Resource Description: Sometimes breaking a grammar point down into steps or parts can make it easier for the learners.  Here's a video for teachers on how to present Question Tags.

Resource Type: Teaching Tips

Resource Description: I took my class to a farmer's market called Curb farmer's market when they were learning about the names of produce. This activity gives them practice in talking to farmers/vendors, practice their listening, speaking to customers for brief interviews, and finding items at the market.

Resource Type: Activities

Resource Description:

Immordino-Yang presents her research on the neuropsychology of social-emotional feelings, including their deep visceral roots in the feeling and regulation of the body and consciousness, their propensity to heighten one’s own subjective sense of self-awareness and purpose, and their connections to memory and cultural learning. 

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is a social-affective neuroscientist and human development psychologist who studies social emotion and self-awareness across cultures, connections to resilience and morality, and implications for education. She is associate professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. A former public junior high school science teacher,  she has been named among the most influential scholars in education by Education Week’s RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings. She has received numerous national awards for her research and for engaging the public with science, and in 2015 she was elected president of the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society.

Resource Type: Convention Plenary & Keynote Sessions

Resource Description:

ELLs face an unprecedented variety of distractions in today’s globalised, digital age. Finding ways of generating student motivation and engagement has become a principal challenge for classroom practitioners. Dörnyei outlines a comprehensive framework of strategies to engage learners with aspects of the learning environment, language learning tasks, and target language.

Zoltán Dörnyei is professor of psycholinguistics at the School of English, University of Nottingham. He has published extensively on various aspects of language learner characteristics and second language acquisition, and he is the author of more than 20 books, including "Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom" (2001), "Research Methods in Applied Linguistics" (2007),"Motivating Learners, Motivating Teachers: Building Vision in the Language Classroom" (2014, with M. Kubanyiova), "The Psychology of The Language Learner Revisited" (2015, with S. Ryan) and" Motivational Currents in Language Learning: Frameworks for Focused Interventions" (2016, with A. Henry and C. Muir).

Resource Type: Convention Plenary & Keynote Sessions

Resource Description:

Our profession increasingly expects us to sustain interconnectedness and encourage dialogue among widely diverse constituents. Being part of these conversations can challenge long-held beliefs and accepted practice. Why should we embrace this challenge? How can we engage with each other as ELT professionals to address the needs of the future?
Ester de Jong is a professor in the School of Teaching and Learning, University of Florida. She teaches courses in bilingual and bicultural education and in curriculum, methods, and assessment for English speakers of other languages. Her research interests include two-way bilingual education and other integrated models for language minority schooling, educational language policy, and teacher preparation for bilingual students.

Resource Type: Convention Plenary & Keynote Sessions

Resource Description:

Afghanistan has been torn apart by decades of war, and Basij-Rasikh believes the best way to create a stable and prosperous country is to raise a highly educated leadership generation. Basij-Rasikh shares how the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, is addressing the challenges Afghan girls face to accessing quality education.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, and completed high school and college in the United States. Cofounder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, a nonprofit dedicated to providing Afghan girls a rigorous education and helping them enter universities worldwide. Widely recognized as a leading advocate for girls’ education, she has received the Davis Peace Prize and was named one of National Geographic’s 2014 Emerging Explorers and one of CNN International’s Leading Women of 2014. Shabana is also a global ambassador for Girl Rising, a global campaign for girls’ education.

Resource Type: Convention Plenary & Keynote Sessions

Resource Description: TESOL’s The 6 Principles for Exemplary Teaching of English Learners establishes the basic knowledge and skills teachers need to establish optimal conditions for second language acquisition and provide effective instruction and assessment in their classes. This webinar discusses how the SIOP Model of sheltered instruction lets teachers meet the 6 Principles and also helps schools establish a culture of shared responsibility. 

Resource Type: Virtual Seminars

Resource Description: This webinar will look in-depth at Students with Interrupted Formal Education.  It will describe what is meant by “interrupted formal education,” listing reasons students are arriving in our schools with gaps in their education.  The webinar will offer specific suggestions for helping students make up for lost time, and also how to help students emotionally acclimate to their new environment.

Resource Type: Virtual Seminars

Resource Description: This webinar shares stories and insights from research-practice partnerships with schools and communities. Some of the topics that will be discussed include 1)  culturally and linguistically diverse students' learning; 2) the role of faculty in maintaining and developing sustainable relationships; and 3) criteria for success in school-university or community-university partnerships. Each of the panelists will share how they have been involved in research-Practice Partnerships with Schools and Communities and what they have learned through their experience. Their presentations will be followed by questions and answers from the audience.  

Resource Type: Virtual Seminars

Resource Description: Young English learners have unique learning needs and experiences that require a creative and responsive approach to teaching. Join this dynamic discussion of research-based teaching practices that go beyond the basics to support a successful start to language and literacy learning. 

Resource Type: Virtual Seminars

Resource Description: Learners’ development of collaboration skills has important implications for their language learning (Donato, 2004), fluency development (Huensch & Tracy-Ventura, 2017), and the development of interactional skills (Johnson and Johnson, 2004). When working together towards achieving a common goal, learners use language to mutually construct new knowledge by sharing their own ideas and accepting contributions from other participants (Donato, 2004). 3D virtual worlds (VWs) can provide learners with the opportunities to collaborate through multiple communication channels, which may facilitate language development (Meskill, 2005). Drawing on the results of the study on learner collaboration in 3D VWs (Kozlova, forthcoming) when students used an audio channel to interact with their peers and a text-based channel to make notes on a collaboration board, this presentation discusses the factors affecting learner collaboration. These factors include (1) learners and instructors’ familiarity with 3D VWs, (2) learners’ familiarity with the format of the learning activity, (3) learners’ experience with the spontaneous use of the second language, and (4) instructors’ use of pedagogical techniques that facilitated collaboration. Although this presentation draws on the findings of the research in 3D VWs, implications of the findings to face-to-face classroom will also be discussed.

Iryna Kozlova, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the TESOL Program, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the use of second/foreign language spoken discourse in the classroom and in casual conversation, application of technology for second/foreign language teaching and learning, task-based learning, and teacher training. She has taught Applied Linguistics, ESL, and Russian in the United States and internationally. 

Resource Type: Teaching Tips

Resource Description:

I have a PhD in Teaching Methodology. The below video link is a brief but to the point introduction to my innovative revolutionary approach to the education of the Oppressed, which was formulated based on my own seminal "Cognitive Socio-Political Language Learning Theory". I received my PhD from the biggest democracy in the world, from incredible India, for this sort of contributions to democracy!     

Resource Type: Teaching Tips

Resource Description:

The lesson's aim is to review the vocabulary topic "Eating out", which was featured in the textbook we are using at our school. 

Desks are arranged into "task islands", at which students do different activities (grammar, reading, vocabulary, video comprehension). At the end of each activity, they check the answer keys and proceed to the next activity. 

At the end of the lesson, students fill out a self-assessment form (based on the can-do statements of the European Language Portfolio) that helps them reflect on the difficulties they had and the skill(s) they need to brush up on. 

Students work autonomously and can choose if they want to work in pairs or groups.

The teacher monitors the activities and is available for students whenever they need help.

The results of the self-assessment and of the activities is then discussed together in the next lesson. 

As a follow-up activity, students work in pairs and must create their own café or restaurant, which they will then present in class with a PowerPoint presentation.

Resource Type: Activities

Resource Description:

• There are up to 75 lessons of various common topics for your readers to choose from. These lessons can help them survive or even thrive in any English-speaking country.

• Lessons are delivered with both texts and high-quality audio, which facilitates speaking and listening practices considerably.

• A video with subtitles for each lesson is also added to help your readers train pronunciation and speaking.

• Lessons are designed in conversation form with questions and responses, which makes learning easier than ever.

• Questions and responses are collected from daily life, so they are highly reliable, practical and applicable.

Resource Type: Lesson Plans

Resource Description: Curt Bonk will be sharing his thoughts in the TEIS webinar on the emergence of at least 30 different ways in which learning is changing—for instance, it is becoming increasingly collaborative, global, mobile, modifiable, open, online, blended, massive, visually based, hands-on, ubiquitous, instantaneous, and personal. These 30 learning and technology-related changes reflect three distinct “mega-trends”: (1) learner engagement, (2) the pervasive access to learning, and (3) the customization and personalization of learning. The webinar will be in a conversation format moderated by Faridah Pawan, the TEIS Chair Elect-Elect.

Resource Type: Teaching Tips