Mar 6, 2022 Opinions, The state of our profession Teaching through the tears: creating cross-border classes in a time of conflict I first went to Russia in December 1999 to visit a friend of mine who’d just taken a teaching job there. Little did I know then what a central part in my life the country would come to play over the next twenty-plus years. Since the turn of the century, I’ve visited Russia more times […]
Dec 1, 2021 Opinions, The state of our profession Another five things I’ve learned running the ENGLISH QUESTIONS ANSWERED group Three years ago now, I was talked into setting up a Facebook group called ENGLISH QUESTIONS ANSWERED. It was designed to be a space where anyone at any level could ask questions about how English is used, whether or not something was correct, why things work the way they do, and so on. I also […]
Nov 19, 2021 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: a rite of passage Generally speaking, I’m not one for complaining about people’s use of language, and certainly not those supposed transgressions of grammar rules such as using like when reporting speech, saying there were less people than expected, or that people are loving it. If you’ve ever seen Hugh’s comments on the English Questions Answered group on Facebook, […]
Sep 24, 2021 Classroom Activities, Lexis, Opinions Using texts to develop lexical awareness In this guest post, Patrick Gallagher outlines how he uses the WORD / CHUNK OF THE DAY sections of this website with his students. We hope it’ll give you some ideas for how you could explore and exploit these texts yourself. Over to Patrick.In order to improve their English, students need exposure to lexically-rich input. […]
Sep 21, 2021 Opinions Twenty things in twenty years part eleven: we’ve been in thrall to the cults of Learning Styles, NLP and Multiple Intelligences for way too long. It never ceases to both depress and astound me when I see quite how many conference talks, articles, books and courses on Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences are still out there in mainstream ELT. Philip Kerr recently alerted me to an activity in a new book on learning styles that was supposedly aimed […]
