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Focus on Speaking/Writing:          This is for students at beginning and intermediate levels. The objective is to practice asking and answering questions. Each student needs one picture. (Pictures of people from various ethnic, economic, age, and gender groups are particular]y useful. Fashion catalogs are good sources of such pictures.) The procedure is as follows: First, as a class, have the students generate a list of interview questions. Write them on the board. Then distribute the pictures to the students. Tell them they will become the person in their picture. The students must create a biography for that person. Give the students time to think. Next, divide the students into pairs. Tell them to take turns interviewing each other, using the questions generated earlier. Students should give answers based on the identities they created for the person in their picture. As a follow-up, students can write a one-paragraph biography of their person. Focus on Grammar: This works well with intermediate-level students. The objective is to practice using comparatives and superlatives. The materials needed are sets of pictures--one set per student--which show similar objects; e.g.,a set that shows different kinds of shoes, a set that shows different kinds of hats, or watches, or cars, etc. The directions for the activity are: Give one set of pictures to each student. Tell students they should use comparatives and superlatives (which have been taught prior to doing this activity) to describe the objects in their pictures. They should write as many sentences as possible. When students have finished writing, they should form small groups and read their sentences to each other. 'They should check for errors, both spoken and written, and discuss whether they agree or disagree with the statements made about the objects in the pictures. This activity also lends itself to a discussion of culture--for example, if the pictures present items of clothing, teachers can

1. Kids get into groups and are given a stack of pictures into which I have put pictures from each of the above category. I usually put around 15-20 in each stack. When we do nouns.... I will place big signs on the board with "common" "proper" "abstract" "concrete" "plural" and any others we are studying. Their group has to go through their stack and find one to correspond with each topic AND they have to have a justification for each. 2. When I do prepositions, I give each student a situation picture and have them list as many preps. as they can find in each picture. I give a prize for the most found. 3. When we study characterization, I give each student one picture from the "people" envelope and have them write a brief character sketch based on what they perceive. 4. When I do verbs, I will give each row ONE picture. I tell the students in the first seat of each row to take out one piece of paper. When I say "GO", the first person looks at his picture and comes up with one action verb. Then very quickly writes it down and passes it back. The next person has to write down another action verb and pass it back to the next. It just keeps going. The person in the back runs the picture up to the front person. I usually start another picture back as soon as the first person passes it to the next. In about 4-5 minutes, I stop and the row with the most and the most accurate verb list gets a prize or pig points. 5. When we do short stories, I give each person an envelope in which I have put 2-3 people (characters), 1 place picture (setting) and 1 picture from the situational. After we have discussed the "elements",they begin to write their own short story based on what they have in front of them. 6. When I teach a vocabulary word that is a little more difficult, I always go to my stack to find one that illustrates it. For example, I found a perfect picture of a clear blue lake with not one ripple to show them "placid". They never forgot that word. 7.

It was a strange day-Thursday-for a wedding. Who ever heard of a Thursday wedding? "Well," Harlan explained to everyone, "the Thursday event is going to cost me half of what Friday, Saturday, or Sunday would cost me. And a 50-percent discount is a lot of money, believe me." Everyone believed him. Harlan knew how to count his pennies. The early evening event was at Cowfish, a popular restaurant and meeting place on campus. Nevin and Janelle arrived at 5 p.m. for pictures, but the photographer had been delayed on the freeway because someone had jumped off an overpass. So they decided to take a stroll on campus. Walking westward, they soon found a fish pond. About a dozen small turtles were swimming in the eastern end of the pond. As Janelle kneeled at water's edge, all the turtles swam toward her. A couple of them climbed out of the water and onto the footpath. They wanted food, but a sign advised visitors not to feed the fish or turtles. So she apologized to the turtles-not that she had any turtle food anyway, she added. Nevin and Janelle took pictures of themselves and the turtles. They walked back to Cowfish just before the ceremony was to begin. Some of the preacher's words were unclear because of static on the portable microphone. After the preacher pronounced Harlan and Ellen husband and wife, guests clapped and cheered. The photographer, who had gotten "some great pictures" of the fallen body, busily took pictures of the bride and groom, the preacher, the parents, and the guests. After their meal, Nevin and Janelle said good night to the newly married couple. This was the fourth marriage for Harlan, so everyone was hoping it would be his last. Then Nevin and Janelle walked out to their car, holding hands and talking about what would be the same and what would be different at their own wedding. That is, if they didn't decide to just drive to Las Vegas for a quick marriage, with Elvis performing at their ceremony. "That way, our only

These are the ideas included in Hall Houston's Random ESL Idea Generator. If you have a JavaScript-enabled browser, you can use the generator to get a randomly-selected idea from this list. Perhaps you will find it useful to print out this list and refer to it from time to time.

The process of reading, being able to connect semantic input with the letters on the page, does not mean much if language learners cannot understand what they have read. The following exercises, modified from Sherrill Flora's Everyone Reads! will give you and your students some fun ways to make sure the meaning came through the words on the page.

Need an idea to help you get started writing? You'll find hundreds of fun writing prompts here - perfect for beginning a new novel or short story, or simply giving your writing muscle a workout.

I've culled this list from the General Service List - a frequency list for English.  These are words that are frequent in English and are relatively easy to picture.  Most of them will show up in the top 2000 words of your target language, and so you can save a bit of time by adding these words to your Anki deck right at the beginning.

Sharing has always been a prominent part of what the Internet is and how it functions. And with social networks exploding in popularity in the past several years, sharing is probably the one aspect we utilize the most on the web. We share news, information, pictures and experiences, and by doing this we can build and maintain relationships as well as create new connections that we would have otherwise never met or worked with. But can this have adverse affects? Can you share too much information?

Can also use this as a dictoglass (read everything) + comprehension (give out the text with gaps) combo activity. It's good to test their listening skills as well as help with their vocab. Use self-correction so that they can pay close attention to their own writing. The text: "You really have to get very old before you realize you're old. I'm in my middle fifties and I don't feel old yet. However, sometimes I look back at my childhood and __1__ things to the way life is for __2__ kids. Some things have certainly changed. One area of change is television. Some changes have been improvements. Some changes, on the other hand, have been __3__. When I started school, most people didn't have a television; TV was just beginning to get __4__. My father decided to go all out and buy a 16 inch black and white Motorola set. I still remember watching the Lone Ranger save people from the __5__ guys on that awesome electronic machine. That was exciting! Now, __6__ have larger pictures in full color. The pictures are clearer and the sound is much more realistic. The new high definition sets are made to rival __7__ screens. The variety and quantity of programming has __8__ greatly. There are hundreds of channels and more shows than one person could ever watch. There are many fine entertainment and educational __9__. There's also a lot of garbage, stuff that most parents don't want their kids exposed to. Overall, we have more choices, and that is good. I wonder what __10__ will be like when today's kids are my age."

English teachers are always being asked to bring songs to class. Although all the input students might have is considered enriching, the fill-in-the-blank exercises seem boring for them and for us as well. In addition, it's very difficult to please students with our song choices.  The aim of this project is to make them think about the songs they listen to and choose one of them to bring to class with the following: a. A copy of the lyrics b. Picture of the singer or group c. A short background of the artist(s) d. Some exercises to be used in class e. The CD with the song (Adapted from Murphey, Tim. Music&Song.Oxford University Press, 1992)

"the spoken word has been an outlet for people to release their views outside the academic and institutional domains of the university and academic or small press. The spoken word and its most popular offshoot, slam poetry, evolved into the present day soap-box for people, especially younger ones, to express their views, emotions, life experiences or information to audiences. The views of spoken word artists encompass frank commentary on religion, politics, sex and gender, often taboo subjects in the world of contemporary academic poetry. Spoken word is used to inform or make an audience conscious of some human aspect pertaining to life*"

Do your students struggle to write with detail? Are their descriptions limited, lacking in specifics or uninformative? If so, you can help your students write more engaging and elaborate pieces by teaching the following strategies for elaboration.

When it comes to teaching vocabulary, one challenge is knowing which words and phrases to teach. There are several areas that should always be included in vocabulary instruction. In addition to single words, idioms: (time on my hands, getting cold feet) and phrasal verbs (get in, go out).  It's especially important for students to learn idioms, phrasal verbs, because there's no logical way to figure out their meaning from the individual words. Also keep in mind that reading is a channel for new vocabulary growth, so always include vocabulary exercises whenever you assign new reading material. It's also a good idea to have students keep a vocabulary notebook. The notebook could be organized into sections for words from novels, selected readings, or news articles, as well as vocabulary they've encountered at random. However the vocabulary books are organized, make sure everyone has the same plan. In this section there are several good strategies you can use for teaching vocabulary. There are also activities you can try with your students to increase their knowledge of English vocabulary.

"Belfort and her colleagues gathered data from 1,312 mothers and children in the United States, tracking everything from the mother's frequency of breastfeeding to other factors including the mother's intelligence, the mother and father's education levels, measures of the home environment, the mother's employment and the type of childcare the baby received."

"Every parent wants to have polite, respectful children with good manners. Fortunately nature is on our side. Children learn by copying what we do and love to do everything 'just like mommy and daddy do', as it makes them feel they are being 'big'."