Speaking

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 […]

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 […]

Animating Stories

<![CDATA[I have been playing with story animation tools for a long time, learning from colleagues' blogs and links on Twitter.  Recent posts include Burcu Akyol’s  4-3-2-1 Action! Online Tools For Making Movies in the Language Classroom and Shelly Terrell’s presentation on Digital Storytelling which includes some excellent ideas. Here are […]