May 7, 2025 Beginners & Low levels, Chunks, Exploiting Exercises, Lexis, Revision, Teaching lexically Rereading texts to revise language at low levels Rereading texts to revise language can be good because we access language outside the selection in exercises labelled vocabulary or grammar. Whether you have treated the listening or reading text as purely developing skills or not, there is good reason to revisit texts to focus on language – especially when we want to revise content […]
Jan 13, 2025 Exploiting Exercises, Grammar, Opinions, Teaching lexically, Uncategorized Meet learners’ needs by following language desire paths If we want to meet learners’ needs, then try following their conversations and teach the language they desire rather than just what we set out to teach. I was out walking the other day and it being somewhat damp and muddy, I decided to stick to the paved pathway rather than take this more direct […]
Nov 14, 2024 Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Exploiting Exercises, Pronunciation Dictation and decoding A long time ago I did a Diploma in TEFL and I remember a particular piece of feedback I was given after one of my observed lessons. In this lesson, I’d dictated a series of words to the students. Now, I can’t remember exactly what those words were or why I was dictating them, but […]
Jul 1, 2015 Exploiting Exercises, Resources When are questions and teacher talk too much? We recently had a query from a reader regarding the kind of language-generating concept questions we advocate. Basically, he had received some criticism after a lesson observation that the class was too teacher-centred, too input heavy and students didn’t have enough time for output (aka – practice or production). There is no doubt that asking concept checks […]
Apr 21, 2015 Exploiting Exercises, Resources Questions about words In my talk at IATEFL this year, I explained some of the limitations of asking traditional concept questions, especially when looking at vocabulary. What follows is a list of alternative types of checking questions about vocabulary. You may see some of the same question frames I used in the talk. The questions that I give […]
