English Teaching Forum 2025, Volume 63, Number 4
Discover how to create and use flexible single-point rubrics for student-friendly feedback and assessment ... lead your students through the process of writing—and potentially publishing—short “letters to the editor” addressed to news outlets ... develop beginner-level students’ speaking fluency and conversation-sustaining skills ... practice 21st-century skills by creating engaging Human Mind Maps ... and much more.
The cover shows Scraps, an image of a nineteenth-century scrap quilt from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Scrap quilts have historically been used to represent communities and tell a story through symbolic messages and imaging. This quilt, created in Georgia by Elizabeth Salter Smith, uses nineteenth-century fabric featuring anchors and horses—symbols that often represent the strength and resilience of African American communities in the South. The combination of unique geometric shapes and novelty fabrics creates a rich retelling of the community behind this quilt.
Resources In This Collection
In this article, author Melanie C. González explores single-point rubrics, a simple, adaptable assessment tool that can offer student-friendly formative and summative feedback in many ELT contexts. Single-point rubrics use one list of evaluative criteria to describe how learners can demonstrate proficiency or success; this flexible rubric style also provides space for individualized, growth-focused instructor feedback in relation to each success criterion.
This guide is designed to enrich your reading of the articles in the current issue. You may choose to read the issue on your own, taking notes or jotting down answers to the discussion questions in this guide. Or you may use the guide to explore the articles with colleagues.
Author Kamran Akhtar Siddiqui shares a project plan for engaging students in writing short opinion-based “letters to the editor” on current topics and for helping students submit their work to print or online news publications. The article describes key steps: analyzing model texts, selecting an issue, creating drafts, giving and receiving peer feedback, and using online editing tools to prepare texts for publication via an authentic news outlet or class e-book
Author Shinya Koga introduces a set of flexible strategies and tools designed to foster learners’ ability to sustain a conversation, even in beginner-level or young-learner contexts. The author’s approach combines structured—yet adaptable—resources with engaging activities, helping students build confidence and fluency while making conversations enjoyable.
To celebrate the innumerable contributions of past English Teaching Forum Editor-in-Chief Tom Glass, we are pleased to re-share his creative Human Mind Maps activity. This engaging, movement-based technique requires students to think critically and creatively as they communicate and collaborate to identify and explain conceptual relationships.
This article profiles Oman’s national professional development hub for public school teachers, principals, and supervisors. The authors describe the pedagogical enhancements and professional development support the Institute’s more than 30 ELT trainers provide throughout the country.
English can sometimes be a strange language … can you spot the “troublemakers” by identifying sneaky, silent letters?
