New on TEFLtastic

A list of new content and links on TEFLtastic, updated every couple of days. Newest stuff top. If you like anything here and want more, please support TEFLtastic.

Connected speech in IELTS Listening – NEW

Performance review verb patterns speaking – NEW

Stimulating acronyms activities – NEW

15 fun complaining and dealing with complaints activities – NEW

Schwa in IELTS Listening gapfill answers – NEW

Describing chemicals with passive voice

Irregular plurals boasting game

Elementary consonant clusters simplest responses

Job interviews verb patterns speaking

Selling ecological goods verbs of sensation practice

15 fun like and would like activities

10 fun consonant clusters activities

Elementary consonant clusters the same or different

Constructing question tags card and coin games 

Talking about achievements conversational reactions practice

How to be friendly in emails

Accommodation vocabulary things in common

How to teach word stress

How to teach making enquiries

7 acronyms games for ESL classes

11 fun passive voice games

Teaching Emailing: Interactive Classroom Activities Second Edition – NEW EDITION

Teaching Meetings: Interactive Classroom Activities 2nd Ed – NEW EDITION

Teaching IELTS Listening: Interactive Classroom Activities (over 200 pages of stimulating activities on every part of the Listening test and every kind of task)

Updated 2 June 2023

TEFLtastic games/ worksheets pages A to Z

A list of every index page on TEFLtastic. There are quite a few! There is also an A to Z of just the grammar pages here, and links by topics and sub-topics here. 

If you like anything you find here and would like more, please support TEFLtastic.

All index pages A to Z

Abbreviations page

Academic applications games/ worksheets – See University applications worksheets

Academic bios page

Academic discussions games/ worksheets

Academic emails page

Academic English (EAP) games/ worksheets

Academic English first lessons page

Academic Word List (AWL) games/ worksheets page

Academic writing functional language page

Academic writing worksheets

Acronyms page

Action vocabulary page

Active listening page

Advantages and disadvantages

Adverbs

Adverbs of frequency

Adverbs of manner games/ worksheets

Advice activities page

Alphabet – See Pronouncing the alphabet

New IELTS Listening e-book out now!

Over 200 pages to teach students what IELTS Listening really involves, giving them knowledge of the key vocabulary, typical phrases, trick questions, difficult things to listen for, hard spellings, etc in the test.  All without any boring recordings or awkward silence in class! Available here now:

Teaching IELTS Listening: Interactive Classroom Activities – NEW

If you haven’t bought any of my books (recently), you could also think of buying a copy as your (tiny) Patreon-style donation to support me in producing more materials and teaching ideas. If you’re not interested in IELTS Listening and/ or can spare another pound, my other exams and business skills e-books are here:

TEFLtastic e-books

Business communication reviews (TEFLtastic Classics Part 51)

Often after my last TEFLtastic Classic (needs and instant personalised practice), I often start business courses with a big review of the basic language for electronic and face-to-face communication, with materials like these:

First contact and further contact picking roleplays (email, online, phone and face to face) – NEW

Telephone, email and face to face error correction pairwork – NEW

Starting and ending business communications simplest responses – NEW

Business communication brainstorming and error correction – NEW

Different kinds of business communication dice game Market Leader Int version

Communicating before, during and after meetings practice (emailing, telephoning, etc – in this bargain e-book)

First contact line by line brainstorming and jigsaw

First contact functions card game (face to face, email and telephone)

Prepositions of time pairwork guessing game (including business skills review)

Business communication prepositions and determiners pairwork

Business communication pairwork correction game

Starting and ending business communications jigsaw texts (email, telephone and face to face, a polished up version of my worksheet in English Teaching Professional magazine)

First contact and further contact dice games (emailing, telephoning, teleconferencing, video conferencing and face to face)

Travel English telephone, email and face to face dice game 

Different kinds of business communication meeting criteria board game

Telephone, email or face to face functional language dice game

Communication challenges dice game 

Related pages

Business English functional language reviews

Needs analysis

Not sure how it’s taken me 15 years to make a list of materials that I use so much… For 50 more activities that I suddenly realised that I use all the time, see here.

Updated 26 January 2023

400 IELTS Writing tips!

Have finally finished my biggest writing challenge of the year, divided into four slightly more manageable lists of 100 tips for teachers and candidates on Task 1 and Task 2.

100 IELTS Writing Task 1 teaching tips

100 IELTS Writing Task 2 teaching tips

100 IELTS Writing Task 1 Tips

100 IELTS Writing Task 2 tips

Problems with Usingenglish.com links fixed

Thanks to a heads-up from a reader yesterday, noticed that loads of links are broken as they are all trying to go to https://www./files/ with no name of the site in it. Seems to be sorted now, but if it goes wrong again try:

• manually add usingenglish.com to the missing bit of the link
• Paste that incomplete link into Google
• Google the name of the thing that you are looking for

Links to other sites all seem to be working.

15 years of TEFLtastic!

In that time, about:

• 23 million views
• 6600 comments
• 2000 TEFLtastic “pages” (worksheets, lists of useful links, etc)
• 1800 blog posts
• 1300 photocopiables on Usingenglish.com
• 275 articles on Usingenglish.com
• 270 articles on TEFL.net
• 70 articles on Englishclub.com
• 8 e-books with over 2200 photocopiable pages
• a stack of other reviews, articles, and worksheets in ETP, in MET, on esllessonhandouts.com, etc
• 3700 views of my YouTube video (over one view per day!)

Two nice new this/ that/ these/ those activities

There are so many possible fun presentation and practice activities for “This is/ That is/ These are/ Those are…” that you have to be careful not to spend more time on this minor grammar point than it deserves… However, I think my new activity and new variation should be considered for the lesson or two that this grammar is worth.

This that these those shapes

This is a nice variation on my other this/ that/ these/ those guessing games, because students get to choose which one they want to be tested with each time. Get some things with distinctive shapes such as plastic fruit (with “grapes” etc to practise these/ those) and two bags, one of which is a bit see through. Students choose if they want the object or objects to be put into a non-see-through bag that they can feel the shape through (“this” or “these”) or a semi-see-through bag that they can see the shape through from far away but can’t touch (for “that” and “those”).

This that these those big and little words

This is a smaller variation on my usual activities for this/ that/ these/ those, which I had to come up with in a hurry after another teacher rightly pointed out that purely oral practice wasn’t much good before a partly written progress test.

Draw a huge circle on one side of the board and a tiny circle on the other side of the board, with lines drawing them to suggest perspective to make the tiny circle look far away. Perhaps after guessing a few huge pictures in the huge this/ these circle and tiny pictures in the tiny that/ those circle (my usual drawing game for this grammar), you can do the same for words written with huge letters or tiny letters in the same two circles. This is most challenging and fun if the this/ these words are written so big that the circle cuts off part of the words (and ditto with any pictures you put in there).

New TEFL stuff 2022 H1*

Much less stuff than in the good ole days, but hopefully less quantity finally means more quality. Latest items top of each section.

New TEFL e-book

Teaching IELTS Speaking: Interactive Classroom Activities (over 300 pages on tips, vocabulary, functional language phrases, feedback, etc on IELTS Speaking Parts 1, 2 and 3)

New TEFL articles 2022 Part One

How to teach link verbs/copula verbs

How to teach like and be like

How to teach like, be like and look like

How to teach verbs of senses

How to teach consonant clusters to EFL learners

How to teach defining relative clauses

How to teach reduced relative clauses

New TEFL PDFs 2022 Part One

Starting academic writing determiners pairwork

Describing things with prepositions games

Needs analysis extended speaking and instant practice

Possessive adjectives brainstorming games

Useful phrases for reports sentence completion games

Determiners in names of places speaking activities

Positive and negative question tags card games

Good and taboo questions with irregular plurals

Starting and ending conversations simplest responses game

Requests and offers in business meetings imperative practice

Verbs of sensation discuss and agree

Likes and dislikes guessing objects games

Verbs of sensation discussion questions

Personalised instant roleplays

Superlative adjectives discuss and agree

Online meetings discussion and brainstorming

Guess the country warmer cooler

Participle clauses personalised sentence completion games

Strong and weak medical advice

School vocabulary things in common

Participle clauses storytelling game

Needs analysis extended speaking

Personalised instant roleplays for logistics

Business communication needs analysis and instant personalised practice

English for logistics needs analysis and instant personalised practice

*My attempt to start a “Q1”-style abbreviation for “first half of the year”, so I can also use H2 the next time I forget to do a quarterly update…

New Teaching IELTS Speaking e-book out now

As Teaching IELTS Writing: Interactive Classroom Activities seems to have been quite popular, I’ve now put together over 300 photocopiable pages of thoroughly classroom-tested materials that help really teach (not just practise) IELTS Speaking:

Teaching IELTS Speaking: Interactive Classroom Activities – NEW

Unlike many exam materials, the handouts also really help improve students’ speaking and English more generally. As well as getting stacks of great worksheets in an easy-to-use format for under a penny a page, buying a copy will allow me to spend more time writing, including finishing off similar books on Cambridge First, grammar, functional language, negotiating, writing, etc, etc, etc. If you don’t teach IELTS Speaking, the same great deal is also available on these topics:

Teaching Meetings: Interactive Classroom Activities (my last e-book)

Teaching Social English: Interactive Classroom Activities 2nd Ed. (the biggest one, for activities on meeting people, small talk, etc that could be useful for anyone)

Teaching Emailing: Interactive Classroom Activities (my most popular book)

Teaching Presentation Skills: Interactive Classroom Activities (the one that ties together most as a book and so is really worth having as one volume even if you have all of my presentation worksheets)

Teaching Telephoning: Interactive Classroom Activities (my first e-book for teachers)

Really Learn the Most Important Telephoning Phrases (my only book for students)

New Like as a Preposition and Verbs of Sensation pages

A mix of old and new materials on “be like”, “look (like)”, “taste (like)”, etc. At the moment the two pages are just the same worksheets arranged differently depending on what your main language focus is, but as usual with my new pages, I’m just getting started on these new obsessions and so many more PDFs and articles will be coming soon.

Sense verbs/ Verbs of perception games/ worksheets – NEW PAGE

Like as a preposition games/ worksheets – NEW PAGE