Resources for teachers – Esltips.com.au

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Contents

Job search tools

jobs.ac.uk Education Studies including TEFL – the premium site for finding positions in the university sector in the UK, Europe and around the world.

Times Higher Education Uni jobs – University Languages, Literature & Linguistics Jobs.

The Guardian – Jobs in Higher Education

English Australia – Job Centre Job opportunities posted by EA members (prestigious colleges and universities).

Teachaway https://www.teachaway.com/teaching-jobs-abroad

General English

British Council TeachingEnglish – An excellent bank of information and teaching resources.

British Council Knowledge Centre – “international higher education reports, research, videos and blogs”

Pronunciation

Online resources for EAP teachers

RMIT Learning Lab –

Monash University, Australia – Study Skills –

Using English for Academic Purposes – Great EAP resource for teachers and learners alike. A very comprehensive resource.

Academic Word List highlighter & gapfill

Academic Word List activities at the University of Nottingham, UK.

EAP Foundation

University of Melbourne – Academic Skills Resources.

Hardcopy EAP textbooks

Secondhand copies of many of these books can be bought cheaply at https://www.abebooks.com/

EAP Now! English for Academic Purposes.

EAP Now! is a good resource, but should not be the core textbook of an EAP course as resources are somewhat dry. However, some of the resources in this book are excellent resources to include in an EAP syllabus. However, I have found the Preliminary version of EAP Now much more engaging.

EAP Now! Preliminary Student Book – See review above.

Cambridge Academic English – An Integrated Skills Course for EAP

Cambridge Unlock – An excellent, engaging suite of textbooks graded for different levels.

Cambridge Unlock is divided into five levels and two modules _ Listening and Speaking and Reading and Writing. The textbooks are complemented by online resources and engaging videos from Discovery Education.
I found them to be very good pedagogically and my students engaged with the materials. The books are well pitched and have interesting, colourful photographs, which help keep learners engaged. I highly recommend this series.

The Study Skills Handbook by Stella Cottrell

The Study Skills Handbook is designed to help users become better, more independent learners. It’s very big on critical thinking skills and advice to help learners develop themselves. I consider it an excellent resource for helping very good learners become outstanding learners, but I would not normally issue it to an entire class. Excellent resource though it is, my experience has been that most students don’t look at it again as they tend to be focused on survival, rather than self-development. Instead, I would use this as a teacher resource and select materials and ideas to give to students (within copyright laws of course). A class set to be lent to students as required might be a good investment. If this book is to be helpful to struggling students, I would recommend embedding it in the syllabus and ensuring extensive teacher guidance.

Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students by Stephen Bailey. Answers and further activities here.

Academic Writing A Handbook for International Students is a very practical resource full of useful activities relating to EAP, such as researching, avoiding plagiarism, paraphrasing, summarising, organising paragraphs and more. I would count this among the ‘must have’ resources for teaching or learning EAP.

Making Connections by Cambridge University Press. Skills and strategies for academic reading.

I can thoroughly recommend Making Connections, which I have used extensively at the Upper-Intermediate level with Chinese university students. This an awesome series of books which have engaging readings and excellent activities which develop academic reading skills.

Headway Academic Skills – Reading, Writing, and Study Skills & Listening, Speaking, and Study Skills

Headway Academic Skills is divided into three skill levels and two skill modules for each level: Reading, Writing, and Study Skills and Listening, Speaking, and Study Skills. There are teacher guide / answer books for each level/module. I have used it as a resource to supplement a larger EAP syllabus and found it to be a good, engaging resource.

IELTS Preparation textbooks

Focus on IELTS This book is an excellent resource, with skills lessons, information about the exam and practice activities.

Focus on IELTS is an excellent, ‘must have’ IELTS preparation resource. It consists of 20 chapters, and each chapter focuses on a topic such as nutrition, urbanisation, poverty, etc. Each unit focuses on two or more skills grammar points and information about the exam. There are ample practice activities with answers either at the back or in the teacher’s book.

Instant IELTS – an excellent resource for frazzled teachers.

Instant IELTS is true to name! This is one of my favourite IELTS Preparation textbooks, for its short activities and great explanations and instructions for teachers. IELTS preparation courses can be tedious, and activities often take too long – it’s a reality for learners that they need to be able to do full tests over a period of a few hours without breaks because they have to do that in the test, but they can’t be expected to do that very often! This book is great when you are unsure how long a planned activity will take – you can have one of the short activities up your sleeve if you finish earlier than expected.

202 Useful Exercises for IELTS

202 Useful Exercises for IELTS is one of my ‘must have’ textbooks for teaching IELTS Preparation. It has short skills exercises for all four skills assessed and there are two editions: International Edition and Australasian Edition. This is also a great book for teaching any group of Upper-Intermediate to Advanced students, especially EAP students or students of Business English

IELTS Testbuilder 1 & 2.

IELTS Testbuilder 1 & 2 are excellent resources and were created by Sam McCarter, who is a legend in IELTS Preparation materials. They consist of four full practice tests with extra activities and very useful explanations. It is an important skill in IELTS (or any exam) to be able to choose the correct answer from a number of options by identifying why some of the options are wrong. Unlike other IELTS textbooks, IELTS Testbuilder explains why options which may seem correct, are wrong. The book is well organised, so that sections of each test can be used as separate short activities.

Cambridge IELTS – Series of books with practice tests and answers. Four full tests in each book.

The Cambridge IELTS series is published by one of the IELTS partners and these books are excellent resources. There are four full tests in each volume and can be used separately. All IELTS Preparation courses should have at least a few volumes from this series.

Cambridge Grammar for IELTS –

Cambridge Grammar for IELTS is very useful, as grammar knowledge is important in all four modules of the test. Remember that your answers in the Reading and Listening test gap-fills must fit grammatically, so knowledge of grammar will help you select the right word from a list of options or modify a word hear in the listening recording to the correct grammatical form. Answers must not just be correct factually, but also grammatically. This is also a very useful resource for EAP teachers

Catering for all learner types

British Dyslexia Association – Dyslexia friendly style guide.

Victorian Dep’t of Education (Australia) Resources for supporting special needs students.

VALBEC ( Victorian Adult Literacy Basic Education Council ) – a not-for-profit association of educational professionals. VALBEC hosts conferences, supports research and provides resources to teachers.

Teaching English as a New Language to Visually Impaired and Blind ESL Students: Problems and Possibilities. This article explores the challenges of teaching English to learners with vision problems and strategies for dealing with these challenges.

Professional development resources for teachers

British Council Teaching knowledge database – An alphabetically indexed repository of definitions and information about language teaching principles.

British Council Knowledge Centre – This useful website contains resources related to reports and research into higher education. It also includes videos and blogs.

What is EAP? by Andy Gillett

“English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP)
Writing: Making the case” by a seminal EAP theorist and academic, John Flowerdew.

ETiC Journal – English Teaching in China: – Based at Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University in Suzhou, this is a specialist research journal which focuses on teaching EAP in a Chinese context.

English Australia – Teaching in Australia

British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP)

BALEAP Websites list – Resources for EAP Teachers

ACTA, the Australian Council of TESOL Associations

TESOL in context – ACTA online journal.

Book – The English for Academic Purposes Practitioner
Operating on the Edge of Academia by Ding and Bruce