Watching Young Learners at Work: From Practice to Principle
This post is based on three activities on video with a young class in their first year of English videotaped as part of a training project for a course on […]
Student made games
Market produced and teacher-prepared games have an important role to plan in the language classroom. Enjoyable and engaging, they draw attention away from too much preoccupation with accuracy and create […]
The Giant Storymaker – Ideas for a Hundred Million Stories
<![CDATA[Storytelling is one of the most important acts of communication. Every day, in our contacts with friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances we share stories, anecdotes – things that happened to […]
Defragmenting Foreign Language Learning
Presenting language in small fragments hoping that they will one day automatically transform into fluent near-native talk may not be enough. My talk at TESOL Greece highlighted some ways in which skilled performers achieve excellence and focused on practical activities promoting holistic language learning using a variety of free online […]
Thinking about Discipline – Part 2
In the first blog post of this series on discipline, I looked at some of the causes of unruly behaviour in the classroom and got started on the path of what teachers can do proactively! I think that one of the best quotes I always remember, is one by my […]
Getting teens to keep talking
<![CDATA[The noontime #ELTchat on 09/03/2011 focused on how to motivate teens to extend their speaking activities, so as to go beyond “I agree” “I disagree”. A numbers of issues was raised such as motivation, being relaxed, students’ silence etc. This summary was contributed by Anastasia Kararoudi – @tasoulazac on Twitter […]
The Art of Being Creative
What is involved in the creative process? It has been suggested that creativity (or, as it is also termed, divergent production) is not a single unifying ability but it is […]
Animating your Coursebook
<![CDATA[ Made with wordle.net What is the secret message in the Wordle above? Have you guessed it? If you are pretty happy following your coursebook page after page and exercise after exercise without omitting anything, then this post may read somewhat strange to you. If on the other hand, you have spent […]
Playing Games or Being Serious?
<![CDATA[Most learners enjoy playing games; most teachers use games convinced of their value for language learning. This short, post aims to give you ideas for games which deal with subject matter which is usually considered ‘ heavy’ or ‘ very serious’ and not usually dealt with in such a light-hearted […]
Visual Delights & Spike Milligan
<![CDATA[I am a big time fan of Spike Milligan, who has nothing whatsoever to do with foreign language teaching or foreign language teacher education but who has given me hours of great delight and, at times, inspiration for materials or activity design. In 1985, he brought out a book called […]