In this blog, National Geographic Learning’s Alex Warren, explores what exactly the flipped classroom is and what benefits it can bring to English language classroom. Having looked at blended learning in my previous blog post, I thought that it would be worthwhile looking at a form of blended learning that
Welcome back to the Life around the World contest! The last post showed fish swim in the South Pacific off the popular holiday island of Bora Bora in French Polynesia. Surrounded by a lagoon and a coral reef, Bora Bora is famous for its overwater bungalows with glass floors that provide a
Repetition has got itself a rather bad name over the years and it is often avoided in many course materials. Why is this the case? Well, one reason may be purely economic. Drills mean a lot of recording and/or space on the page which makes for an expensive book. Similarly, repetition of
In this new monthly blog, National Geographic Learning’s in-house teacher trainer Alex Warren explores what’s going on in the world of ELT in his work around the region. With schools and universities going back to business and new adoption cycles at private language schools, it’s fair to say that September
In this first post in a series of blogs on the use of technology in the ELT classroom, National Geographic Learning’s in-house teacher trainer Alex Warren, looks to demystify and clarify what exactly is meant by the term blended learning. Here’s the thing: everyone thinks they know what blended learning
Welcome to the fourth post in this series. In this post, we will be looking at why images are so powerful in the language learning process and at bringing images into the classroom to develop our students’ creative thinking. The Social-Age You may have noticed, with the popularity of Instagram,
Welcome back! The Life around the World photo from last month depicted a man strolling along the Malecón in Havana, Cuba. Started in 1901 to protect Havana from the water, the wall stretches for 8 kilometers and is a popular place to take a stroll and enjoy street entertainment. In bad
Welcome to another month of the Life Around the World Contest! Last month’s photo shows rowers taking part in the 42nd annual Vogalonga in Venice, Italy. The Vogalonga is a famous non-competitive regatta that started in 1974 as a protest against motorboats. Its 30 km route goes through many picturesque parts
In May, National Geographic Learning gave me the opportunity to share via webinar my experience of learning English and becoming a TED speaker. It’s heart-warming to “see” hundreds of language educators joining from around the world, hungry to become better teachers, hungry to help their students learn English, the de
‘CREATIVITY Is intelligence having fun’ (Einstein) Don’t you just love that quote? In previous blog posts we talked about the importance of developing creative teaching and the need to start with ourselves, becoming more creative as teachers. In the last blog post we explored a framework to use with existing