Category Archives: Skills

The best IELTS Listening practice test?

Posted on 08/04/2025 by alexcase

An IELTS Listening practice test wish list, then two candidates for the prize. The perfect IELTS Listening test would have: It would also be nice to have a flowchart in Part 3 to tie in with Writing Task 1, even … Continue reading →

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Business communication reviews (TEFLtastic Classics Part 51)

Posted on 10/01/2023 by alexcase

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 … Continue reading →

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Guest post: 11 tips for teaching controversial topics in the ESL classroom

Posted on 17/04/2021 by alexcase

A great post from Alice of Hot Take English, hopefully re-starting the once numerous and always popular TEFLtastic guest posts. For a lot of English language teachers, the mere thought of teaching a so-called “controversial” discussion topic in class is … Continue reading →

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New articles on emailing page

Posted on 09/12/2020 by alexcase

Have written so many articles on writing emails and teaching emailing to promote my email English e-book that they have now got a page of their own: Emailing articles Seven articles and a list of useful phrases there so far, … Continue reading →

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New spelling games/ worksheets page

Posted on 04/11/2020 by alexcase

Perhaps because of all that brainwashing in communicative language teaching , it’s taken me 14 years to realise that a page of my spelling PDFs might help students who want to spell properly and teachers who want to help them … Continue reading →

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New Teaching Emailing book out now

Posted on 19/10/2020 by alexcase

300 photocopiable pages on opening and closing every kind of email, being formal and friendly, planning and paragraphing, fixing common emailing problems, etc – all with a surprising amount of classroom communication for a book on writing: Teaching Emailing: Interactive … Continue reading →

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New articles on telephoning page

Posted on 27/07/2020 by alexcase

With 10 articles on telephoning and teaching telephoning already up and about 10 more to add soon, thought it was worth tidying up my telephone English worksheets page by moving the articles to a page of their own: Telephone English … Continue reading →

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New Teaching Telephoning e-book out now!

Posted on 21/07/2020 by alexcase

While the rest of you were taking up new hobbies and having Zoom parties (?), I used my lockdown to finally keep my promise to those who were kind enough to buy a copy of my one of my previous … Continue reading →

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Good time to teach teleconferencing/ video conferencing?

Posted on 23/03/2020 by alexcase

Amongst an understandable dive in my blog stats, perhaps the only one page which has increased in popularity compared to this time last year is one which has just made me realise that I should be teaching it to my … Continue reading →

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Discussing your week(end) to practise particular language (TEFLtastic Classics 42)

Posted on 09/03/2020 by alexcase

This is a combination of two recent posts, being a particular kind of small talk to practise different kinds of language, and also a classic but difficult to find page.  Discussing your week and weekend to practise grammar Discussing your … Continue reading →

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