Apr 21, 2020 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions Back to School Part Three: lessons of forgetting and laughter They say that learning a foreign language is a good way of avoiding dementia in later life, but with learning Russian I sometimes feel that maybe dementia has already set in! Words taught mere seconds ago can become a blank and I find myself stuck in a loop of asking “What’s that word?” and “How […]
Apr 21, 2020 Classroom Activities, Opinions, The state of our profession, Twenty things in twenty years Twenty Things in Twenty Years Part Two: Troubling trouble when trouble troubles you! There are plenty of things that you generally don’t learn on a four-week CELTA course: how bizarre many of the staff rooms you’ll later find yourself in will be; how rife the illegal photocopying of published material is around the world; how you’ll probably end up inventing Dogme by accident one morning as you stumble […]
Mar 20, 2020 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions, Pronunciation Back to school Part 2: TomAYto TomARto In my last post, I described two basic routes to learning language as a means of communication. At this point, I should reiterate that what I am talking about here are not routes to any real kind of fully-functional fluency. One of the most profound realisations you have when you start learning a new language […]
Jan 20, 2020 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Lexis, Opinions Beyond word lists: eight ways to get more from the OUTCOMES Vocabulary Builder One of the more innovative add-ons that accompanies the OUTCOMES series of General English coursebooks we wrote for National Geographic Learning is the Vocabulary Builder, which is often just known as the VB. The main idea behind the Vocabulary Builder was to provide both teachers and students with a list of language covered on each […]
Jan 17, 2019 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions Translation: Tackling the Taboo part 2 In the first post on tackling the taboo that surrounds using any form of translation in the language classroom, I unpacked my own slow conversion, considered the roots of the English-only dogma, and explored why such positions were unsustainable. Today I’d like to move on to more practical matters and simply share seven activities that […]
