A collection of information, ideas and inspiration for ELT teachers
Category: How To’s
A while back, I summarised an article for ELT Research Bites exploring the reasons why language teaching professionals rarely access primary research reports. The main findings were that practitioners may have negative perceptions of research as irrelevant, they may face practical constraints such as expensive pay walls and a lack of time to find and … Continue reading How to access ELT-relevant research
What do you do in those last 5 minutes of class when you've finished everything that was planned? Or when energy levels hit a low during a lesson? Or in that lull while the next student gets ready to present, or whatever? We all know about the need to revise and recycle new vocabulary in … Continue reading Worksheet-free Vocab Revision Activities
Since October I've had a student in my class who is practically deaf, especially if she hasn't got her hearing aid. The class that she's taking with me is actually an Oral Skills class; it's the first class of an EAP programme and focuses on presentation and seminar skills. Clearly, not being able to hear … Continue reading Teaching a deaf student EAP oral skills
Today, at the TEASIG / CRELLA conference in Luton, I had the pleasure of hearing two talks by Dr John Field. He was focussing on creating L2 listening tests, but a lot of what he said will be useful for those of us writing ELT listening materials for teaching, too! Based on what John talked … Continue reading Common problems with common listening tasks
There's been a lot of talk about this recently - getting the balance right. The balance between men and women, between native and non-native speakers at ELT events and conferences. I've fairly recently joined the committee of an IATEFL SIG. I'm on the events team. So these kinds of 'balance' topics are more pertinent to … Continue reading Getting the (Conference Speaker) Balance Right
How did we manage to write an ebook in just 14 weeks? My British cultural studies class rocks! Here's how!
Jennifer Macdonald's post "Friends don’t let friends use bad dictionaries" was an inspiration! It’s an issue that frustrates me every semester anew! As I posted as a comment on Jennifer's post, last term, I even made the (joke) rule that if someone uses dict.cc or leo.org (translating tool thingies for German – English) on their phone or … Continue reading Showing students what makes good dictionaries good
