Nonnative speakers of a language are often at a disadvantage in producing extended speech, as they have differing native (L1) phonological systems and rhetorical traditions or little experience in giving talks. Prosody in the form of stress, rhythm, and intonation is a difficult but crucial area needed to master extended speech because prosody…

In this article, Elaine Kerry describes the educational context and perspectives of International University of Grand-Bassam (IUGB) Instructor Mohamed Lekrama. Kerry describes his beginnings as a Mauritania-born teacher, who first came to Cote d'Ivoire in 2017 after many classroom journeys of his own, what attracted him to IUGB and Cote d'Ivoire,…

Teaching large classes of students who aren't familiar with communicative activities can be challenging. One of the biggest challenges is to ensure that all students participate actively, especially if the teacher isn't able to pay close attention to them. One useful and simple strategy to help students stay on task for longer when doing…

This is a step-by-step guide to offering role plays that give learners practice in describing a problem, asking for advice, giving advice--and giving and receiving feedback from peers. The article includes numerous sample prompts.

Do Na Chi is a lecturer in the English Language Education program at An Giang University, Vietnam. Teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) at a language center for young adults, Chi wants create interesting activities that can engage students, and sees the learning center as a place for them to practice what they have learned in class. He…

The technique provided in this article offers an integrated-skills activity. Students should be able to read the description of a visual image, describe their own visuals, read and collect information from other students' writing, and speak about what they have found. This activity can be adapted for nearly any language level. The activity can…

The author is responsible for teaching reading classes and overseeing the reading curriculum at an intensive English program in the United States. The institution strives to make reading fluency a priority in the classroom, but after conducting a basic overview of the literature on the topic, the author realized that the approach could be improved…

English language learners are often more grammatically accurate in writing than in speaking. As students focus on meaning while speaking, their spoken fluency comes at a cost: their grammatical accuracy decreases. The author wanted to find a way to help her students improve their oral grammar; that is, she wanted them to focus on grammar while…

This article describes the teaching experiences of Alief Noor Farida--a junior lecturer at Indonesia's "Universitas Negeri Semarang" (Semarang State University [UNNES]). Now teaching her fourth semester and an alumna of the English Education program at UNNES, Ms. Farida is an especially motivated and dedicated educator. She teaches 18…

In this article Karen Adams demonstrates how to incorporate group grammar techniques into a classroom activity. In the activity, students practice using the target grammar to do something they naturally enjoy: learning about each other.

An understanding of noun positions in sentences can correct many recurring problems in the writing of English language learners. This article outlines an approach for anticipating and preventing these sorts of errors while providing a framework to explain the errors to students. For this approach to be successful, students need to have an…

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…

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…

The usefulness of the dictionary as a reliable source of information for word meanings, spelling, and pronunciation is widely recognized. But even in these obvious matters, the information that the dictionary has to offer is not always accurately interpreted. With respect to pronunciation there seem to be two general pitfalls: (1) the…

For a variety of reasons, learning English prepositions is notoriously difficult and a slow, gradual process for English as a Second Language (ESL) students. To begin, English prepositions typically are short, single-syllable or two-syllable words that are seldom stressed when speaking and therefore often not articulated clearly or heard…