A Palindrome is a word or phrase which can be read correctly either right-to-left or left-to-right. These are palindromes: civic deified dewed kayak level madam minim racecar radar redder refer rotator rotavator rotor sagas solos sexes stats If punctuation is ignored,...
The curriculum (plural curricula) is the program of work for a student in school. The hierarchy is this: the entire English language > what the student needs > curriculum > syllabus > lesson > activity Although in general usage curriculum and syllabus...
What I Did at the Weekend is a common activity used in TEFL classrooms. At the beginning of the lesson as a kind of warm up the teacher will typically ask a few students what they did last weekend, or yesterday, or during the holidays, etc. This can be a useful...
Laying Down the Law is an activity which lets your class practice modal verbs used for permission. Running the Activity Firstly break your class into small groups of 3 or so. Then have each group brainstorm everything that is wrong with their town. Make them write...
Hidden Relations is a way to get your class into groups using a more extended vocabulary activity. Preparation Suppose you want to divide your class into 5 groups of 3 students each. You need to prepare 5 sets of cards and each set will consist of 3 cards. On those...
The International Phonetic Association or IPA is the major as well as the oldest representative organization for phoneticians. It was established in 1886 in Paris. The aim of the IPA is to promote the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical...
In general terms, a Lexicon is a list of words. It is almost synonymous with vocabulary. For example, we can talk about: a personal lexicon - the words which an individual knows a social class lexicon - the words used by a certain class of person; of course this can...
This is an excellent tip for teachers concerned about classroom discipline. It is best for Day 1 of your new class. With slightly noisy classes it's often a good idea to move the disruptive students away from each other or to the front of the class. However, if you...
Touching, has the power to enrich lives but also to ruin them and touching children is a potentially thorny issue and one which can cause difficulties across cultures. This article looks at various aspects of the way in which teachers and children can interact and how...
Verifying Tags is an activity which gets your TEFL class practising using question tags. Question Tags are often used to verify information of which we are not 100% certain. For example we might be discussing holidays and ask someone, "You went to the Seychelles a few...
