I met Dean and Emma and their then-two-year-old daughter Liz (not their real names) in 1992 and we’ve been good friends ever since. When I first started socializing with them, I was struck by how comfortable they were as parents and how well they integrated their young child into their
When I started teaching English in the 1980s, the “culture” in ELT tended to focus on the cultures of two specific countries: The USA and the UK. In London, you had red double-decker buses and in New York, you had the subway. British people ate fish and chips, Americans preferred
One great thing about TED Talks is that they cover a huge variety of interesting topics – big ideas that will engage both you and your learners. But sometimes, they can be fairly technical. Some teachers hesitate to bring technical material into the classroom because they feel they don’t have
According to the internet, video is processed 60,000 faster than text – an amazing, but seemingly unfounded claim repeated over and over online. Still, the old proverb A picture’s worth a thousand words isn’t wrong, and as teachers, we understand that one of the great things about video is the
In my previous post, I wrote about playing TED Talks without the sound as a simple hack to control language level. But what happens if we leave the sound on and turn off the pictures? Does that have the opposite effect and raise the level of the input? Not necessarily.
A simple hack to control language level In the first post of this blog series TED Talks work for all levels: Try it!, I talked about how TED Talks can be used in the classroom for students at any level, as long as the activities that support them are level-appropriate.
What’s the best level for introducing TED Talks? All levels, including beginners. Teachers and learners love TED Talks because they feature big, fascinating ideas that learners want to talk about. And with the right TED Talk, one that offers a big idea and the opportunity for students to learn and