35 reasons to buy Teaching Social English

Reasons why you should shell out a couple of quid on my new e-book

1. You want to start term with something which is fun and light but also useful outside the classroom
2. Your students are going to meet you and each other (for the first time or again) in the next class and you want them to do so in a way which matches how they should do so outside the classroom
3. You will start and/ or end future classes with small talk and want to teach your students how to fully take part
4. Your students find it easier to write technical reports and give presentations on their speciality than to start and end conversations, chat in the elevator, give advice to foreign visitors, explain local foods, etc
5. Conversations when students meet each you and each other (for the first time again) are slow, awkward, unlike real-life chats, etc
6. Your students can’t respond well to your small talk questions
7. Your students are not good at asking you and each other small talk questions
8. Your students endlessly re-use “Nice to meet you”, “How are you?” and “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”
9. Your students’ social skills in their own language don’t transfer well to English
10. Your students lack social skills even in their own language
11. Your students blunder into taboo topics
12. Your students avoid or are shocked by perfectly okay topics
13. Your students are not good at finishing small talk and conversations smoothly
14. Your textbook/ syllabus doesn’t link the language well to real life conversations
15. Your textbook mainly asks students for their opinions/ has heavy discussion questions
16. You’re going to be teaching business skills and have found that Social English is the most popular topic
17. You’re going to teach a whole course on Social English and need a whole stack of suitable materials
18. You’re going to teach a whole course on Social English and need more interactive materials to add more real communication and practice to the materials you are using (from Delta, the Oxford Express series, etc)
19. You want to add a class or two on Social English to a textbook course, business skills course, etc
20. You want to tie the language you are studying (present tenses, jobs vocab, past tenses, prepositions, determiners, question formation, auxiliary verbs, tense reviews, TOEIC listening, etc) to more real-life questions
21. You want an easy introduction for you and/ or your students to some games that can easily be adapted to other language points (board games, card games, coin games, dice games, jigsaw activities, lying games, memory games, TPR activities, etc)
22. You’ve used some of the TEFLtastic classics and wish there were versions for meeting people, small talk, recommendations, invitations or socialising
23. You’ve used some of my worksheets and wish there were polished up versions with the typos fixed, easier to cut up cards, etc
24. You’re feeling grateful for all the free teaching ideas and materials I’ve supplied you with
25. You’re feeling guilty for all of my teaching ideas and materials that you’ve used for free
26. You are the third person to have an ideological objection to me providing stuff for no pay
27. You’re feeling guilty for all the teaching ideas and materials you’ve borrowed off other teachers and want to add something to the teachers’ room that everyone can use
28. You have realised you don’t need an expensive subscription to Onestopenglish etc and are looking for a lower cost option
29. You want me to turn down a few cover classes and polish up TEFLtastic instead
30. You want me to turn down a few cover classes and write some more books in the series (on IELTS, presentations, meetings, negotiations, emailing, telephoning, etc) instead
31. You want me to concentrate on writing books and not revert to writing stupid lists like this one
32. You went to one of my conference presentations and want me to concentrate on writing instead of inflicting that on more people
33. You bought a copy of my last book when it came out and are ready to shell out again
34. You know you’ll just waste the money and trust me to spend it better
35. You were the person who borrowed my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at Koparan Summer Camp in 1996 and are still feeling guilty about never giving it back