An Utterance is the spoken equivalent to a sentence. As a sentence is bounded by a capital letter and a period or full stop (or other punctuation) so an utterance is often (though not always) bounded by silence or a breath or pause. Having said this, there is no...
Complements in English Grammar
In grammar a complement - not to be confused with a compliment! – is a way to provide more information about the subject or the object of a sentence. He is gorgeous! Did you like the present she gave you? A complement completes an idea, whether this is expressed...
Short Answers in English
Look at these simple questions: Can you handle the truth? Are you busy? To answer them your students will often give just a Short Answer: Are you rich? No, I'm not! Does he smoke? Yes, he does. Who killed the king? He did. Short Answers & TEFL Sometimes your...
ESP – English for Special Purposes
English for Special Purposes or ESP is subset of English for a specific purpose which is likely related to their work. For example, a doctor who wishes to work in an English speaking country will need ESP biased towards medical English; a footballer from Italy...
Listening Skills in Teaching English
Listening is one of the four main language skills along with reading, writing and speaking. Whilst in reading and writing we talk about sentences, the spoken (or heard) equivalent is an utterance. The Components of Listening Listening is often confusing for...
CAE – Certificate in Advanced English.
CAE stands for the Certificate in Advanced English. As the name suggests it is an exam for advanced users of English. It is generally aimed towards people who can use written and spoken English for most professional and social purposes and it sits roughly between...
Kim’s Game – tefl activity
Kim's Game is a simple (and classic) game which can be played to help memorize a group of objects. As such it's a good game to help students learn vocabulary, especially objects within a certain semantic field. Note that in general this works better with concrete...
Language Acquisition and Language Learning
While need or motivation can be strong impulses in second language learning, they do not influence language acquisition. The question is do we as children acquire language for any other reason than that we are communicating (speaking) animals and language is as...
Movie Trailers in Class
This is a good idea; basically you use a movie trailer in your class to provoke discussion amongst your students. The trailer you choose must be suitable for the level of the class but it can be exploited in many different ways. For more on using videos in class - how...
Lessons in Your Rucksack (book)
Author: John Hughes Publisher: Modern English Publishing Ltd Details: paperback, 192 pages; pub 2005 ISBN: 1904549071 A resource book of tips, ideas, activities and ready-made lesson plans for your first year of Teaching English as a Foreign Language. The complete...