The Book Next Door
Australian ESL materials for adults and young adults
2025 Sep 25

Displaying EAL resources: An inspiring library example

Librarian Josephine Greay from North Metro TAFE with a Tabletop English display

When I created Tabletop English (a set of printable games and activities), I assumed that teachers would browse through and print out what they needed, as they needed it. Which is fine, but what about a centre or a college with multiple lecturers? How can they make sure there’s not an excess of printing, or that communal copies don’t disappear … Continue reading

2018 Apr 26

The Language Centre bookshop: now in North Perth!

Annie Folk at the Language Centre bookshop

[QUICK TIP: If you’re simply wanting to contact Annie, her phone number is 0407 386 453. Her website is https://languag1.wixsite.com/language-centre] There’s a sign ready to go up at Annie Folk’s new North Perth bookshop, “The Language Centre: Serving Perth since 1982.” That’s a lot of book-selling experience. I interviewed Annie back in 2013, but in 2014 she had to close down … Continue reading

Carmelina Lanza-Volpe

Hooray for language bookshops! Last term I went to the QATESOL-QCAL ‘mini conference’, where I met Carmelina Lanza-Volpe for the first time (we’d spoken on the phone, but I’d never got to her Brisbane shop). She gave a great presentation on grammar, but also ran a scaled-down version of her bookshop, The Language People, in the foyer of the conference … Continue reading

The Garage Sale book and the Garage Sale Trail flyer

The Garage Sale Trail is happening on October 21/22 – an Australia-wide community event. So if you’re using the reading book The Garage Sale to practise the language of recounts, now could be a perfect time to link that reading with some community awareness. A confession – I actually hadn’t heard of the Garage Sale Trail before spotting the flyer at … Continue reading

How do ESL Extras support pre-employment English? This is a question I expect to have to answer, with the new AMEP contract coming soon – and of course it’s already an issue for anyone who teaches on the SEE program. (For anyone outside Australia reading this, these are national government programs providing language and literacy training. The Adult Migrant English … Continue reading

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