Topic: Group Work Level: Intermediate, Advanced, Age: Adults Skill: Speaking, Description: Small group discussions based on difficult situations.

Sometimes I try to make use of new vocab and tell them to move as if they have just won a million dollars or are all drunk, hungover, are all police officers, wealthy ladies out shopping, and -my all time favourite- as if they can smell something terrible. Breaks the monotony and gives me a bit of a laugh. - Vanessa Pasini

Ss prepare an idiom, expression etc to say to 5 persons before the next class. It works because I hear them say the words and it is fun to hear. Simple but students like it and practice it...

In my opinion there are 10 Commandments for practitioners to follow in the classroom:

The articles I've read by Japanese high school teachers (quite rightly) refer to how the students are generally silent and try to avoid standing out. I'll certainly take on board the ideas I've read for livening them up. To get a little motivation going, I devised a system which has worked really well for me these last few months. I hold a weekly 3-part competition open to all students in my class.

Bright ideas for Teaching ESL: classroom materials, news to use, ESL teacher talk, idioms, grammar, accent reduction, business English, ESL books...

Use popular media such as newspapers and magazines to create these interesting poems.

This subject is especially useful with younger students who might be hesitant to speak about their own lives. Speaking about films provides an almost endless font of possibilities for conversation. Here are a few ideas:

Simple creative writing and oral storytelling activities with printable handouts.

A collection of inspirational and motivational quotations. The quotes in each of the categories listed below are some of my personal favorites that I've collected over the years. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Created by a high school student, RepeatAfterUs is an award-winning online library with the best collection of copyright-free English texts and scripted recordings. Our free audio clips provide an excellent resource for students and literature lovers of all ages.

The idiom dictionary is compiled from the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms and the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms. The Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms explains over 7,000 idioms current in British, American and Australian English, helping learners to understand them and use them with confidence. The Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms, based on the 200 million words of American English text in the Cambridge International Corpus, unlocks the meaning of more than 5,000 idiomatic phrases used in contemporary American English. Full-sentence examples show how idioms are really used.

From "how to" information on lesson planning and writing behavioral objectives to ideas about classroom management, and descriptions of the advantages and disadvantages of different instructional methods, this section of the ADPRIMA site can be helpful to new teachers, beginning teachers, and teacher education students. Every attempt has been made to write these descriptions in an easy-to-understand style. Most visitors appreciate this. You will find useful information here that will give you a different perspective, get you thinking, and maybe help you to be a more effective teacher, or better student