Last ramble before I’m back to sharing lesson ideas. I’ve been re-reading Russ Mayne’s blog on evidence based ELT. I remember being quite into it in the lead up to my diploma and agreed with (what I saw as) his… Read More ›
reflections
Acoustic blur, soundshapes, speech streams
I’ve been thinking about an interaction I had in class last week. I’ve transcribed it roughly below. For a bit of context, the language point was going to for future plans, and the language had been presented through a listening…. Read More ›
Subject knowledge, jargon, learners
This is a post aimed at candidates about to take a diploma course, but is still relevant to all. It also loosely connects to Sandy’s recent post about mistakes you’ve made in class (click here).
Article for Modern English Teacher: using Quizlet in teen classes
Here’s my article for the latest Modern English Teacher, April 2018. I did a bit of action research on using Quizlet in class, which I mentioned before in this post. Sorry about the graphs, Scribd makes them look a bit… Read More ›
How I plan with coursebooks
Coursebooks. Arrgh. I write and read so many rants about them. Global coursebooks are too ‘catch-all’, they’re not aligned with what we know about second language acquisition, they’re a straightjacket, the images promote certain ideals, the content is too diluted,… Read More ›
Edtech exploration
I’ve come across loads of edtech sites/tools recently. I’ll forget them all if I don’t start writing them down. Here’s a random mix of stuff I’ve come across or have been using. Things I tried in class last term… Quizlet… Read More ›
Making things up… during observed lessons
Last weekend I had a pretty scary lesson observation… I’ve been observed more at British Council Thailand than in any other teaching job, which is to me a good thing. There have been formal observations twice a year, observations during… Read More ›
Students that make my job easy
Full marks to my awesome teen class last week. The work they produced was fantastic and I’m so proud of them. We did a short project based on describing graphs. It started off with scanning tasks and a few activities… Read More ›
Classroom silence and digital natives
Svetlana Kandybovich recently wrote a post about allowing students thinking time. It’s full of useful ideas for the classroom and well worth a read. Something else worth reading is ‘The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World’ by… Read More ›
IATEFL 2017: Does feedback work?
A summary of Loraine Kennedy’s main points from the talk ‘In one ear and out the other: does feedback work?’ You can access the session here (again, won’t embed). Orientation This talk was specifically about in-service feedback for teachers, not… Read More ›
ELT Planning 