Happy New Year! Attention! New blog! My mates in Bangkok have started this site to help people who want to teach English. They offer general advice, opinion and interviews with current teachers, to give an idea of what the job is… Read More ›
elt
Workstations for reviews (young learners)
I saw my boss use a simple workstation activity during a peer observation. It was a really good way to prepare students for their final task. I often include a quick 10-15 minute workstation activity in my YL classes now…. Read More ›
Q+A: Reading and listening texts for DipTESOL teaching practice
Someone contacted me on this blog asking a question about the DipTESOL. Q: Where/how did you find good listening and reading materials for the teaching practice? My answer: a) I recorded my own b) I sourced authentic materials on the… Read More ›
Teaching pronunciation: contractions
Contractions often come up as a pronunciation point in our Elementary level lessons. My students don’t have much trouble with ‘I am’ becoming ‘I’m’, but contractions with ‘you are’, ‘we are’, etc seem a bit harder to produce. I feel… Read More ›
An EFL book I’ve used: Incredible English
Last year our course book for primary level learners was Incredible English. This was the first coursebook I ever used for teaching primary learners, and I have to say I thought it was great. It seemed like the perfect book… Read More ›
TEFL sniglets – ‘tiglets’
sniglet (noun): any word that should be in the dictionary, but isn’t. (Hall, 1983). I’ve been watching some old sniglet sketches from Not Necessarily the News recently. This one is by far my favourite (sorry for lack of quality): Call… Read More ›
Highlighting success criteria to young learners
This post explains simple coding you could use to help learners notice key features of a model text. I know this type of stuff is common in primary schools, so I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s just not… Read More ›
Lesson idea – self-portraits
I love the book Being Creative by Chaz Pugliese. It’s full of great activities and ideas for personalising learning. It’s also a great book for new teachers to have around as it will encourage you to experiment. I first used… Read More ›
A rant about comprehension questions
On my module in materials development we’ve just looked at reading and listening tasks. We spoke about what makes good/bad comprehension questions. ‘Plain sense’ questions are seen as pretty ineffective, as they just test familiarity with sentence structure rather than… Read More ›
Breaktime games
Does anyone have any good suggestions for break time games? I have an interactive whiteboard and I’ve started to leave a game on the board (if I can trust the class with the equipment!). I prefer using things like Quizlet… Read More ›
ELT Planning 