Learning to Teach Better

Hi everyone! I hope you're well and still come on here from time-to-time to look back at the great course we did. I'm going to be co-editing a Special Supplement called Current Trends in Teaching Vocabulary for the ETAS Journal next Spring and would LOVE to hear your thoughts and practical ideas! Please see the Call for Papers link attached and let me know if you want to get involved in this exciting edition. It would be great to have you aboard and your expertise will feature alongside a number of well-known names in ELT (including Penny, too, hopefully :-) ) The deadline is September 30th so no rush. Looking forward to hearing from you! https://www.e-tas.ch/journal/calls-submissions/etas-journal-spring-2019-call-papers

A 2017 news quiz for back to school! http://leoxicon.blogspot.com/2017/12/news-quiz-2017.html

For anyone fascinated by languages! I'm currently reading his book, The Etymologicon and it's brilliant. http://blog.inkyfool.com/

You can check the common usage of words using Google Ngram and trace its history since the 1800s until 2008. I hope they continue it to count the last 10 years, as I am sure there have been some significant declines and increases. My students often say "persons", so I have used this as an example. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=persons&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpersons%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=persons&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share&direct_url=t1;,persons;,c0

Another website I have encouraged my students to use for writing practice is Write and Improve by Cambridge English. They choose a topic to write about - beginners, intermediate, advanced or Just for Fun, write their text then get instant feedback for how to improve it before submitting a final copy. There is also a section for IELTS. https://writeandimprove.com https://writeandimprove.com

For those of you teaching young learners and teens and you'd like to give your students some authentic writing and reading practice, we have used this digital pen pal website before. You can choose a course for your class to join then it matches them with other students from around the world who are similar in age and interests and can be as young as 8 and as old as 18. They then interact by responding to each other's comments and questions on the course. There is a great range of topics such as Fake News, Protecting the Planet, Robotics, Festivals and Cultures lasting from 1 to 6 weeks. One of our classes signed up to a course about Pakistan to tie in with Malala Yusafzai's book which they were going reading afterwards. https://www.penpalschools.com https://www.penpalschools.com

Hello everyone! I'm so sorry I couldn't be there live during the last couple of recordings. Just finished watching Week 4 and I had to stop myself from typing my thoughts and praise for all the fantastic ideas shared into the chat box, so here is my (lengthy) response to another excellent session! There were plenty of great activities to try out for teaching reading, some of which have confirmed my own beliefs, such as Tips 1 and 2, not letting students read a text aloud if they've never seen it before and pre-reading for them. It is incredibly daunting reading aloud in a foreign language anyway, let alone something they haven't come across previously, especially for weaker students. One of mine doesn't even like doing it in her own language, so much so that the school told us not to force her to read things aloud (English is ok though, apparently!) TTT is again called into question here, but these are incredibly useful tasks for our learners! I always let them hea...

Does anyone know of any good activities to practice the past simple? I'm teaching a Syrian refugee who has been here for a few years but I'm stumped for how to approach this because usually it's related to personal stories and experiences and we don't know each other well enough yet to broach his past. One activity book at school featured a speaking game with bomb and military tanker cards with past tense verbs and questions on it. I wish I was making this up! I'm shocked at how Eurocentric and downright inappropriate some books can be! He likes reading so maybe I can base it around the last book he read?

Hello, everyone! Just catching up with the last two weeks and I'm quite disappointed I couldn't get involved in the discussions on the day! Penny's Week 3 tips have really made me question my beliefs on error correction and the use of L1 a great deal in terms of what and when to correct. There is the tendency not to interrupt students or ask others to chime in for correction, and L1 is practically non-existent in my lessons as a rule except with beginners (and even then, I try to encourage students to help themselves because I'm not entirely confident using German for fear of citing the wrong word...French is somewhat easier, however) What to do with such conundrums? I am still mulling over the points made but Penny has without a doubt shown that despite what teacher training and research may believe, there are no rules and we should trust our professional judgement while ensuring that the methods implemented are suitable for our learners. Most points have resonated wit...

Now the thanksgiving stuffing has been made, I can respond properly to Week 2 session! Another excellent hour full of practical tips which I am now trying to apply to my current context. Tip 1 for exampIe I feel, seems obvious now on reflection and yet I, or my colleagues, normally like to find out the abilities of a new student from Day 1. I think we forget sometimes that it may take a while for some students to feel confortable and willing to speak. We often push them too early and expect them participate immediately. More confident students will do so, thus we probably need to adapt this tip accordingly. I realised early on that a new Syrian student was having trouble expressing himself in the first few lessons and I felt a bit helpless for a good few weeks. Now there has been some sort of transformation (maybe or maybe not due to an extra weekly private lesson he has recently started having with me) and he talks all the time! It really did take me by surprise. I really enjoyed lear...

GETTING TEENS TO SPEAK - IDEAL SCHOOL (2nd Conditional focus) Here is a lesson which worked a treat this week. (I adapted a few of the ideas from a British Council conversation lesson plan.) 1. Write down any words they think of about school on the board then pick a few to discuss afterwards asking why they wrote that. 2. Have each student say a subject they currently have at school (it was a class of 9 and we managed to go around almost twice!) 3. In groups/pairs, get students to choose 6 subjects and put them in order of easiest (1) to hardest (6). Explain why and compare with others in the class. (1 - English - yay! French from the exchange student. 6 - Physics, Maths, Chemistry) 4. Now do the same again but this time ask them to order them most useful to least useful. (English came top again, also History and German which then fuelled a brief Swiss German vs. High German debate - a touchy subject here in German-speaking CH! Physics came last.) 5. Hand out and read 4 descriptions of...

VOCABULARY BUILDING. Hi everyone, I found out about this fab resource for helping students build on their vocabulary. Just type in a word (ie. important) and it'll give you synonyms and examples from hundreds of sources so that they see how it can be used: https://skell.sketchengine.co.uk/run.cgi/skell https://skell.sketchengine.co.uk/run.cgi/skell

I just got the EFL magazine in my inbox and I think I spy an article from Elizabeth Bekes, if it's the same one on this course? :)

SPEAKING EXAM PRACTICE Give everyone a set of pictures or a mind map and have them record an audio file of their 1 minute comparisons and 3 min parwork discussions (Canbridge First/Advanced Speaking Parts 2 and 3) on their phones in their own time then send them to you by email. This is optional but many take the opportunity to do this. It might seem like a lot of work for the teacher but I find that it’s actually easier for me, as I can listen again and give more valuable feedback rather than simultaneously listening to them and scribbling down things I thought I heard during a 20 min face-to-face session. They can record themselves as many times as they like and only send me the one they think is their best version, instantly solving the problem of limited time to practise these in class. They also get to hear themselves and be their own examiners, and have a better idea of how long these parts last for.

LEARNING VOCABULARY I get my students to write personalised sentences using new language because it is often more memorable when it’s related to your own life than that of Tim or Tammy or whoever features in a lot of textbook. Why? Because it shows that they have understood how to use it and also encourages experimenting with the different forms and often the grammar. I go around and check in class where possible and ask them to bring examples for next time then go over anything they weren’t sure about. For example, I taught some proverbs yesterday and have asked that class to write their own example sehtences for homework to help them remember at least 3 of them, after we looked at meaning (example stories and a matching exercise) form and pronunciation (proverbial summarisers and intonation used) reviewed the vocab itself (finishing each other’s chosen proverb with a pack of Uno cards) and having them create and act out conversations where the proverbs could be used.

USING QUESTIONS Giving students the chance to ask Qs during lessons is a great idea to encourage speaking and participation in lessons. If some of them don’t do this spontaneously and confidently in front of others already, I encourage them to grab my attention and I’ll come and see them personally. I also ask Qs after certain parts of the lesson, or as I’m explaining a grammar/situation/vocabulary and give them time to write their question down if that’s easier for them. I find that this constant opportunity for exchange helps to build rapport, confidence and communication with my learners. All too often when I was at school, there were teachers who talked at us and never gave us the chance to speak!

For formative assessment, feedback or any other comments students would like to make, I use post-its. Students have to write down something they’ve learnt, something they’re not sure about and anything else they’d like to know or say before leaving the lesson and I always try to address anything at the start of the the next one, without referring to the person who said or suggested it to avoid embarrassment! If it was something that could be addressed quickly, I talk to the student(s) at the end of class or at the start of the next one, and failing that I email them.

Some of my classes go on cultural trips for a week, but the school has a flying ban in place, so their task is to plan their own cultural week in groups of 4/5 (sadly not to an English-speaking country because of the limited radius and travel time, but oh well!) and present it to the class in a few lessons’ time. They have the freedom to decide what the content is and how they present it, but it must be a presentation in English under a certain time limit and everyone has to speak. When the presentations come around, I ask the rest of the class to listen for at least 2 good things they hear (content or language), and questions they have. I take notes on language but I also enlist a more advanced student to take notes on this and give some feedback to their peers. Another alternative is plan and present a weekend city break to somewhere in the UK (not London so they can discover other places - their request!) within a certain budget. I point them in the direction of useful websites wher...

I try to bring the real world into the classroom as much as possible, and my teens are particularly curious about travel, so recently I’ve been using some holiday photos and videos so that they can learn more about where I’ve been (Vietnam in this case). I call this activity I See, I Think, I Wonder and I think it went down quite well. They share prior knowledge they have of that country (location, culture, history etc.) brainstorm what the pictures might show (food, beach, scenery etc.) they then look at the photos and discuss what they see in small groups, give their opinions and reactions and think of any other questions they might have. Their levels are quite varied but I found the weaker students participating more than usual, sharing words they knew but some more advanced students in the class didn’t.

Hello and thank you so much for the excellent first session yesterday! I am already looking forward to subsequent meetings with Penny and everyone else on this course. Excuse the long post, but I have so much I want to reflect on! (Maybe best to put the kettle on at this point...:-) ) First of all, the discussion about the use of activities like Hangman and whether we are making good use of the limited learning time students have really hit home. I tend to use that particular game as a warm up, such as a lead-in to the topic we are focusing on today, to wake them up, a 5 min filler if there is leftover time at the end (because I think it is important to finish on a high note and many students don't get to play such games in their regular English class - the perks of being the assistant teacher!) or simply to change the pace of the lesson at moments where focus has been lost, but I think it is vital to question the relevance of every activity we plan because it is extremely easy to ...