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), speaking seems intuitively the most important." Indeed, whether for business or pleasure, a primary motivation to learn a second language is to be able to converse with speakers of that language. However, in addition to being an important skill,…

For many university teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL), the study of literature is indispensable because it exposes students to meaningful contexts that are replete with descriptive language and interesting characters. Structuring lessons around the reading of literature introduces a profound range of vocabulary, dialogues, and prose.…

An oral-skills lesson is proposed having three dimensions: (1) contextualization, where the students are shown the function and use of a language pattern; (2) drills which stimulate student thinking during mechanical manipulation; and (3) communication, which enables the student to use what they have been practicing. (Author/PJM)

A program was designed to enhance mission candidates' communicative skills and to develop their awareness of United States history, geography, and culture. In the professional record, students gather a diversity of material on a topic of interest. Relevant ideas are entered in a notebook, and students formulate positions on their topics.…

Suggests a way of looking at difficulties students have in using words appropriately, and an approach for presenting this information to students. The discussion concentrates on: (1) restrictions on words that can co-occur; and (2) rules for the grammatical marking of various noun phrases that occur with certain verbs and adjectives. (Author/PJM)

Demonstrates some of the many ways in which a text can be used, not only as a basis for comprehension, but also for practicing grammatical structures, writing, and conversation skills. Such a variety of activities with one text can help to alleviate students' boredom. Sample texts are given. (Author/PJM)

Defines formulaic phrases by showing their stereotypical nature. A taxonomy of phrases is proposed for classificatory purposes, and some techniques are suggested for teaching these structures. The techniques are based on analogy and analysis, where students imitate a sentence by keeping certain structures unchanged and changing the rest. (PJM)

English prepositions are generally considered difficult to teach to nonnative speakers, for a variety of reasons: the large number of possible meanings for many prepositions, which change according to the context in which they are used; the lack of a written guide to usage; and, for native Arabic speakers, the commonly-used grammar-translation…