Digital literacy skills are crucial twenty-first-century skills that are required for the successful use of technology and active engagement in today's world. However, there is a lack of effective resources and guidelines for developing English as a second language (ESL) learners' digital literacy skills. Due to their increasingly important and…

Update your vocabulary practices to meet the Common Core and improve students' word knowledge! This new, clearly-structured guide shows you how. It's packed with engaging, research-based, classroom-ready strategies for teaching vocabulary. Topics include: (1) Selecting meaningful words for direct instruction; (2) Strategies for engaging students…

Metaphors and analogies are more than figurative language suitable only for English classes and standardized test questions. They are "power tools" that can electrify learning in every subject and at all grade levels. Metaphors show students how to make connections between the concrete and the abstract, prior knowledge and unfamiliar concepts, and…

Notes that three picture story formats-- sequential organization, spatial organization, and compare and contrast organization--provide right-brain hemispheric input and stimulate verbal production of students learning a second language. (FL)

The author demonstrates how simple snapshots can open new entryways into literacy for all children and help educators view teaching and learning in new ways, building classroom-wide and school-wide community. The book offers projects that help children see real-world possibilities in literate behaviors by using photos as a stimulus for literacy…

Examines various approaches to the teaching of word meanings in the second language classroom, including the use of translation, visual aids, and direct methods. (AM)

Describes how foreign stamps can be collected, catalogued, photographed, and arranged in thematic areas in order to be incorporated into a language curriculum or culture cluster. (Author/AM)

The use of situational sketches, drawn on the blackboard or shown by an overhead projector, is seen as more effective than ordinary illustrations. The procedure is particularly useful in the intermediate grades (8-10), being suited to the content of textbooks at that level. (IFS/WGA)

Describes a prototype electronic device that may be used in the classroom or in the laboratory to display pedagogical models and student articulations of target language sounds simultaneously. (Author/AM)

Driver instruction through the medium of a foreign language is useful in teaching vocabulary, grammar, and culture. The maps, driving manuals, and cars stimulate discussion and communication. Course techniques can include Asher's concept of Total Physical Response wherein students act in response to commands in the foreign language. (PMJ)

The following aspects of using the overhead projector in the advanced reading class are discussed: (1) control of focus by pointing, underlining, or circling; (2) control of how much text the students read at one time; (3) use of overlays to isolate different aspects of the text; and (4) progressive processing of the text. (SW)

Describes how the use of stamps from francophone and other countries may be an adjunct to the teaching of French language and culture. (AM)

The video-based exercises, designed at the Novice High to Intermediate High skill levels on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages language proficiency scale, are aimed at developing non-interactive listening comprehension. The tapes used contain authentic broadcast Russian. Nothing is adapted. The trick to using real Russian is…

This unit on Spanish proverbs for second year students includes five main lessons, each dealing with a different way of using proverbs to teach or reinforce certain grammatical points and vocabulary. Each exercise and suggested vocabulary list also has a corresponding transparency. Lesson one contains 18 Spanish proverbs which have a common…

Aims to heighten teacher awareness of the semantic, syntactic, and phoneme-grapheme transfer problems that Chinese students face. Provides teaching suggestions involving phonology, vocabulary, syntax, and morphology. Urges reading teachers to use the visual modality to help make the transfer to the English script system more successful. (RS)