Failure is a word and a concept that our students often fear. In today’s society, with its focus on success, celebrity, fame and wealth, failure is linked with a sense of not being good enough. But actually, failure is a hugely important part of learning. By failing, we see where
In this month’s blog post I want to look at why and how we can use real life topics to engage our teenage students. As teachers and materials writers, I think we can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of language as a set of structures and lexical sets
In my previous post in this series on quick and simple ways to motivate our students, I looked at setting measurable targets for tasks and classroom activities, the idea being that giving students a specific outcome to aim for leads to a sense of achievement. Part of meeting a measurable
Sometimes you can tell that your students are going to doze off as soon as the lesson starts. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, despite making a ‘brilliant beginning,’ you can sense the energy levels start to flag as your lesson progresses. A quick switch, getting your students up and out of
I want a house with a swimming pool. That’s what a friend said to me during my first week at college. It was my first understanding that we are all motivated by different things. And it’s as true of language learners as it is of mountain climbers, entrepreneurs or ex-smokers.
Here’s a question for you. How often do you use the listening scripts in the back of the book for follow-up work or additional activities? Be honest! Now, I’m going to guess most of you are thinking ‘not often’, and you wouldn’t be alone. From my experience of doing countless
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
Listen to Tom Fast explain in more detail his guiding principles for teaching English and the three things he’s learned as a teacher! Have you read Tom’s article?
In 2014, I started writing a textbook with National Geographic Learning that was part of a series for teens. For six months, before any writing took place, our team of authors and editors conducted lengthy discussions on the content and methodologies that would go into the books. This gave me
When I was 11 years old, my father gave me my first camera and took me to a friend’s backyard garden to photograph birds. Sitting in a small shelter with my eye pressed against the camera’s viewfinder, I watched as bright red cardinals and brilliantly colored blue jays landed on