Jun 8, 2025 Core Principles, Opinions, Teaching lexically What makes effective language teachers? Method or something else? What makes effective language teachers? There seem to be two routes taken in answering this question. The first is methodology. Some would suggest that the only effective teacher is one working within, say, task-based teaching. The second route might be described as ‘affective’ factors: the ‘quality’ of the teacher, how they are and how they […]
May 29, 2025 Chunks, Core Principles, Revision Word-for-word translation: an activity with possibilities Generally speaking, teachers discourage word-for-word translation from a students own language into the language they are learning. Sometimes they discourage it for the wrong reason – that translation or the use of L1 is just wrong. Sometimes teachers discourage it because they know it’ll end up in gobbledygook and they teach students that the correct […]
Apr 25, 2025 Beginners & Low levels, Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Lexis, Teaching lexically, Vocabulary Choice Low level activities to revise vocabulary: what to choose To learn words students need to recall and use them multiple times, so it is good to have activities to revise vocabulary in class. In this post I look at choosing items to revise and what difference low levels makes on this and the tasks we do.Not just vocabularyThe first thing to say is that […]
Apr 4, 2025 Beginners & Low levels, Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Lesson planning Student-centred classes: it’s not just pair work! What do teachers mean by student-centred classes? It seems some only see it as increasing pair work and reducing whole class teaching. The teacher should be a facilitator setting up tasks and watching, rather than doing explicit teaching. That at least was an impression I had from one teacher at a recent training, but it […]
Mar 14, 2025 Core Principles, Coursebooks, Grammar, Lesson planning Do we really need needs analysis? Teachers are often urged to conduct a needs analysis at the start of their course. But if your analysis is just choosing a coursebook, don’t feel guilty. The reality of most teachers’ contexts and the students they have is that a formal needs analysis often won’t produce anything you don’t know already or lead to […]
