ELT Articles for Teachers
12 practical articles from English Teaching Forum, chosen for classrooms like ours: large, mixed-ability and short of materials. Each has a summary, notes for a Sri Lankan classroom, and the full article to read.
About these articles
English Teaching Forum is a free quarterly journal for English teachers, published by the U.S. Department of State and distributed in more than a hundred countries. Most of its authors are classroom teachers, and its articles are practical: an activity, a routine, a way of managing a class.
We have chosen the ones that work where classes are large, books are shared and a lesson lasts forty minutes. For each there is a short summary, the steps, a note on using it in a Sri Lankan classroom, and the whole article, which you can read on the page or open on your phone.
Written in Sri Lanka
Group Progress Charts for Young Learners is by Malka N. Wickramasinghe, a senior lecturer at Mahaweli National College of Education in Kandy. It describes roles for every pupil and a wall chart that lets the whole group climb towards a goal together.
Large classes and classroom management
For crowded rooms, mixed-ability groups and very few materials.
Student-Centered Teaching in Large Classes with Limited Resources
Classes of 50 to 80, no textbooks and a piece of chalk: what still works, tested by the teachers themselves.
Minimizing the Chaos through Cooperative Classroom Management
Four colour-coded jobs in every group - and the noise, the drift and the one pupil who does all the talking are handled by the pupils.
Group Progress Charts for Young Learners
By a lecturer at Mahaweli National College of Education, Kandy: roles for every pupil and a wall chart that lets the whole group climb towards a goal together.
Speaking and listening
Short, repeatable activities that get every pupil talking, not just the confident few.
Using Practice Posters to Address EFL Challenges
One poster of pictures and cue words, and in ten minutes a class practises fifty or more sentences before the lesson has really begun.
Small Talks: Daily Speaking Practice for Vocabulary and Grammar Mastery
A timed chat of under two minutes at the start of every lesson, on last lesson's words and grammar.
Pair Counting to Improve Grammar and Spoken Fluency
One partner talks for a minute, the other tallies every past-tense verb - then the talker tries to beat the score.
A Good Listener Is a Good Speaker: Three Multisensory Activities
Listening routines and three games - a memory chain, hidden sound-making objects and a number game - with notes on large classes.
Reading
Turning the passages you already have into fluency practice.
Repeated Reading with Retelling: A Multi-Skilled Fluency Activity
Two short texts, two partners: read aloud, take notes, retell in a minute, check - and repeat with a new partner.
Writing, feedback and assessment
Less marking for you, more thinking for the pupils.
Better Writing with Big Paper: Peer Correction in Collaborative Learning Teams
A pupil's uncorrected paragraph in the middle of a large sheet, and a group correcting it in silence, in writing.
The Single-Point Rubric to Simplify Student Feedback and Assessment
One column of success criteria between two blank columns - one for what to improve, one for what was done well.
Examinations
Preparing pupils for a test without teaching them tricks.
Teaching beyond the Test: A Method for Designing Test-Preparation Classes
Stop teaching exam tricks: find the skill each question type is testing, and teach that.
Teachers like us
Classrooms elsewhere in South Asia, with the same pressures as ours.
My Classroom: Bangladesh
A village primary teacher in Bangladesh who gets children speaking with chants, stories and games instead of memorisation.
Where the articles come from
Every article is published by the U.S. Department of State in English Teaching Forum and is shown from the journal's own website; RCF English does not host copies. The summaries and classroom notes are RCF English's own. RCF English is not connected with the journal or the U.S. Department of State.