It’s really simple too and does not need any resources. I hate using games which can’t do without soft balls, or baskets, or blindfolds. Well, this one needs no prep at all.

Walk into class. Draw a grid (3×3 or 4×4 or 5×5) on the board. Elicit question words and fill them into the grid randomly.

Divide the class into 2 teams. Give each team a symbol (e.g. , * , $ )

The team to go first chooses any square and uses the question word in it (e.g. how) to form a question. For e.g. How old is the teacher? or How old is Tracy (a student)?

If the other team guesses the correct answer, it can put its symbol in that square. If they don’t guess the correct answer, the team that asked the question can put its own symbol in the square. Now, the other team chooses a grid and asks a question. And so on..

The team with the most number of squares under its belt wins the game, or the team which gets 3 symbols in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) wins the game.

Gets the kids really competitive, as they ask wild questions to trick the other team.

And it works for all levels and ages – pre-intermediate to advanced, little kids to adults!

There are a few lists of useful ESL websites but as time went on, I had my own growing list of sites I referred to almost on a daily basis. There is such a wealth of information out there, but it’s frustrating how many websites need registration, or worse, contribution!

Heavens.. if I were an experienced teacher with worksheets and games to contribute to the ESL world, I wouldn’t be trolling the internet desperately searching for the same.

So here’s my list of the most useful ESL websites. Most of these don’t require registration and NONE of them require your contribution, thank goodness for that. Plus, I hate lists that go on for 43 pages, so this one is short and sweet. In all probability, whatever you need – be it games, grammar clarifications, worksheets, or ESL songs – you can find it at one of these addresses. But of course, if you wanna just troll.. that can go on forever.

Anyway, here goes -

GENERAL:

1. http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ The BOMB website – Instant lesson plans.
2. http://www.usingenglish.com/handouts/
3. http://bogglesworldesl.com
4. http://www.eslflow.com/Fillers.html Good stuff

READING:

1. http://www.rhlschool.com/reading.htm Reading Comprehension
2. http://www.miguelmllop.com/practice/intermediate/readingcomprehension/readingcompindex.htm
   
3. http://a4esl.org/q/h/holidays.html
   
4. http://esl.about.com/od/englishreadingskills/English_Reading_Comprehension_Skills_for_ESL_EFL_Learners.htm
   
5. http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/ Audio books and other free books

SONGS:

1. http://www.esl4kids.net/songs.html
   
2. http://www.songsforteaching.com/esleflesol.htm Songs for teaching
3. http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems.html Lots of songs and chants.. pretty awesome

GRAMMAR:

1. http://www.eslcafe.com/grammar/confusing_words_come_go.html Students in Vietnam really need this grammar point drilled into them
   over and over again
2. http://englishforyounglearners.org/funny/ English for Kids
3. http://www.eslflashcards.com/ Free flashcards
4. http://abcteach.com/directory/languages/eslenglish_as_second_language/esl_grammar/ A few free posters to explain grammar points

VOCABULARY:

1. http://www.eslall.com/exercises_66_l0.html Hangman Online finally! phew..
2. http://www.saksena.net/partygames/bingo/ Bingo Generator. Pretty Awesome!
3. http://www.learnersdictionary.com/ Webster’s ESL dictionary. Perfectly graded language to explain even the most complex words
4. http://www.english-test.net/

Sunset from our apartment in SJ

As I was growing up, and it wasn’t THAT long ago.. As I was growing up in the 90s in India, I always saw the sky studded with stars. I took them for granted. I never thought, then, of an eventuality where the stars would not sparkle any more.

In Guwahati, Patna, Ahmednagar, Dehradoon, Pune and Ferozepur.. the stars always shone.

And I missed them only when they were gone. I first noticed the starless skies in California, in San Jose, where the only thing in the sky is the moon. A bigass moon it used to be too. But strangely enough, no stars.

Of course it was the pollution in the SUV-ridden valley. The pollution made for glorious sunsets – pink, green, purple hues in the skies. And from our beautiful 9th floor apartment, we watched those sunsets every evening, marveling at myriad hues of light.

Until the sun dipped, and a lone star remained – all others too obscured by the same pollutants that catalysted the sunsets. We used to sleep watching the moon from our bedroom window. Through the clear glass, the moon sometimes looked so big it would fill up the entire window. But always, the absence of shimmering stars struck discordant, like the absence of seeds in watermelons (I never could get used to the seedless varieties).

And now, sitting on the roof in Saigon, gazing up at the skies, I see again the midnight gray skies, despairingly empty of any shimmer. Sometimes, on a really, really clear night, I can spot the tail of the Ursa Major. But it’s not enough.

The human race, as a whole, is culpable for the absence of stars in our lives. It’s as if the most beautiful citizens of the night have gone into self-exile, damning the human race with an impenetrable, opaque grayness.

I think, and I don’t know whether I’m right, but at this point of time in my life, I think, that it is really ‘every man for himself’. People must fend for themselves, and equally, we all must take the responsibility to do what’s best for us – for each one of us. Because what’s best for each one of us has to be best for the planet too. We have to fight the pollution, keep our running costs to a minimum, recycle and reuse, and move to the countryside if that’s what it takes to see the stars again.

I can’t wait to move to the countryside.

Nothing has really worked enough to excite my students. Has anyone had more success using the internet as a viable teaching tool to produce language in ESL classrooms?

Any suggestions will be welcome.

And, if anyone wants to use http://www.wix.com/ to have students create websites, I’ve got a whole tutorial written up. Just ping me.

I could just be a navel-gazer and say we had it in us all along, but. I’ve never been a navel-gazer after all, have I.. that title is reserved for my wonderful friend Bharti.

And here’s a wonderful moment for an aside. You see, I received an email from this wonderful navel-gazing friend of mine today. A one-liner – not to express her how much she misses me, but to ask whether I was pissed with her over something. Of course not, it was just so wonderful to hear from her, and however much I begrudge her for sending me a one-liner (you see, she’s a gifted writer), I sent her one myself, for which I should be duly ashamed.. a longer email is long overdue. Gosh, it’s been over a year since we met, which doesn’t seem really long, but it is. I long for the days when we spent endless hours in the sun (in Dilli winters) and endless hours under the Nescafe umbrella shade (in Dilli summer) yapping in parallel streams of conversations that only ‘us’ understood.

(Pulling myself away from the nostalgia)

Anyway, so the success of our cooking must lie in the flavors in vegetables and meat in Saigon. And perhaps, practice. After all, we have been cooking so much more than we used to. And enjoying it too. Just today, Pratik made guacamole, and I made my first attempt at an involtini.

Nothing close to the Italian gourmet dish with its fluid meat slices, crusted with bread crumbs and filled with expensive cheese, but it was involtini nonetheless. And since I’m such a bhulakkad, I think it might be useful for me to have the recipe written down somewhere, just so I don’t forget it, along with everything else I did on this absolutely gorgeous Saigon day.

Another ‘aside’ moment. I had a lazy morning in bed after two long days of teaching. We were out of brown bread and frozen parathas, so we got dressed first thing to go out and get some. The walk to the bakery, for the bread, and the supermarket, for the paratha, is just about a km or two, but it was such a beautiful day – the sun wasn’t even peeking through the clouds, the clouds weren’t even menacing and threatening to burst, and there was a very un-Saigonly breeze in the air – we decided to enjoy the morning and walk on. For four hours, we walked aimlessly, through downtown, exploring new-found alleyways and narrow streets. I bought a beautiful, if too loose on my much-thinner-than-2009 frame, blouse that I can’t wait to wear (shhh.. planning to wear it on our anniversary dinner night). Discovered a great banh mi seller – new favorite in this part of the town.. her bread was about an inch shorter than regular banh mis but the pate and meat floss and veges more than made up for it. When we got back home at half-two, both of us just flopped on the bed and almost dozed off.

And then when hunger struck again, P made me the guacamole, which we had with toasted dark rye bread. Very nice it was too (f-ed up Indian English syntax I louuu.. he he). In the meantime, I had been browsing the internet looking for new ways to use the lone eggplant in the fridge. I found some very interesting involtini recipes. Now, I didn’t have half the ingredients called for in the classic recipes but I do have an imagination, as some would say.

So here’s the involtini I made:

I took my lone, lean, mean eggplant.. not the stout ones I would’ve loved to have, this one one long and thin.. and sliced in diagonally in thin slices (not too thin, they’d break when being rolled). I smeared each slice with a mixture of fresh-ground pepper, jeera powder, and a little bit of oil. Now, I arranged all the slices in my spanking new Teflon pan and let them brown on both sides. Take them off the heat to cool.

I had two sausages wallowing in the freezer. While I was playing around with the browned eggplant, P grated the sausages and browned them nicely too. Now, I took the browned meat and added a triangle of cheap Vina cheese and mashed it through, forming a sticky, lumpy mixture. I took a few pinches of the mixture and patted it down in the middle of each eggplant, then rolling it and placing it seam-side down on a plate.

Voila! Instant Involtini.

Took about 15 mins. YUM.

FOR KIDS: Divide your class into small groups of 3-4. The smaller the group, the more speaking practice the kids get. Have the kids sit in a circle. Give each group a line to start with. For e.g. – There was a little boy/chicken/monkey. The first person in the group must come up with a sentence in the past tense to continue the story. And so on..

Monitor all the groups to make sure all the kids are using the past tense form of the verbs. I’ve used this with my pre-intermediate 8-10 year olds who are in the process of learning past tense.

To give them a little impetus, you can do a board race with past tense verbs on the board so students don’t run out of verbs to use.

FOR TEENS AND OLDER: In my experience, older intermediate and advanced ESL students tend to get somewhat bored with the somewhat slow pace of story telling. Make this a fun writing exercise for them. Give each student an A4 sheet with the first line of the story printed on top. For e.g. – There was a crazy boy with five feet. Each student writes the next line of the story on their papers and then passes it on to the person on their right. The person on the right must now write the next sentence in the story, also using past tense, or more complex verb forms. Pass it on again. And so on..

In the case of older students too, small groups works best so everyone gets a chance to contribute to familiar stories. Anything larger than 5 people in a group has never been quite as successful in my classes.

**Remember to reward the best story for added motivation!

Vietnam, however, has brought a major overhaul in the way I perceive fruits. I see sidewalk vendors sitting on low stools behind their beautiful piles of gleaming fruits and I have this urge to buy all and eat all right there. Large, firm oranges, glossy apples, giant pomelos, and the dragon of all fruits – the dragon fruit.

If there’s one thing I’ll mis about Vietnam – you can bet it’s not gonna be the traffic, or the smells, or the constant ‘hellos’ – it’s gonna be the dragon fruit.

The kind we get around here is the white flesh variety. I can’t wait to try the pink flesh dragon fruit, though I’ve heard it makes pee turn pink, and poo turn purple.. ugh.

What I love best about the dragon fruit is it’s mildly sweet flesh and the crunchiness of the tiny seeds. A whole dragon fruit for breakfast is the ideal way to start a day. It fills me up so I don’t feel the urgency to snack, and is not overly sweet. So much better than Post’s sweetened cereal that I used to obsess over back in the States. I used to particularly like Post’s Caramel flavored Honey Bunches of Oats. Used to be my regular breakfast. The sugary sweetness was so addictive, I sometimes had two bowls of cereal, one as soon as I woke up, and another halfway through to lunch.

Can’t help feeling it was a major contributor to my obscene weight gain during my two years in the States.

And now, barely 6 months into our move to Vietnam, both P and I have lost close to 15 kilos (yeah, we finally weighed ourselves.. found a pharmacy with a free weighing scale).

So here’s cheers to Vietnam and to the beautiful dragon fruit!

This is how you do it.

For one omelet, for one healthy person, with a healthy appetite:

Take a large, ripe avocado. It has to be squishy and mushy, not tender green. Scoop it out and mash it with a fork or whatever you may have at hand. If you scrub your hands well enough, you’re allowed to get messy

Now, add any seasonings you may want. I chose salt, fine fresh ground pepper, red chillies. Crack a couple eggs into the guacamole mixture and whip up a creamy paste. Pour this into your pan making sure to spread it out using a spatula. The paste will be slightly thicker than pancake batter.

Flip when one side is browned in patches.

Enjoy!

I think the loveliest thing about the avocado omelet is the fluffiness, apart from its beautiful Virginia green color.

Note to self  - must take pics next time, for the sake of this blog.

Take a flashcard to class. It could have any picture on it, but I prefer something with a scene, not a single object. The last time I took a picture of a blue lake surrounded by mountains and a small yellow fish jumping out of the lake.

Show your SS a half-second glimpse of the picture. Elicit what they saw and let them discuss and debate. Obviously, different SS will end up seeing different things. Flash the picture again, this time for a little longer, perhaps a second. This would give them a lot more to talk about.

In small groups, SS must start writing notes or a short story about the picture flashed at them.

Believe me, SS come up with some hilarious stories. One of my best classes – intermediates, ages 9-11 – came up with a story about the teacher’s (my) pet shark marrying the tiny yellow fish and then eating it up when it was hungry.

With younger, pre-intermediate kids, you could have them draw what they saw while talking about it. They still have to discuss what they saw and the best way to depict it on paper. e.g. The fish was very big. No, it was small. I think it was yellow. I think it was red.

Much as you want to step in and correct errors, the point of this exercise is to develop fluency, so try and restrain yourself, and let the students direct their discussion. As long as they don’t revert to L1, that is.

There was a time when I used to scrunch up my nose at the mere mention of baingan, or eggplant. Perhaps it was just that I had grown up on a weekly diet of awful baingan sabzi (which had healthy amounts of heeng, that I used to hate) and aloo baingan bhujiya, which was mildly tolerable. i never enjoyed baingan in any form until I met Pratik, or more accurately went to his Bilaspur home.

Now, I don’t know whether it’s true for all Bengali homes (would be too much of an essentialization if it were), but Pratik’s Bilaspur home is full of some very awesome Bengali cooks. Whether it’s his kaku, kaki, peeshi, or jethu,jethima – they’re all magicians once they enter the kitchen. It’s amazing how many spectacular dishes they turn out at meal times. That is not to say all the food is healthy. In fact, some of it is very deep fried. But oh my gawd, is it yummy!

It’s in that house that I first had properly deep fried baingan bhaja – melt-in-the-mouth deep fried eggplant slices marinated in plenty of spices.

Then, in the States we rediscovered baingan in different cuisines  - PF Chang‘s eggplant chicken, Gulzaar’s Lebanese babaganoush, Persian’s kash-e-badenjaan, and Trader Joe’s Eggplant Hummus.

I didn’t experiment much with cooking eggplant in the States, and I’m making up for lost time here in Vietnam. There are loads of eggplant dishes I love to make and eat now. But this one is my new obsession, perhaps coz it’s so simple and needs so little prep. And it can be as healthy as you make it.

For 4 servings with rotis, here’s what you need -

yogurt – 1/2 kg
eggplant – 2 large, or 6 small
coriander powder – 1 tsp
cumin powder- 1 tsp
red chili powder- 1 tsp
turmeric powder- 1 tsp
garam masala- 1/2 tsp
salt and pepper to taste
chopped garlic – 3-4 cloves
chopped chillies – to taste

Here’s what you gotta do -

1. Mix all the spices together in a large bowl. Slice the eggplant in 1/2 inch thick slices and toss them into the bowl with the spice mix. Mix well to coat all the slices. Let this sit for about 15 mins.
2. Spray some cooking oil into a non-stick pan (if you wanna keep it healthy), or add a small layer of oil to your pan. Shallow fry the eggplant until fully cooked. If you’re not using too much oil, monitor the heat regularly. If the heat is too high, you might end up with eggplant crisps. What you want is squishy cooked eggplant slices.
3. Remove the eggplant and transfer to a serving bowl.
4. Add the yogurt to the bowl which had all the spices in it. Swirl so the yogurt soaks in the leftover masala.
5. Pour the yogurt over the eggplant.
6. In a separate smaller pan, hat some oil. Add a pinch of cumin powder, garam masala, and chopped garlic, chillies. Let this sizzle for half a minute, and pour over the yogurt.
7. Yum yum!