After over ten years of offering thousands of articles, teaching tips and classroom materials for free, I’ve finally put together several whole books of materials that I think are worth paying for:
Teaching IELTS Listening: Interactive Classroom Activities (over 200 pages of stimulating activities on every part of the Listening test and every kind of task) – NEW
Teaching Emailing: Interactive Classroom Activities 2nd Ed (over 350 photocopiable pages on writing all kinds of formal and informal emails, including over 60 pages on opening and closing emails and over 70 pages on avoiding typical emailing errors) – NEW EDITION
Teaching Meetings: Interactive Classroom Activities 2nd Ed (over 300 pages on starting and ending meetings, chairing, smoothly moving between topics, turn taking, etc) – NEW EDITION
Teaching Presenting: Interactive Classroom Activities (over 300 photocopiable pages on every step of planning, practising and giving feedback on business and academic presentations, including lots of stimulating pairwork and groupwork activities)
Teaching IELTS Speaking: Interactive Classroom Activities (over 300 pages on tips, vocabulary, functional language phrases, feedback etc on Speaking Parts 1, 2 and 3)
Teaching IELTS Writing: Interactive Classroom Activities (over 300 photocopiable pages on how to analyse, plan, write, edit and give feedback on every kind of IELTS Writing Task 1 and Task 2 task, including loads of intensive practice of useful words and phrases for the test)
Teaching Social English: Interactive Classroom Activities Second Edition (over 350 pages of photocopiable materials on meeting people, small talk, invitations, socialising, etc)
Teaching Telephoning: Interactive Classroom Activities (over 300 pages of photocopiables on smoothly making and dealing with business and personal phone calls)
Really Learn the Most Useful Telephoning Phrases (over 100 pages of self-study materials that really do what the title promises)
As well as being full of useful materials in an easy to keep and easy to use format, buying a copy would help me cut down on my teaching hours a little and spend more time on writing and publishing . Things I could do with that time include:
– Finish off and get up some of the hundreds of unpublished worksheets and articles waiting on my hard disk
– Finish off some of the half-finished e-books waiting on my hard disk (on Meetings, IELTS, Negotiations, Presentations, Travel English, etc)
– Polish up the materials already on here (including adding more of those answer keys that people always ask for…)
– Provide more useful links to other people’s stuff
Votes on how I could most usefully use my time below please!
If you can’t afford to contribute at the moment or have already bought the books, you can also support TEFLtastic by sharing a link to an e-book and or your favourite pages on this site with as many people as you can.
Updated 21 March 2023
TEFLtastic 
Hi,
I am from India, and I would like to know more about your book. The activities on your blog are in line with my philosophy and teaching style. So if you could describe the contents of your book I would be happy to invest in it.
Thanks and regards
Nivedita
Hi
Thanks for the nice message and sorry for my late reply – I was polishing the book up a little.
There’s a full description of the book and the reasons behind it if you click on the link above, plus there are these two articles I wrote at the same time:
https://www.usingenglish.com/articles/20-things-wrong-with-most-selfstudy-books.html
http://eflmagazine.com/activities-for-the-questions-in-students-heads/
Suggest you work on your website site and spend less time and writing messages degrading other Esl websites. All the negative things you are saying about other sites can easily be said about YOUR organization. That is my opinion. But all, the negative crap you are generating can certainly apply to you and yours and you usually state that your negative comments are your OPINION without any proof
Thanks for your comment, but it’s quite ironic that you are attacking me by saying that I need to spend more time on my blog on the page that says I would like to spend more time on my blog. Also, you attack me for not providing evidence while not even providing examples of the “negative crap” that you are talking about. Would you care to explain more what you are talking about?
Yo Alex, please can you set up a link for Google Wallet, or enable an alternative way to pay? I wanna make a donation to you because I use your website for materials daily. I hate paypal.
Hi Tom
Feeling totally understood, but in this case you can actually pay with a normal credit card, just through the Pay Pal system. I will look into Google Wallet though (I’d literally never heard of it).
Hi Sirs,
im Amr Hassan ( Managing Director )
We Are Egyptian Houses for publishing and Distribution,
that we are seeking to get some
details for the middle level of ELT publishers in Greece and UK ,
like their web sites or links .
thanks and wait your reply .
Amr Hassan ,
(Managing Director)
Egyptian Houses for publishing.
https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/full-list-of-elt-publishers/
Hi Alex,
Happy New Year! Just wanted to let you know how much I’ve appreciated your blog. I’m just getting back into full time teaching, and your materials have been real timesavers and lifesavers! Thanks again and all the best.
DM
Thanks David. Spread the word!
I am a fellow lifer and want to get my “life’s work” published. I would like to say a huge thank you for the list of publishers. I am mailing them one by one! Also, if you have any tips, please share them!
I have many! There is a list of articles on the topic in the articles section, and many more posts you can get to by clicking on the ELT Publishing category. Have just added links to them to the bottom of the list of publishers post.
I’ve just posted this to another page….I don’t mind purchasing as long as I can do it quickly, I’m not loaded with cash but I feel that you DO need support for doing all that you have….HELP!
Dear Alex, thank you for making all these games available. I especially thought the Word plus prepositon would be a great game but…
Please, please, please….I can’t find the instructions anywhere, also not in the link posted under the game: https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/snap-and-pelmanism-in-efl-classes/
HELP!!! I’m on a CELTA training course and I handed this game in as Freer Practice for my assignment ‘Focus on the Learner’ but I need to resubmit because the rules were missing. I tried figuring out the rules for myself; the original rules for SNAP are much too complicated for an Upper Intermediate level.
Thanks in advance really hope you can get back to me on time to rer-submit my assignment.
cheers, John
Hi John
Thanks for your comments. Just replied to your comment on the post in question.
Thank you for all your great ideas, I’ve opted to buy your British English Idioms but would have rather had a complete packet of all your grammar activities bundled in one pdf available for download. I’ll just have to drop in more often I think. :)
Thanks for the comment. If I can ever make enough money from my telephoning book, one of the plans is indeed to make some grammar activity books, one of about 12 books I have half ready. British Idioms book is unfortunately not mine though…
Hi Alex,
Have just revisited your website with a ‘new hat’ on. Have previously used much of your stuff when I was teaching IELTS prep, and found it great. I am now involved with writing an Academic English course, and would love to incorporate some of your material. I couldn’t see anything about copyright/attributions on your site. What is is your policy?
Thanks,
Helen
Hi Helen
Thanks for the nice feedback.
That’s fine, as long as it isn’t put up on a publically-accessible website. Please add a message like “taken with permission from https://tefltastic.wordpress.com” or “adapted from https://tefltastic.wordpress.com“. Note that only applies to stuff that is actually here on WordPress, you’d have to contact Usingenglish.com about my stuff that is up on there but linked to from here.
And if you’re benefitting financially, spreading the love by buying a few copies of my book would be much appreciated…
https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/support/
Hi Alex,
Is there any way to email you privately please?
I have a few questions re teaching business English. I’m willing to pay something for advice.
Cheers, John
Hi John
Thanks for your comment. I’ve just emailed you. There’s no obvious way of actually paying me, but if you find my advice useful then it would be great if you buy a copy or two of my e-books.
Cheers
Alex
I had actually purchased your telephone e-book last year….any others that you recommend?
Great, thanks a lot John. New book is https://www.usingenglish.com/e-books/social-english/. Did you get my email?
Yes, email received, just writing the reply now. Thank you very much Alex
I’ll reply to the part of your email about starting business courses, especially those without a syllabus, here, as it might be useful for others too. I’d start with students interviewing each other on relevant details like their jobs, duties, use of English and hobbies in pairs, filling in forms with those kinds of headings. After doing so with their own ideas for questions, they can then continue with a list of suggested questions and/ or suggested answers such as “dealing with complaints” and “video conferences”. There should be something here which is suitable or could be adapted:
https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/worksheets/needs/
Then I get them to choose one typical or future using English situation that they just described and roleplay it with their partner, like a more generalised version of this:
Click to access telephoning-teleconferencing-personalised-practice.pdf
This then leads naturally onto something on different kinds of business communication like this:
https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/worksheets/writing/email/email-phone/starting-ending-communications/
Will deal with your other questions by email in the next day or two.
Hope that helps.
Hi Alex, Thanks for that, will start delving asap. Cheers, John
Hello Alex, I am wanting to find practical teaching material for inter-cultural awareness. There are lots of books on theory, but few lessons or worksheets. Can you help? Thank you. Sandra
Hi Sandra. I have a stack of worksheets on the topic here: https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/worksheets/efl-cultural-training/
Thank you so much, Alex. I appreciate your prompt reply and the inter-cultural links. Sandra
Hello Again Alex, your links for inter-cultural awareness aren’t what I am looking for. I am interested in addressing inter-cultural awareness between different nationalities, therefore different cultures — Chinese, Indians, Iranians, Canadians, Sudanese, etc. From my personal experience, there is a wide communication, understanding, and accepting each other gap, as well as inadequate teaching material to this end.. This is what I had in mind. Any further suggestions? Thanks. Sandra
Hi Alex,
Do you have any update regarding the TEFL University and/ or Tesol University? I saw your last article regarding this matter in 2014.
Regards,
Manny
I don’t have any update on the so-called TEFL University, but there is literally no possibility that they’ve really become an actual university, so I’m sure that my conclusions stand. I’ve never heard of TESOL University.