This article outlines reasons to use (or not use) the Internet in English language teaching, exploring the Internet as tutor and tool. Discussion of Internet content includes types of content and how to select, save, and use content. Various learning tasks, appropriate even for those without Internet access, are presented and highlighted in a…

Digital storytelling can motivate and engage students and create a community in the classroom. This article lays out a 12-week digital storytelling project, describing the process in detail, including assessment, and pinpointing issues and challenges as well as benefits the project affords English language students.

Integration of the four language skills can be enhanced by focusing on back translating--translating an English text into the students' first language and then back into English. This article describes a three-step process for using back translation in reading classes as a way to help students identify gaps in their English competence.

This article speaks to teachers who have been paired with native speakers (NSs) who have never taught before, and the feelings of frustration, discouragement, and nervousness on the teacher's behalf that can occur as a result. In order to effectively tackle this situation, teachers need to work together with the NSs. Teachers in this scenario…

Most teachers have experienced the "blank stare" when after teaching a lesson implementing all their best strategies using their best language-learning English and at the moment of releasing responsibility--that is, moving from the teacher's responsibility to prepare students for the task to their responsibility to carry it out--the…

In this article, the authors offer an alternative to traditional methods of teaching English that often included translating structures from the target language to the mother tongue. Although this method seems antiquated, it is still commonly practiced, as original dictogloss procedures were intended to provide an alternative to traditional…

Switching conversational partners in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom has long been an effective way to involve students actively in communicative interactions and increase their talking time. This article describes a "mingle" as an activity where a student approaches a classmate, talks for a while, and then moves on to…

The teaching of writing, and the teaching of developmental and ESL/EFL writing in particular, has historically given priority to the sentence, often in theory and almost always in practice. The writing approach modeled here simply argues that the paragraph should be given primacy of place in ESL/EFL academic writing instruction. The…

This article describes a three-week project-based unit on entrepreneurship conducted with students in communications classes in an Academic English context. A detailed road map of the project is given, starting with an introduction and ending with final presentations and poster sessions. Students were motivated by their own interests in business…

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…

Although many fields of study are increasingly promoting awareness of the need to protect the ecosystem by thinking and acting "green," the concept of environmental education actually has a long history; for example, concerns about global environmental problems were discussed at a 1972 United Nations Conference (Nkwetisama 2011), which…

Students feel more comfortable in a new language when they understand its jokes. And when the jokes are puns, they build metalinguistic awareness. This article describes four categories of English puns--soundalike puns, lookalike puns, close-sounding puns, and texting puns--and suggests how they can be incorporated into English language…

Learners of English as a foreign language often find it difficult to understand figurative speech, which relies heavily on metaphor. This article explores why metaphors challenge learners and presents ways to incorporate metaphors into EFL instruction to help learners understand figurative speech. Topics discussed include cognitive metaphor,…

This feature article explores the topic of trains from their early history to recent trends in railroading. A glossary provides related vocabulary, a sidebar called "Romance of the Rails" adds colorful detail about train songs and railroad lore. An additional section, "Classroom Activities," by John Silver, presents three…

This article discusses the role of culture in language teaching and provides activities for introducing culture in the classroom, focusing on teaching context and methodology to integrate culture. The authors outline five activities that can be adapted to the language level and interests of students. Instructions for each activity include language…