It’s really simple too and does not need any resources. I hate using games which can’t do without soft balls, or baskets, or blindfolds. Well, this one needs no prep at all.

Walk into class. Draw a grid (3×3 or 4×4 or 5×5) on the board. Elicit question words and fill them into the grid randomly.

Divide the class into 2 teams. Give each team a symbol (e.g. , * , $ )

The team to go first chooses any square and uses the question word in it (e.g. how) to form a question. For e.g. How old is the teacher? or How old is Tracy (a student)?

If the other team guesses the correct answer, it can put its symbol in that square. If they don’t guess the correct answer, the team that asked the question can put its own symbol in the square. Now, the other team chooses a grid and asks a question. And so on..

The team with the most number of squares under its belt wins the game, or the team which gets 3 symbols in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) wins the game.

Gets the kids really competitive, as they ask wild questions to trick the other team.

And it works for all levels and ages – pre-intermediate to advanced, little kids to adults!

There are a few lists of useful ESL websites but as time went on, I had my own growing list of sites I referred to almost on a daily basis. There is such a wealth of information out there, but it’s frustrating how many websites need registration, or worse, contribution!

Heavens.. if I were an experienced teacher with worksheets and games to contribute to the ESL world, I wouldn’t be trolling the internet desperately searching for the same.

So here’s my list of the most useful ESL websites. Most of these don’t require registration and NONE of them require your contribution, thank goodness for that. Plus, I hate lists that go on for 43 pages, so this one is short and sweet. In all probability, whatever you need – be it games, grammar clarifications, worksheets, or ESL songs – you can find it at one of these addresses. But of course, if you wanna just troll.. that can go on forever.

Anyway, here goes -

GENERAL:

1. http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ The BOMB website – Instant lesson plans.
2. http://www.usingenglish.com/handouts/
3. http://bogglesworldesl.com
4. http://www.eslflow.com/Fillers.html Good stuff

READING:

1. http://www.rhlschool.com/reading.htm Reading Comprehension
2. http://www.miguelmllop.com/practice/intermediate/readingcomprehension/readingcompindex.htm
   
3. http://a4esl.org/q/h/holidays.html
   
4. http://esl.about.com/od/englishreadingskills/English_Reading_Comprehension_Skills_for_ESL_EFL_Learners.htm
   
5. http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/ Audio books and other free books

SONGS:

1. http://www.esl4kids.net/songs.html
   
2. http://www.songsforteaching.com/esleflesol.htm Songs for teaching
3. http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems.html Lots of songs and chants.. pretty awesome

GRAMMAR:

1. http://www.eslcafe.com/grammar/confusing_words_come_go.html Students in Vietnam really need this grammar point drilled into them
   over and over again
2. http://englishforyounglearners.org/funny/ English for Kids
3. http://www.eslflashcards.com/ Free flashcards
4. http://abcteach.com/directory/languages/eslenglish_as_second_language/esl_grammar/ A few free posters to explain grammar points

VOCABULARY:

1. http://www.eslall.com/exercises_66_l0.html Hangman Online finally! phew..
2. http://www.saksena.net/partygames/bingo/ Bingo Generator. Pretty Awesome!
3. http://www.learnersdictionary.com/ Webster’s ESL dictionary. Perfectly graded language to explain even the most complex words
4. http://www.english-test.net/

Nothing has really worked enough to excite my students. Has anyone had more success using the internet as a viable teaching tool to produce language in ESL classrooms?

Any suggestions will be welcome.

And, if anyone wants to use http://www.wix.com/ to have students create websites, I’ve got a whole tutorial written up. Just ping me.

FOR KIDS: Divide your class into small groups of 3-4. The smaller the group, the more speaking practice the kids get. Have the kids sit in a circle. Give each group a line to start with. For e.g. – There was a little boy/chicken/monkey. The first person in the group must come up with a sentence in the past tense to continue the story. And so on..

Monitor all the groups to make sure all the kids are using the past tense form of the verbs. I’ve used this with my pre-intermediate 8-10 year olds who are in the process of learning past tense.

To give them a little impetus, you can do a board race with past tense verbs on the board so students don’t run out of verbs to use.

FOR TEENS AND OLDER: In my experience, older intermediate and advanced ESL students tend to get somewhat bored with the somewhat slow pace of story telling. Make this a fun writing exercise for them. Give each student an A4 sheet with the first line of the story printed on top. For e.g. – There was a crazy boy with five feet. Each student writes the next line of the story on their papers and then passes it on to the person on their right. The person on the right must now write the next sentence in the story, also using past tense, or more complex verb forms. Pass it on again. And so on..

In the case of older students too, small groups works best so everyone gets a chance to contribute to familiar stories. Anything larger than 5 people in a group has never been quite as successful in my classes.

**Remember to reward the best story for added motivation!

Take a flashcard to class. It could have any picture on it, but I prefer something with a scene, not a single object. The last time I took a picture of a blue lake surrounded by mountains and a small yellow fish jumping out of the lake.

Show your SS a half-second glimpse of the picture. Elicit what they saw and let them discuss and debate. Obviously, different SS will end up seeing different things. Flash the picture again, this time for a little longer, perhaps a second. This would give them a lot more to talk about.

In small groups, SS must start writing notes or a short story about the picture flashed at them.

Believe me, SS come up with some hilarious stories. One of my best classes – intermediates, ages 9-11 – came up with a story about the teacher’s (my) pet shark marrying the tiny yellow fish and then eating it up when it was hungry.

With younger, pre-intermediate kids, you could have them draw what they saw while talking about it. They still have to discuss what they saw and the best way to depict it on paper. e.g. The fish was very big. No, it was small. I think it was yellow. I think it was red.

Much as you want to step in and correct errors, the point of this exercise is to develop fluency, so try and restrain yourself, and let the students direct their discussion. As long as they don’t revert to L1, that is.

Preteach Language -
1. What’s your name?
2. When’s your birthday?

Round 1 -
Have all SS stand in a semi-circle in the classroom. On the floor, write down January 1 at one end of the semi-circle, and December 31 at the other end. Now, ask SS to rearrange their circles based on their birthdays. SS will have to ask the same question many times, and there will be a lot of discussion about who stands where.

Round 2 -
Add another level of difficulty. This time, write a large ‘A’ at one end of the semi-circle, and a large ‘Z’ at the other end. Ask students to rearrange themselves in alphabetical order of their names. Also teach them that if two students have names beginning with ‘A’, they should then consider the next letter of their names.

For added urgency, get a stopwatch to class and time the students.

SS really start opening up with this ice breaker. They’re all forced to talk and there’s no room for shyness. My students enjoy this so much, they often ask for a repeat in the second lesson!

In my classes of 12-18 students, I divide them into groups of 3-4. Bring as many chairs as there are teams to the middle of the classroom, and arrange them in a circle.

One student from every team comes to the middle and sits in their chair.

Now, give the students any category. e.g. animals.

One student starts off by naming any animal. The others must not repeat this name, and must go on to name other animals in turn, without spending much time thinking, until one student can’t think of any animals’ names. Then, he’s dead and the other teams go on playing the game. The winning team gets a point.

Some categories I’ve used while playing Word Tennis in my ESL classrooms –

1. past tense verbs – ate, drank, played, wrote etc.
2. past participle verbs  - eaten, drunk, played, written etc.
3. adjectives – beautiful, tall, handsome, loud etc.
4. prepositions – on, in, at, over, along etc.
5. advice (e.g. I have a cold) – You should see a doctor. If I were you, I would stay in bed. etc.
6. already – I have already eaten breakfast. I have already seen ‘Avatar’.

This is one of those games I learned during an observation, and was so surprised to see how well it works. The students really love it.. they’re on their feet thinking of words.. producing language.. and being competitive.

If you’re having students produce whole sentences (You should.. If I were you..), make sure you write the process language on the board as a visual cue. And drill it pre-game. Enjoy!

Hell man, I’m gonna get a job in China/France/Haiti/Brazil and I’m gonna be gone while you guys clean up the mess around here!!

Uhmm.. wait. Did you sign your contract yet? Did you get the figures right? Are you sure you’re going to have the weekend off? Just some of the questions that your daddy might ask when you’re trampolining and telling him all about your new job.

So what are the loopholes you should look out for in ESL contracts? What are the benefits you must insist on? Find out..

If you are smart, you probably did the CELTA, which increases your chances of landing that purrrfect job you want so bad. If you are smarter, you probably did your ESL certification from a school that guarantees you a job. You, my friend, will (hopefully) have a job offer or two before you walk out the door with your TEFL/TESOL certificate.

Don’t get me wrong – I haven’t switched allegiances over a triviality such as job placements. Ha, yeah!

No seriously, I do honestly think CELTA is the best possible certification available, just because it’s so widely known, accepted and respected. I mean, believe me, the ESL world is partial and sexist and racist enough (though some insist that’s changing) for you to want the best possible certificate under your belt.

With a CELTA or equivalent certificate (120 hours of in-class instruction and at least 6 hours of teaching practice), you will be in a better position to demand a better salary, more benefits, and will definitely be the prize catch for any ESL school out there.

Be warned though – there are so many shady paan ki dukaans (Hindi term for a small pop shop around the corner) cropping up everywhere around the world, promising to teach English to the Queen herself, and giving ESL teachers as raw a deal as you can imagine.

Which is why, it is so important to

Step 1: check whether the school you’ve just heard from (offering you a plum job) is legit. Google the school name. If they have a website, scan it carefully. See if they have contact information of anyone apart from the person you’re in touch with. Get in touch with some of the others – maybe the academic manager, or a teacher. Ask for the contact information of other ESL teachers at the school. Email them and talk to them.

To find out if they’re for real, see if you an find them on Facebook or MySpace. A lot of the times, you might find the blog of someone who has taught or is teaching at the said school. Don’t forget your course tutors. Ask them if they’ve heard about the school. Your tutor has probably been in the ESL world for at least a decade. If s/he has heard of the school, go to

Step 2: read the fine print of the contract. The reaaaaally fine print. Here’s a list of some of the questions you must consider before signing the dotted line.

1. The details of your duties and the hours of the job. The norm in the world of ESL is 24-30 contact teaching hours per week, plus 3 hours on standby to fill in for absent teachers.
2. The amount and currency of your pay.How often are you paid? What is your gross salary vs. net salary? Are there any deductions on your paycheck?
3. The length of your contract. Is it a renewable contract? Are there any terms and conditions associated with the renewal? Most importantly, do you get a resigning bonus?
4. Accommodation. Does your school have apartments for teachers? Are you responsible for your own apartment? Does the school give you a housing allowance? If your school is not going to help you with housing, can you at least get an advance to pay your deposit and rent for the first month?
5. Your tax liabilities. Check the local laws.
6. Provisions for healthcare and sick leave pay.
7. Pension and insurance contributions.
8. Bonus, gratuities and perks.
9. Days off, statutory holidays, vacation times.
10. Visa, Airfare ad transportation from the airport.Reputed, legit schools almost always arrange for visas. They’ll probably reimburse your tickets from your home country. And they’ll always meet you at the airport when you arrive.
11. Probationary period and length of notice which you or the employer must give before you terminate the contract.
12. Penalties for breaking the contract and circumstances under which penalties can be waived.

Once, you’ve nitpicked your contract and shot a million emails to your contract at the school (and  irritated them to the extent they’re considering withdrawing the offer), you can safely go to

Step 3: the beautiful country you’ve chosen to live and work in for the next few months. Go, go, go…

Since English is a non-phonetic language, there is often no correlation between the way words are written and spelled. And if you thought that’s the hardest bit to learn about writing well, think again. With the multitude of writing style sheets floating around in this world, it can be incredibly hard for students to even realize what they’re up against when they embark out on ‘Project Write Well’.

ESL students are overwhelmed enough by the enigmatic English grammar. When it comes to writing, I think the simplest rules help them the most. Not everyone is going to make a great writer but sticking to some simple rules can really help in taking students’ writing to the next level. At the bottom of this post, you will find a downloadable pdf copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the famous little bible of English.. I strongly recommend using this in ESL classrooms during writing lessons, more on this book in a later post.

For the intermediate and advanced ESL students, who are already on their way to writing paragraphs and essays, the simple 5W and H rule works superbly.

But what about children and elementary level ESL students. It can be a drab job, isn’t it, to strike every capitalized letter in a sentence for one student, and find another allergic to capitals. The comma, period, semi-colon and colon can also be as frustrating as the rules of grammar itself!

Here are some really basic tools to begin teaching writing with to the really elementary students. It’s useful to put these up on a chart paper, prominently, in the classroom, and involve students in useful games where they earn points for good writing practices.

These are the rules..

SCRIPT
The English alphabet has 26 letters, each of which has an upper case and lower case form. English is written from left to right.

CAPITALIZATION
Only the first letter of the first word of a sentence is capitalized. Proper nouns, and the pronoun, ‘I’ are also capitalized.

PUNCTUATION
Sentences always end with a period. A comma signifies a momentary pause.

SPELLING
You gotta work on this baby. Ain’t gonna be easy, because English ain’t no phonetic language!

PARAGRAPHS
Multiple sentences make one paragraph. Each paragraph conveys a single idea.

ACCENTS
English uses accents and stress marks only for words imported from other languages, esp. French.

For many more wonderful tips on good writing practices, download the famous little bible of English, Strunk and White’s

I found this pdf booklet here: http://bit.ly/D9Q3N

You can buy this book online at Amazon

One would’ve thought that the month-long somewhat rigorous course would have taught all us CELTAtians enough that we needed to know before we venture out into the world of ESL teaching. umm… apparently not.

Have you ever been in a situation when everything, and I mean Everything, goes against you? You think the heavens have conspired against you and after a series of mishaps/catastrophes, you begin to give up hope in all that is joyous and wonderful in this world. Presenting the last lesson on the last full working day of the CELTA course should have been a thrilling experience. All the ragda was over. No more stressing over lesson plans and assignments, no more rising at unearthly 6 o’clocks, no more late nights, no more no-beer nights!

I should have breezed through the last lesson, after all I’d been doing the act for a month.

But then, the anti-Pulkit forces of the universe came together to wreak havoc in the until-then magical moments of the last CELTA lesson. I was to begin teaching at 2 pm and since it was an hour long lesson, I had been working on my handouts etc. until about 1.30 pm. With just half an hour to go, I thought I would go ahead and print the lesson plan and finally grab some lunch.

I was using Fernanda’s laptop, which, apart from having Windows in Portuguese, was also about the slowest creature I’ve ever tapped my fingers on. Despite the Portuguese, it wasn’t too difficult to do simple things like opening, editing and saving documents, and using the browser (IE 6, omg… AAARGH).

So it struck 1.30 pm, I salvos my Word doc on the Desktop (it’s an old habit of mine.. just go to the Desktop and save everything.. that much easier to find documents that way) and closed it, hoping that closing Word would prompt IE to open quicker. Well, I was right – IE opened quite swiftly and I logged into Gmail. I was going to email the document to myself so I could access it on one of the computers connected to the printer.

I started to attach the lesson plan… searched for it on the Desktop. Whaddya reckon – it wasn’t there!! Well, no trouble. I went into My Recent Documents and thought I’d find it there. But that was not to be! I opened Word again and searched for the tyke in the Recent Documents under File. Voila, it wasn’t there either. I did not panic yet. I hollered out to Fernanda to decipher the Portuguese f****** for me. With brimming confidence in her ability to understand the cryptic lingo of her laptop, she went about looking for it in all the obvious places.. but my beloved ESL Lesson Plan, the last, was nowhere to be found.

The clock was ticking furiously fast. I had no choice but to run up to the tutors’ room and break the awful news to them. I could have taught the lesson without my lesson plan but unfortunately, all my handouts were in the same file as well! I’d lost everything.

The tutors really calmed me down, saying worse come to worse, I could present the lesson the next day. Phew, the beads of sweat that had been balancing precipitously on my throbbing forehead began to flow down my face from sheer relief that this option was available to me. (I would’ve never known relief can make sweat flow.. but I guess in the state I was, the sweat would’ve flowed whatever the tutors had said)

Meanwhile, half my co-CELTAtians had surrounded Fernanda’s laptop and were trying to scrape it in the hope of finding the elusive lesson plan. Nothing seemed to work.

I relaxed. Elena was filling in for me. I could present the lesson tomorrow.

I was just taking a deep breath when I saw the otherwise-usually limp Wilson and daug Darin stride purposefully into the classroom, snatch their backpacks and go off in a hurry. I looked around wondering if anyone had noticed their odd behavior. With a minute left for the beginning of the lessons at 2, we were all expected to be seated at the back of the classroom to observe the lesson. If anyone should have appeared frazzled at the moment, it should’ve been me (and I was just about beginning to relax).

Well, I leaned over and asked Fernanda if she knew what was going on with those two and she told me they were going to fill in for me. Gabi, one of our tutors had asked them to prepare a lesson plan within an hour and teach it.

“Hell,” I thought, “I don’t want to make these guys go through the trouble.” But I wasn’t quite sure whether I could recreate my own lesson plan within an hour. Well, I went for it.. plodded away at a different laptop this time, rewrote my entire reading passage and the accompanying handouts. I let the lesson plan be – it would take too much work to do that all over again, and I just didn’t have the luxury of time that afternoon.

In about 45 mins, miraculously, I managed to redo my entire lesson. You bet, it was an achievement. WIth a huge sigh of relief, I went into the computer room and set about printing the reading material and handouts. Cleeeeeeek, cleeeeek, whined the printer. Beep, beep, it announced that it was out of ink!! Shit, jog to the reception, ask the nice lady to attend to the dying printer right away. Done. Feed a wad of paper into the printer and give the Print command. Wheeeeee, the printer hummed, sucking in paper. I held my breath. I didn’t trust my luck anymore. It printed a couple of sheets perfectly, I walked back to my computer, in readiness to head out to the copier machine as soon as the printer had finished its job.

Ah it did. Without a glitch. Things were beginning to fall in place. I walked over to the copier with my 6 or 7 handouts ready to make about 20 copies.. we had a LOT of students that day. Placing the first sheet face down on the glass top, I punched a few buttons before the monstrous machine made the unhealthiest copier sound I’ve ever heard. It began with something that sounded like it’s gonna begin copying but turned into an ugly, loud screech. The monitor furiously blinked and announced that paper had been misfed into the bloody copier.

OMG, race back to the front desk, waaaaaaaail. SOS was here. Quite-a-nice-looking front desk chap offered to help. On the way down the lobby, he asked me how the paper got misfed. Hell, how did I know, I wasn’t the one feeding it. I began to question the presence of a brain behind his chiseled bones. By the time we arrived at the scene du crime, it was clear he had set his eyes on the sophisticated copier for the first time in his life. He looked blankly at me and apologized. Hell, he didn’t waste time in fleeing after seeing the glint in my eyes.

Mercifully, a lady I’d never seen before was passing by. She sensed my distress and quickly fixed the misfed paper problem for me. It was about 3.15 now, and the students had been waiting for their second teacher for the day for about ten minutes (they had a 5 min break at 3, when Elena’s class ended).

I don’t much care how the lesson went. After the ordeal of the day, I was surprised I was able to present anything at all. My students had a good laugh when I told them the catastrophic day I had had. It wasn’t the best lesson I presented but I think it was halfway decent considering what I’d just been through.

You can download this lesson plan at the bottom of this post. It ain’t the best and I think you should go ahead and I’d encourage you to create better handouts, but it worked for me in the desperate time ever. The vocabulary I was teaching that day was all related to cooperation and competition, something that I had googled in various permutations and combinations the day before and come up with naught. So I do hope you find this useful and helpful. Drop me a line if you do

If you are looking for assignments that CELTA students are required to do during the course, you’ll find them here. If you are still wondering whether you should go for CELTA or one of the many other TEFL/TESOL courses offered, you might find it useful to read why I chose CELTA.

Go ahead and download this fateless lesson plan. I do hope you have fun with it, not the horrid time I had.