English Comes Alive! Dynamic, Brain-Building Ways to Teach ESL and EFL

Do you like vigorous, quick-moving lessons with lots of classroom interaction? If so, you'll like English Comes Alive! Dr. Witherspoon opens with 60 favorite, wake-them-up activities. Then he writes about role playing, creative speaking, correcting bloopers, acting out words and sentences, outdoor activities, and much more. Drama, variety, student-teacher interaction: it's all here. And that's what it takes to ignite learning. Witherspoon has extensively tested these lessons during 20 summers of teaching overseas. His students have varied from teenagers to middle-aged professors, from clerks to physicians to non-native teachers of English. Whatever the age or profession of his students, he stresses conversation. "The act of talking," he says, "removes the fear of talking." And by removing that fear, students become fluent.

Mare's milk drew Dr. Witherspoon to the teaching of English, contaminated mare's milk. A colleague in China drank it, got a temperature of 104 F, and temporarily gave her class to him. He loved it! Thus he later took training in ESL and became a leader of teachers going abroad. As the leader, he collected rousing, easily remembered activities to present to his students and fellow teachers. Here you see the end product--ENGLISH COMES ALIVE! Witherspoon taught biology before English, so his earlier books, audiovisuals, and computer programs are mainly in that field. They include The Living Laboratory (Doubleday), The Functions of Life (Addison-Wesley), Human Physiology (Harper & Row), and From Field to Lab (TAB McGraw-Hill).