Talk about a weird situation. I started a new teaching job on April 1st. I haven’t met my students face-to-face (well, you know, apart from virtually). I haven’t met my colleagues face-to-face either. I haven’t set foot in my new… Read More ›
eal
All change!
It’s the end of an era! I’ve spent nearly five years with the same language school (British Council) here in Thailand, which is a pretty long stint. Overall, it’s been a good experience. I mentioned before that the pay and… Read More ›
Types of curriculum
Leslie Owen Wilson’s useful post on types of curriculum is well worth a read. Before I read it my idea of ‘a curriculum’ was narrow. I thought of it as a group of subjects that are taught, plus the skills… Read More ›
12 conversation strategies worth teaching
One thing my CELTA course skimmed over was how to develop learners’ conversation strategies. There seems to be a good amount of focus on conversation strategies in recent coursebooks. However, at times I find these can be problematic. Models of… Read More ›
ELT Twitter chats
I did a digital reset of my Twitter account recently. I now see a much wider range of content than before, and have found loads of awesome EAL/ELL/ESL teachers to follow. One really useful thing about the reset is that… Read More ›
Lesson idea: Viral videos
This was a context builder for a sequence of lessons on viral videos, viral ad campaigns, viral marketing, etc. It’s similar to the idea I shared for introducing recipes. Anyway, used this with B1+ teens, worked well. Task 1 Find… Read More ›
Materials writing news and views, February 2020
I’ll hopefully keep this update going this year. Bit busy at the moment so here are a few very quick updates and some useful links. New releases Express Publishing are promoting a new book English for 21st Century Skills (Mavridi… Read More ›
Book review: The Learning Power Approach
The Learning Power Approach (LPA) proposes that teachers encourage learners to cultivate an array of traits which are seen as beneficial for lifelong learning. These traits, or learning dispositions, include various cognitive, metacognitive and behavioural strategies/processes/habits – summarised on the… Read More ›
Wordwall with young learners
I wrote an overview of Wordwall last year. Here’s a more practical example of how I actually use Wordwall, rather than just as a load of games… Well, still as a load of games actually, just in a more purposeful… Read More ›
Review: Ready to Run video platform (DLA)
This review was first published in the Winter 2019 edition of the ETAS Journal. Many thanks to ETAS for allowing the review to appear on this blog. Ready to Run, from Digital Learning Associates (DLA), is a platform providing video-based… Read More ›
ELT Planning 