Each of the four language skills--reading, writing, speaking, and listening--plays an important role in language learning, and successful teaching can benefit from including a combination of these skills in the classroom. This article shares strategies for integrating speaking into a writing-focused course, with the goal of improving students'…

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.

This communicative activity is ideal for English language learners of at least a low-intermediate proficiency level. In this activity, the teacher brings several personal items from his or her life to share with students. These items should be carefully selected and should in some way represent the values, experiences, or characteristics of the…

In this article the authors describe how a specific technique--having learners create cartoons based on a reading passage--helped learners explore their understanding of reading passages and helped the teachers reflect on what the learners had comprehended.

This article describes an activity that will allow students to practice using greetings by creating a brief skit. The goals of this activity are to practice common greetings; to use appropriate greetings with different community members; and to understand when to use informal and formal greetings

Cognitive research has shown that the human brain processes images quicker than it processes words, and images are more likely than text to remain in long-term memory. With the expansion of technology that allows people from all walks of life to create and share photographs with a few clicks, the world seems to value visual media more than ever…

In this article Matthew Jellick describes an introductory lesson he has used on the first day of class with students around the globe. The activity touches on each of the skill sets associated with English language acquisition, with special attention paid to cultural issues that can be applied on a country-by-country basis. No matter what country…

Creating specific lessons for different language skills is challenging and time consuming for English teachers, but it is definitely worth the effort. In the author's experience, teaching language skills through mechanical exercises and traditional fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and multiple-choice assessments does not interest students as much as…

In this article, the authors endorse a model that uses themes as springboards for language improvement, accompanied by the added benefit of content learning, though to differing degrees depending on the instructional setting. The themes that teachers choose to integrate into their language classrooms may reflect serious issues (e.g., elections,…

The challenges of teaching writing and encouraging students to write are many. However, one of the most difficult issues to deal with is students' reluctance to write in any language, even their home language. Because of this reluctance, being asked to write in English as a foreign or second language can feel like a double burden. Learners of…

In English language teaching, it is not unusual to come across a student who seems to lack certain basic organizational skills. However, many of the language teaching techniques and materials require students to rely heavily on these skills. The use of textbooks and handouts, the assigning of tasks and homework, and the planning of a syllabus or…

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.…

Middle school teachers often attend seminars and workshops where the advantages of communicative activities are discussed at great length. Teachers may even enjoy doing the communicative activities themselves during a teacher training session. However, many teachers are afraid to use communicative activities in the classroom. In theory teachers…