Welcome to Heads Up English, my website devoted to providing materials for upper-level EFL learners around the world.

Who am I? My name is Chris Cotter and I have been teaching EFL in Japan for ten years. At present I design materials and training programs for a nationwide chain of schools here, teach at a university, and put together materials for this site. As you might guess, I also don't get much sleep!

Each week, I provide two original lessons based on world events - one for advanced students, and the other for upper-intermediate students. The lessons may be quickly previewed online, or they may be downloaded and printed out for classroom use and homework.

A word about the materials: Each lesson contains more activities than anyone could possibly use in a 90-minute class. Use only the activities that interest you, and that will challenge your students. This allows you to construct a unique lesson geared towards your students' needs every time. There are also lesson plans available for listening, speaking, and vocabulary acquisition for each week's news lesson. Lessons from previous weeks will always remain on the site. You can jump directly to the news lessons:

Advanced Current Events Lesson
Upper-Intermediate Current Events Lessons

You can also find questions and exercises dedicated to a specific skill. These can be used in the classroom as supplemental material, but you may want to assign some of the work for self-study by your students. Different topics and activities are available for advanced and upper-intermediate students at:

Advanced Skill Builders
Upper-Intermediate Skill Builders

Any questions, comments, ideas, or requests can be directed to:



And if you have more questions, take a look at the Frequently Asked Questions page.
Chris Cotter