Joe McVeigh

The December 2011 TESOL Quarterly contains a wonderful study by Dilin Liu analyzing the frequency of phrasal verbs across several corpora. This is a really useful article for teachers and materials writers, with lots of great information in it and a valuable companion to his 2003 corpus study on the […]

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I’m delighted to announce that my latest ESL textbook, coauthored with Jenny Bixby is now available. It is the introductory level of Q: Skills for Success, the Reading/Writing strand.  Like our other book in the Q series, this level has entertaining readings, solid vocabulary-building activities, and a wonderful graphic feel, with loads of photos to […]

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We’ve been having a heat wave in Vermont, in the northeastern United States where I live. The temperature has reached 95° F (35° C). It’s actually hotter here than it was in Saudi Arabia when I visited in the spring. It got me thinking about the effect of heat and other discomforts on our classes […]

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A recent thread on the TESOL English as a Foreign Language Interest Section e-list discussion group raised the issue of teaching conversation in the EFL classroom. I came up with the following list of useful books for those interested in teaching speaking.
Folse, K. S. (2006) The art of teaching speaking: Research and pedagogy for ESL/EFL […]

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I’m just back from performing a program review for a couple of intensive English programs in Saudi Arabia. Lots of grist for the intercultural communication mill. Major issues in student motivation and finding the appropriate materials for the curriculum, as well. I’ve got to hand it to teachers who are able to teach over there […]

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My Oxford University Press co-author Jenny Bixby and I have recently contributed posts to the Oxford ELT Global Blog. We each talked a bit about using questions in the language classroom–this is a key element of our book in the forthcoming OUP series called Q: Skills for Success. Read the posts here and leave a […]

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Jenny Bixby and I will give a talk at CATESOL in Santa Clara on April 24th. The title is Principles to Practice in Teaching Reading and draws on much of the research that we did in preparation for our forthcoming student reading/writing textbook from Oxford University Press. You can download the handout and PowerPoint here […]

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On April 17th I’ll be giving a talk at the Literacy New York Volunteer Conference in Saratoga Springs. The participants are mostly volunteers who work one-on-one with individuals and families from an amazing array of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This talk is on speaking skills for English language learners. Even though the program is theoretically […]

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Darren Elliot keeps a great blog called The Lives of Teachers.  He interviewed a number of people at a recent conference of JALT (The Japan Association for Language Teaching.)  One of those interviewed was Miles Craven, a British ELT author based in Japan.  Miles talks about the process of researching materials, the challenges of writing, […]

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  Tim Murphey had his EFL students at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan talk about their experiences learning English in junior high school and high school.  They then made a very interesting video about their experiences. In it, they ask the Japanese Ministry of Education to change the exam system and they ask […]

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