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Author: John Hughes

John Hughes is an award-winning ELT author with over thirty years’ experience of teaching and teacher training. He has worked with learners and teachers from all over the world and is a well-known conference presenter. For National Geographic Learning, he is an author on the course series Pathways, Third Edition; Life, Third Edition; World English, Third Edition; World Link, Fourth Edition; Success with Business, and Total Business. He’s also co-author of the methodology title, Critical Thinking in ELT. Currently, he is specializing in materials writing training at www.writingeltmaterials.com.

A before/while/after you watch approach to planning a video lesson

11 November 2019 John Hughes Teaching Adults, Teaching Teens 4 comments

In a new series of posts on the subject of using video with language learners, I plan to look at a range of issues relating to this area of English language teaching such as the criteria for selecting video, how different genre of video lend themselves to different task types

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How to motivate learners with visible goals

23 May 2019 John Hughes Teaching Adults Leave a comment

Why do we have goals? As teachers, we are encouraged to have goals for our lessons. Some teachers even write the goals on the board at the beginning of a lesson, so students can see them. For other teachers, their goals (also sometimes called aims) are written at the top

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culture

Personalizing Culture

28 January 2019 John Hughes Teaching Adults, Teaching Teens 2 comments

If you’re familiar with materials from National Geographic Learning you’ll know that they include a lot of images, texts, and topics about people and places from different countries. For this reason, you can often use the cross-cultural aspects of the material to help your students build their intercultural awareness alongside

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culture

How To Personalize Culture

21 May 2018 John Hughes Teaching Adults, Teaching Teens 2 comments

If you’re familiar with materials from National Geographic Learning you’ll know that they include a lot of images, texts and topics about people and places from different countries. For this reason, you can often exploit the cross-cultural aspects of the material and help your students build their intercultural awareness alongside

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Pre-intermediate

How to integrate critical thinking at lower levels

7 March 2018 John Hughes Teaching Adults, Teaching Teens 7 comments

Critical thinking is often associated with teaching students at higher language levels. Perhaps it’s because the kinds of problem-solving tasks which are associated with critical thinking require a level of English at Intermediate or above. Maybe it’s also that the kind of language used to describe critical thinking skills includes

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survey

A global survey of critical thinking in the ELT classroom

9 February 2018 John Hughes Teaching Adults Leave a comment

As many teachers who use ELT titles from National Geographic Learning will be aware, critical thinking is a key feature of the materials and informs our approach to English Language teaching. Now, Life authors Paul Dummett and John Hughes are carrying out research into how critical thinking is applied and

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personalization

Personalization: From ‘I’ to ‘you’ to ‘we’

21 November 2017 John Hughes Teaching Adults 2 comments

In the two previous posts in this series looking at personalization in the classroom, I focused on the individual learner and how teachers and materials can make the language and topics of the classroom relevant to him or her. However, personalization isn’t just about making sentences using the words ‘I,

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personalization

Personalization: Tiny steps at the shallow end or diving in at the deep end

18 October 2017 John Hughes Teaching Adults 2 comments

The previous post in this series looked at how personalization in the classroom helps to build rapport, add authenticity and make classroom activities more motivating. It’s an aspect of teaching that is normally seen as beneficial and desirable. However, integrating personalization into your teaching is not without ‘risk’, according to

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personalization

Personalization in the ELT Classroom

19 September 2017 John Hughes Teaching Adults 4 comments

Why do we assume personalization is good for language learning? The idea of ‘personalizing’ language learning naturally has positive connotations; after all, an ‘impersonal classroom’ doesn’t sound like a very pleasant place to be! But in what ways does personalization actually enhance learning? Primarily, personalization in the classroom can lead

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National Geographic Learning Author John Hughes: Interview on Visual Literacy

Interview: John Hughes on Visual Literacy in the Language Classroom

20 January 2017 John Hughes Teaching Adults, Teaching Teens 3 comments

Listen to author John Hughes discuss how an understanding of visual literacy can help teachers make effective use of images in the English classroom and students decipher visuals in English. Have you read John’s article on the subject?

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21st Century Skills (29) Academic Skills (11) Adult Education (7) assessment (3) Blended Learning (4) Bringing Learning to Life (3) College and Career Readiness (3) communication skills (7) Content Based English (4) Creativity in the Classroom (7) Critical Thinking (29) Effective English (5) EMI (1) Exam Preparation (8) Games (15) Global Citizenship (18) Grammar (5) Interview (6) Learning Moments (10) Listening Skills (2) Literacy (6) mediation (2) Motivating Learners (34) multiple literacies (3) National Geographic Explorer (14) National Geographic Explorers (1) Online Teaching (22) Personalization (8) photography (24) Projects (10) Question and Answer (1) Reading Skills (17) SDGs (8) Series (16) Songs (2) Speaking (9) sustainability (11) Teaching Lexically (3) Technology (13) TED Talks (15) trends (1) Visual Literacy (6) Vocabulary (3) Voices from the Field (2) Writing (2)
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