Ask Why Your Students Want to Learn English

“Well begun is half done.” Ancient Greek proverb Sometimes we forget the most basic questions. What brings the students in your English class into the room? Are they fulfilling school requirements, pursuing academic achievements, or creating new possibilities? How do you motivate your ESL and EFL students to do their best from day one? Asking students for their motives, needs, and...

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Search and Share exercises enhance learning resources

Explore with Search and Share worksheets Photo Source: Photo taken by Nicola Sapiens De Mitri “In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.” -John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) American theoretical physicist We live in a world full of wonderful resources from books to television to the internet. These resources remain invaluable to encourage our students to immerse...

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Spring ESL: “One Stop Connection to ESL, EFL, ELD, ELT, and ESOL instructional materials”

Book center hosts a wealth of ELL materials “Spring Book Center strives in three basic principles: Service, Responsibility and Lower Prices.” -Spring ESL We live in a Golden Age for teaching English. We can find resources from around the globe to fit the needs of the language learners in our classrooms. Yet this overwhelming plethora of choices can cause headaches. Where do you go to find...

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‘Teaching History With Film’ encourages use of film through examples, lesson plans

Photo source: Wikimedia Commons. Gone with the Wind and Birth of a Nation remain prominent examples of how films can capture an era–for better, or for worse. How and when to use film in classrooms, and why “The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.” -Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993) American screenwriter Film remains a powerful, if...

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Between life and death: Zombie nouns privilege pretentious vocabulary at the expense of simple clarity

The nominalization of nouns creates abstract, dry and often misleading language “Simplicity is the glory of expression.” -Walt Whitman (1819-1892) American poet Sometimes, it’s fun to play with the English language and transform its adjectives, adverbs and nouns into more complex-sounding words. Playing with word forms can both emphasize a key concept and add an academic tone. Like many other...

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Biscuit: mobile app to recall, learn, explore vocabulary words

Innovative technology allows students to absorb new vocabulary “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” -Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Austrian-British philosopher Have you ever found a word you don’t know, jumped to your dictionary, tried to remember the spelling, typed it in, gotten the definition and promptly forgotten it? For avid language lovers and learners alike, this...

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