I knew that pronouncing the -ed suffix for regular verbs in the past tense was hard for my adult students. They had certain “fossilized” errors that were going to be hard to break. Many of them had spent years making the same mistakes. I had developed a compact table and...
by Ellen Baker Dubois · Published February 16, 2025 · Last modified May 31, 2026
Struggling to get your adult learners to see the long-term value of English beyond passing an exam? This 3-hour, no-prep lesson helps students connect English proficiency to their own personal growth, making them more motivated, engaged, and successful. From four short texts, ESL students will discover the reasons why the journey...
by Ellen Baker Dubois · Published January 24, 2021 · Last modified February 4, 2026
If you’re an English teacher you’re going to want to organize your ESL lessons so you can reuse them. I’m going to show you my system, where I put all my lessons into an Excel table with a link back to the file location. I classify each lesson by subject,...
Find the list of 80 words you’ll need for this lesson on one of the top TOEIC topics “Kinds of Jobs and Kinds of businesses” including five suggestions for making your own vocabulary games that are proven to engage students and increase retention of new words. To round out the...
Want to help your ESL students to finally master the prepositions ‘in on at‘? Try this ‘visual’ slideshow tour of New York City and its flashcard game. Learn how to teach your students to ‘visualize’ each preposition of place and time in 3D or 2D with this slideshow of images...
Want to make your ESL students sit up and listen in class? Just announce ‘We’ve got a video today’. A video, and especially a funny video, instantly perks up the hardest to inspire students. Learn to find and download the perfect ESL video without a YouTube Premium account. It doesn’t...
I think we all agree that it’s so important to give your ESL/EFL student what he needs to fulfill his language goals: personalized ESL lessons delivered in the most interesting and engaging way possible. Just about every teacher I know feels this way. But you’ve probably already got a full...
Get your students speaking accurately in minutes with this zero-prep verb tense game. Download it from my TeachersPayTeachers store for FREE.
Master workplace vocabulary with these scaffolded activities designed for professional learners. Download for $3 from my store on TeachersPayTeachers
