Category Archives: Social English

Englishlessonhandouts articles for teachers boxset

It’s been nearly a year, so I guess we will never see the long-awaited Season 2 of my series of englishlessonhandouts.com articles. However, I think Season 1 works as a standalone series, as it covers everything I had left to … Continue reading

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2021-style invitations lesson

Of all the pre-COVID materials I’ve had to use in the last 15 months, probably the least successful was a lesson where students responded to almost all invitations with “I can’t because of coronavirus” and “Maybe when COVID is gone”. … Continue reading

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Teaching Social English Second Edition out now!

Before using my lockdown time to finish off some new books, I thought I’d fix some typos, add some newer worksheets and fix the so-called “invitations roleplays” that turned out to be nothing of the sort in my first book … Continue reading

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New Social English articles page

Teaching my first two Zoom lessons yesterday showed me that, as I suspected, students need even more help online than face to face when it comes to smoothly starting and ending conversations, small talk, conversational reactions, etc. Luckily, I’ve written … Continue reading

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Small talk for specific language points (TEFLtastic Classics Part 41)

There is perhaps no smoother introduction to and no more realistic way of practising language than a set of especially chosen small talk questions. These could be questions including the grammar etc that you want to practise, e.g. small talk … Continue reading

Posted in Photocopiable worksheets, Social English | Tagged | 2 Comments

The (mildly) autistic TEFL teacher

While adding two new articles and a list of useful phrases to my rapidly expanding small talk for EFL learners page, it suddenly struck me how ironic people who know me would find it that I’m teaching small talk, let … Continue reading

Posted in Social English, Speaking, Teaching English as a Foreign Language | 1 Comment

35 reasons to buy Teaching Social English

Reasons why you should shell out a couple of quid on my new e-book You want to start term with something which is fun and light but also useful outside the classroom Your students are going to meet you and … Continue reading

Posted in Photocopiable worksheets, Social English | 2 Comments

The first TEFLtastic book for teachers

Teaching Social English: Interactive Classroom Activities (Rushed out now as it’s especially useful for new courses)

Posted in Social English | 2 Comments

New small talk games/ worksheets page

My Business English students often complain that the most difficult part of using English in their jobs is not making presentations or chairing meetings but the networking, chatting and bumping into people in the lift that can happen before and afterwards. There … Continue reading

Posted in Business English and ESP, Cultural differences/ cultural training, Photocopiable worksheets, Social English | Comments Off on New small talk games/ worksheets page

New TEFL articles and worksheets November 2011

I’ve mentioned some of these in my posts on tips and useful language etc, but the ones near the top of each section are those that have just gone up and I haven’t linked to before: Articles Teaching grammar in Business … Continue reading

Posted in Academic writing, BULATS, Business and ESP writing, Cambridge First Certificate, comparatives, Complaints, Future tenses, IELTS Speaking, IELTS Writing, Language of meetings, Modals of possibility probability, Politeness, Reports, Requests, Social English, teleconference, unreal past | 2 Comments