Author Archives: alexcase

TOEFL to improve high school English?

Posted on 29/07/2014 by alexcase

The British government has finally learnt its lesson about dealing with ETS after many cock ups including the recent big fraud which means that TOEFL can no longer be used for immigration purposes, but that’s not stopping schools in Japan: … Continue reading →

Posted in ETS, Teaching English in Japan, TOEFL, TOEIC | Leave a comment

Using blocks/ stacking games blocks to practise language

Posted on 28/07/2014 by alexcase

I forgot to say this in the article I just published on the topic, but this is one of my favourite games in one-to-one young learner classes, because I’m often genuinely worse than the students at stacking blocks, plastic cups … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching young learners, TEFL games | Leave a comment

New times and dates EFL activities page

Posted on 26/07/2014 by alexcase

Article, games, photocopiables, songs and suggestions for stories: Days, months, dates and times index page

Posted in Teaching English as a Foreign Language | Leave a comment

Made up statistics in the language classroom

Posted on 24/07/2014 by alexcase

86 percent of statistics mentioned by teachers in the classroom are completely made up… … but that figure is completely okay. In fact, I’m increasingly moving from saying “Single countable nouns almost always take a determiner” to “Something like 97% … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching English as a Foreign Language | 2 Comments

Does writing about TEFL make you a better teacher?

Posted on 19/07/2014 by alexcase

The answer is obvious, but maybe not the one that you are expecting. Back when I worked in a certain international chain of schools and so was forced to waste time justifying my professional development, it seemed that all the … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching English as a Foreign Language | Leave a comment

ECC may have bought data stolen from owner of Berlitz

Posted on 19/07/2014 by alexcase

According to the newspaper Japan Times, the data on 75,000 high school students that large Japanese language school chain ECC bought might have been among that stolen by someone working at Benesse, owner of the Berlitz and ELS chains, plus the … Continue reading →

Posted in Berlitz, Eikaiwa | Tagged | Leave a comment

Why my worksheets don’t have numbers

Posted on 05/07/2014 by alexcase

Along with my complete disregard for appearance and even hatred of pointless illustrations, probably the biggest difference between my photocopiable materials and paper-based published ones is how mine almost always use bullet points rather than numbers and letters. Unlike the … Continue reading →

Posted in Photocopiable worksheets | 1 Comment

IELTS Academic review lesson plan with classroom materials

Posted on 04/07/2014 by alexcase

Materials One copy of most of the worksheets below per student Cut up copies of some of the worksheets below, sometimes one per class but usually one set per group. One dice by group. At least one of each type … Continue reading →

Posted in IELTS | 4 Comments

My computer corrected me in class!

Posted on 30/06/2014 by alexcase

In one of the schools I work for the computers in the classroom make a strange bing-bong noise when the screensaver starts, one which sounds a lot like the sound that a wrong answer gets in a quiz show. It’s usually … Continue reading →

Posted in Interactive whiteboard, Technology | Tagged | 2 Comments

Over 100 IELTS worksheets now easier to find

Posted on 21/06/2014 by alexcase

As part of the continuing reorganisation of my many worksheets pages, have added all the relevant index pages to my main IELTS games/ worksheets page, making it hopefully only two or three clicks from there to materials for just the task or … Continue reading →

Posted in IELTS, Photocopiable worksheets | Leave a comment