CPSWE resources: what’s around for ‘prelim’ ESOL learners?
If you’re teaching adult ‘prelim’, CPSWE, Initial Course in EAL, ‘pre-beginner’ or ‘literacy’ students in an ESOL class, you’re probably making a lot of your own materials. Your classroom cupboards are filled with word and letter cards, ‘play money’, food and medicine packets and supermarket flyers. Your reading materials are based on excursions or ‘learner news,’ recorded on learners’ phones for … Continue reading
When ESOL reading becomes fun…
Carly and Kumar to the rescue… Yesterday I had to find an activity for a young woman waiting for her husband to finish English language class… what could I offer her to make that couple of hours less tedious? I showed her a few ESOL reading books, and she grabbed Karen Barber’s ‘Carly and Kumar’, with a smile, though she … Continue reading
SpellingWorks – now online
Interested in spelling? It’s a while since Maureen Hague and I wrote a book called Spellingworks for Heinemann Australia – so long that it’s gone out of print. Hooray for the publisher (now Pearson), however – and for the artist, Shane Nagle – and for the publishers who have tiny extracts of their books somewhere on a page – they … Continue reading
Let’s Connect: An Australian Grammar Workbook
Talking to Helga Burry, ESOL grammar book author and grammar enthusiast: I always get excited about new Australian ESOL/EAL resources, and once again, I know the author. I met Helga, who has just published Let’s Connect: An Australian Grammar Workbook, when we taught together in a refugee camp in Thailand, years ago. (The same camp where I met Carmel Davies, from Urban Lyrebirds … Continue reading
Another new Australian EAL/D resource
According to the Script… I met up with Pauline Bunce at the ACTA/ACAL conference last weekend – she has a new resource out, called According to the Script, available as a downloadable pdf – from her website, alphabetheadaches.com. I bought it (for a very reasonable $15) – it’s huge, very comprehensive, pitched at a more advanced level than the Prelim … Continue reading










