Marmara Elt Resources

“Tag questions” are one of the more difficult areas for ESL and EFL students. They know that you are asking a question, but the difficulty is in figuring out whether their answer should be a positive (yes) or a negative (no) answer. This is the first problem.

Understanding intonation is the other difficult area of tag questions for ESL students. As most native English speakers know, when a tag question is used, it can be used in two ways: (1) when the speaker doesn’t know the answer to the question and is asking for an answer, and (2) when the speaker is not really asking a question, but rather, is asking for agreement from the listener. For example, “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” The speaker isn’t really asking for a weather report, but rather, is making a comment and asking the speaker to agree with him or her.

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Grew up in an English speaking country? Or your Mum and Dad taught you to speak English? Or both? Congratulations! You have a talent that is in huge demand and that can take you just about anywhere in the world. Teaching English as a second or foreign language.

The world is growing smaller day-by-day. Increasing globalization in the business world combined with the phenomenal growth of the Internet mean demand for a truly international language has never been greater. And that language is English.

The demand for English is such that a native speaker could probably finance (or substantially subsidize) a global tour without any kind of training or qualification. Indeed, that is what many people do.

However, given the immense and likely increasing demand for English, English teaching is an extremely good career choice. Not only are qualified, experienced English teachers are unlikely to be unemployed for very long but the profession offers the true job satisfaction that comes from the knowledge you are genuinely giving something to others.
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12 Great Memory Strategies For Better Grades by StrongLearning
STRATEGY 1. CHUNKING

It is easier to memorize information when you break it up into small chunks. This is called chunking. You may not realize it, but you use chunking often, like when you memorize your friend’s telephone number, a locker combination, or your social security number. It’s easier to remember long numbers when you “chunk” them into groups of threes, fours and fives. That’s because most people can only remember about three, four or five bits of information at a time.

Here are suggestions on how you can use “chunking” to remember information as well as numbers.

• Chunk vocabulary words by grouping them by parts of speech or other attributes.

• Chunk history by time periods or events.

• Chunk foreign language by grouping words into categories like household items or occupations.

• If there is no pattern to the information you need to study, just group the items into three, four or five at a time, and that will help a lot.
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ESL Warm-Up Suggestions
Students studying English as a second language usually have a hard time participating immediately in class. Sometimes, teachers have to resort to doing about 10 to 15 minutes worth of warm-up exercises first in order to prepare the students for the speaking activities in class. Here are some suggestions on what kind of warm-up exercises or icebreakers teachers could do in class:
Introduction Icebreakers
At the beginning of class, when students do not know each, the teacher could facilitate an icebreaker to help everyone get to know each other and start chatting. One of the most fun icebreakers is called Alliterative Introductions. It involves the student introducing himself to the class using a sentence based on the first letter of his name. For example, Charles might say, “I’m cool Charles. I like chasing cars.” The usual pattern in this type of introduction is putting an adjective before the name then describing an action of a noun in the next sentence. The more interesting the description, the more other people will remember it. Students will need some help and some examples before they get the hang of it, but once they get it, they will really have fun!
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