The TEFL News Network

Stay out of Thailand if you are a teacher. That seems to be the advice coming from two of the mods of Thai Visa’s Teaching Forum and good advice it is indeed. With all of the hassles that teachers are encountering in Thailand in dealing with visas, work permits and teacher licenses and the precious little help that school can and will provide, it’s the only smart thing to do, avoid teaching in Thailand.

Sentence rewriting is a good way for intermediate and advanced students to learn about grammar and vocabulary. It entails understanding the sentence given and being able to rewrite it in their own words. It’s an excellent way to help students who like to cut and paste their assignments from Wikipedia. We’ve all had them, haven’t we?

How to teach your students to rewrite sentences? Never fear, About.com ESL has a Sentence transformation exercise online that you can use and tailor for your students, depending on their level. With just a little reworking, you could have an exercise that you could use over and over again and give your students a skill that would serve them well.

This week’s TEFL Game of the Week comes from My Camp Resources, a great camp games sites by a former TEFL teacher turned Camp Director. It’s modified slightly from his rules to reflect realities of the TEFL teaching environment. It’s called “What the King wants.” We all know that what the King wants, the King gets.

Description:
This is a offshoot of indoor scavenger hunt (30-100+ people)

Time:
15-20 min

Material:
Nothing

Objective:
Get the object to the King first

How to play:
Split the group into smaller groups of about 10-12 people. The leader is the “king”. Then get the “king” to stand at the front and say: “The King wants ….” and the first group to get it to the “king” gets the point. Some ideas of what the king would want are:
-1 sock
-a size 12 shoe
-something that smells pretty
-belly button lint
-toe jam
-ear wax
-a retainer
-a pink rock

Remember that if they do not have it they need to get and get it.

Rules:
First group to get the right item wins the round

Keep score and run it through several rounds until you have a winner of some sort.

TEFL Good: It teaches students new and interesting vocabulary words in a fun and energetic way