The original idea for this blog post came one afternoon when my wife saw my response to an email we'd both received from the school our son goes to. His new form tutor had written to us saying how well…
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…
Back to school Part Five: challenges and homework
As if to prove the point about procrastination and failing to do stuff outside class that I made in my last post reflecting on my own language learning experiences, I'm almost ashamed to begin by admitting it has been over…
Twenty Things in Twenty Years Part Nine: the vast majority of mistakes really aren’t to do with grammar!
The world used to be so tidy. Back in the misty morning of my youth, I seriously did naively believe that the root cause of student error was essentially grammatical. If only students could somehow have the ‘rules’ for the…
Why ‘Is it formal or informal?’ is perhaps my most-hated question in ELT
Let's face it, over the years, we've probably all asked plenty of questions in class that we later look back on and regret. This starts from our very first teaching practice when we become aware of the fact that we've…
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…
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.…
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 – often just known as the VB. The main idea behind the Vocabulary Builder was…
A different kind of Beginner-level book 5: Pronunciation
Pronunciation: Really? Do I have to? While the bulk of Beginner coursebooks on the market are pretty uniform when it comes to the way they handle grammar and - to some extent - vocabulary, there seems to be little consistency…
A different kind of Beginner-level book 4: a spiralling syllabus
A spiralling syllabus is NOT just about grammar Hopefully, you'll have read our previous post on a spiral syllabus. In this short post, I want to add that the spiral syllabus doesn’t only apply to grammar. The same principles also…