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Using a genre approach for writing
As we saw in the last post, all ‘real life’ writing is embedded in a social situation: we write for a specific purpose and audience. We can, of course, also do this in the classroom, but often we are...
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Even more statements on lesson planning: ELT Chat summary
Photo Credit: Diego Cupolo via Compfight cc The inspiration for the recent #eltchat on lesson planning came largely from @michaelegriffin’s post 29 statements about lesson plans. It seems that people...
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Authentic or graded? Is there a middle way?
One of the often used arguments against published coursebooks is that the texts, especially at lower levels, tend to have been specially written. When I first started writing coursebooks I was very...
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More than just a worksheet: how to write effective classroom materials.
Many teachers produce their own materials, either from necessity or to provide something more tailored to the needs of their students. However, writing materials for a whole lesson, which really engage...
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Motivating students, staying motivated as a teacher and other things
Thin on the ground? As you may have noticed, my posts have been a little thin on the ground lately. I’m planning to remedy this when the project I’m working on slows down enough for me to catch my...
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Breaking the ice: a collection of getting to know you activities
Click here to go to my latest blog post for the British Council Teaching English site, with lots of getting to know you activities for new classes, or more established ones.
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Realia
@janetbianchi for eltpics. A link to my new post for the British Council Blog, on using realia, or real, physical objects, in class. Find out why a trainee teacher brought a chicken pie and a beef pie...
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More ice breakers for the ELT classroom
For many of us it’s that time of year again when we are about to start new classes. Learning a foreign language can be stressful, so we want our students to feel at ease with each other, and with us....
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Feedback: the most important part of any exercise?
When you’re preparing a lesson you probably give a lot of thought to the tasks and exercises you plan to include. But how much thought do you give to what happens (or should happen) between the...
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Tips and techniques for CELTA teaching practice
I’m an advocate for CELTA. It isn’t perfect, and you certainly can’t consider the job finished when you pass, but in my experience it’s an excellent way to pick up a lot of skills quickly. The...
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