TEFL Resources and Lesson Ideas

Note: this idea comes from Humanising Your Coursebook, by Mario Rinvolucri. It is used here with permission.
Suggested levels: elementary to advanced.
Aims: to re-use reading material from the coursebook; to focus on textual cohesion.
Materials: spare black ballpoint pens and photocopies of a reading passage from your students’ coursebook. I find it useful to enlarge the copies [...]

Suggested levels: strong pre-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to learn and practise using interesting conversational gambits in English; to practise informal speaking; to practise turn-taking, etc., in English conversations; to create a strong class bond.
Materials: these questionnaires (one for each student); enough classroom space to make two circles of chairs.
Procedure:

Give out the speed-date questionnaire (see above).

Ask students [...]

Suggested levels: pre-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to engage with the structure of informal English letters; to practise skim-reading and reading for detail; to practise writing informal letters; to compose drafts and scan for grammatical and vocabulary errors, and mistakes in register.
Materials: some “doctored” agony aunt letters (pre-intermediate examples are here, upper-intermediate examples are here and advanced [...]

Suggested level: advanced.
Aims: to engage with a classic of English literature; to practise writing and giving presentations; to experiment with different intonation patterns to evoke different emotions and convince an audience; to read for gist and detail.
Materials: these pictures of busts of Mark Antony, Julius Caesar and Brutus; these speeches from Julius Caesar; these [...]

Suggested levels: upper-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to practise the “pure sounds” of English; to hear and produce these sounds in a published poem.
Materials: the YouTube lessons below (familiarise yourself with these before the lesson); this recorded poem by Thom Gunn.
This is a great way to practise pronunciation of individual phonemes (especially monophthongs) and sentence stress; it [...]

Note: this idea was inspired by the Peter Watcyn-Jones’ quizzes in Pair Works 2 and 3, this BBC article and this article from the TimesOnline website.
Suggested levels: upper-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to practise law-related vocabulary; to practise modals of speculation by answering a multi-choice quiz.
Materials needed: one copy of this quiz for each pair of students, [...]

NB I have adapted this activity from Deck of Conversations, on the onestopenglish website.
Suggested Levels: elementary and above .
Aims: to practise speaking, listening and polite turn-taking in informal conversations.
Materials needed: dice and students; a list of conversation topics.
Procedure: Before the class, prepare a list of conversation topics, one for each number of the dice; [...]

Aims: to practise using intonation to convey interest and enthusiasm, and to encourage students to bond as a group by giving feedback to each other.
Suggested levels: Strong pre-intermediate and above.
Materials needed: Copies of the Chindogu inventions at the bottom of this page (one for each group of three students), and paper and pens.
1. Pair your [...]

Please note that the idea of the body language table comes from Listening by Goodith White (Oxford Resource Books for Teachers: 1998).
Suggested levels: strong intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to focus on body language and how this affects communication; to focus on appropriate body language in different settings; to acquire and practise using vocabulary connected with the [...]

Note: the ideas for most of these activities come from Jim Scrivener’s excellent Straightfoward Pre-Intermediate Teacher’s Book.
Suggested levels: elementary to advanced.
Aims: to enliven gapfill tasks in coursebooks.
The One-Minute Gap Fill
This can cause a few laughs from students. Present the gapfill in the usual way, but set a strict time limit of one minute for students [...]