The Alphabet Publishing Blog

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Pragmatics and Scripts
The Editors

What does “I was, like…” mean?

In the spring, I had the great pleasure of seeing a bit of David Crystal talk at the 2020 Digital Hay Festival. (By the way, if anyone is looking to for a great Christmas present, his latest book looks amazing!) and I was rather pleased to hear him, as a

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Activity
The Editors

Embodied Mind: The Dancer and Dance and Grammar

“How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Yeats famously wrote. And in the dance of human communication, the body plays a role. Language is more than word choice or grammar, and even more than prosody. Gesture, body language, facial expression are all tools of meaning-making. This is why

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Activity
The Editors

Warmers for Online Classes

Community building is important in any classroom, but warmers for online class are particularly important as students feel physically distanced from each other. Many teachers who were forced online by the COVID-19 pandemic learned that right away. And I hope as you read this article, you are back to the

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Basic Minecraft for Kids
The Editors

Easy Kitchen Furniture in Minecraft

Whether you build a cool house, castle, or tower in Minecraft, you need furniture and decorations to make it look nice. Here are some ideas for easy kitchen furniture in Minecraft. You can put them in your house or restaurant or even an office building setting (and click here for

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Drama for Language Learning
The Editors

Set Your Roleplay to Music

Looking for a way to make your roleplays more engaging and also help students explore communication tools more effectively? Try music. We all know the power of music to set a mood. Television shows and movies exploit this all the time. You probably know the famous theme from the film

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Creative Classrooms
The Editors

Resources for Distance Learning

We know we aren’t the first and we probably won’t be the last people you hear from to talk about our resources for distance learning (or that work well teaching online). But we assume if you’re reading this blog, or getting this email that means you like what we do.

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Creative Classrooms
The Editors

Get Students Writing and Talking!

As more and more teachers are turning to online teaching and distance learning for the forseeable future, and students may be considering self-study options, I’d like to introduce our free prompt generating tool, English Prompts, with three different kinds of prompts: creative writing, speaking, and role-plays. The first, Stories Without

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Drama for Language Learning
The Editors

Kinesthetic Grammar Activities: Getting Grammar on the Move!

We’re thrilled to be publishing a book on Kinesthetic Grammar Activities from Alice Savage and Colin Ward. Kinesthetic grammar is a great way to practice language dynamically. The benefits are many: Vary the pace of the classroom Help teach nonverbal language and gesture in communication Activate embodied mind and improve

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Resource
Walton Burns

Time Management as a form of Self-Care

A recent post on Patrice’s blog about time management made me stop and think. Like many in the education business, I never feel like I have enough time to do all my work. And then there’s everything else that needs to be done outside of work: paying bills, keeping the

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Classroom Management
The Editors

The Art of Exams

There’s a lot of takeaways in Sharon Hartle’s new blog post, THE ART OF GATHERING… EVEN FOR EXAMS. I think assessment and examinations are a neglected topic in TESOL/EFL circles. Particularly in a world where examinations are necessary, there’s rarely much reflection on what exams mean and their purpose. As Sharon

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