Critical thinking is seen as an increasingly valued skill to teach students in the 21st Century, but the first thing we need to ask is what exactly is it? Very often critical thinking can become a complaint that people aren’t thinking like me! Some definitions have a focus on being
Talk to teachers about using TED Talks in the English language classroom and you generally get one of two responses – “I love using them and my students love them” or “I love using them, but my students find them too difficult”. Often, these statements are followed by something along
As a continuation from his previous blog post, teacher trainer, Alex Warren shares four more ways to ensure a positive learning experience to develop motivation for teen learners within the ELT classroom. 1. Learner-Centered Learning Take a step back from being the sage on the stage and become the guide
Flipped learning has not only been gaining popularity rapidly in recent years, but it has also become one of the biggest trends in classroom teaching. While having students be actively involved in their own learning, flipped learning can also lead to dramatic improvements in students’ academic performance (Talbert, 2017). Moreover,
Will you be at the TESOL 2019 convention in Atlanta, Georgia from March 12th-March 15th? We are thrilled to be sponsoring the opening keynote speaker, Dr. David Harrison. Dr. Harrison is an anthropologist, linguist, National Geographic Fellow and co-director of the Society’s Enduring Voices Project. If you’re attending TESOL, be sure
In his monthly blog, National Geographic Learning’s in-house teacher trainer Alex Warren explores what’s going on in the world of ELT on his travels around the region. —- It’s no coincidence that no matter where you are in the world, teachers face exactly the same problems. I’ve spoken with teachers
How can we get our learners talking? A combination of factors can often inhibit our students from speaking out loud – fear of making mistakes in front of their peers; not knowing what to say; not feeling motivated or interested in the topic. If we want to engage our students
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
Many coursebooks provide word lists of ‘new’ words that appear in the unit. Sometimes these are with a translation and they may also have an example or phonetic forms. The word list is an obvious resource for repetition. I don’t use the word ‘review’ here, because that implies that we
A few years ago, I was doing a session on technology in the classroom with a group of teachers and I noticed there was a clear split between them. There were those embracing it and seeing it as a powerful addition to their teaching practice and then there were those