Any teacher knows students like to have fun, both inside and outside the classroom. And so we have to bear this in mind when planning our classes – lessons need to be fun. As Plato famously said nearly two and half thousand years ago, “Do not train children to learning
The Power of Projects
I remember the first project I ever did very clearly. It was with a class of intermediate level young teenage learners, and I was a little nervous about how it might go, as with anything you’re trying for the first time. There were lots of questions in my mind –
Dictation Re-imagined
Many moons ago when I was learning French at school, our teacher always insisted on doing dictations. He absolutely loved them, and yes, you guessed it, we hated them. Apart from anything else they were boring and repetitive and we didn’t really see the point in them. So imagine my
Song Time
Students love music, and they love doing songs in class. It’s small wonder then that coursebooks are incorporating songs or offering songs on supplementary photocopiable material. However, these are rarely the songs that students want to listen to. Students are far more motivated when the songs they do in class
Classroom Ice-Breakers for English Language Teaching
Welcome to the first in our series of posts on activities for short courses – Ice-Breakers for the ELT Classroom! Join us over the coming weeks for posts on various activity ideas – from grammar games to projects and songs! It’s that time of year again when students are coming
Interview: Anna Hasper on Differentiation in the ELT classroom
Listen to our interview with Anna Hasper on differentiation in the ELT classroom and her strategies to manage this – to ‘enable not label’. Have you read Anna’s article here?
There’s Only One of You: How to Cater for Differentiation in Young Learner Classes
On my first day teaching English to a class of young learners I walked into a classroom full of 6-year-olds. As the young teacher I was then I had no idea of how different one 6-year-old could be from another. I mean, from the outside they all looked the same;
Interview: Dan Barber on Why to Use TED Talks in your ELT Classroom
Listen to our interview with Dan Barber talking about how TED Talks really do make good English lessons and download Dan’s FREE lesson plan around Rana el Kaliouby’s TED Talk on an app that can read your emotions! Have you read Dan’s article here?
Six Reasons TED Talks Make Great English Lessons
TED became popular around the same time as Twitter, so it may come as a surprise to the millions of enthusiastic fans to meet people who haven’t heard of it. TED Talks aren’t quite as ubiquitous as funny-cat videos but they provide an intelligent balance to that more frivolous side
Interview: Hugh Dellar on Speaking Out for Spoken English
Listen to Hugh Dellar talk about his thoughts on spoken English, how YouTube can actually be useful in English language teaching, and how it’s OK to let your students speak at a higher level! Have you read Hugh’s article?