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Tag: lesson planning

Target Language and planning

Written by Andrew Walkley on . Posted in Grammar, Lesson planning, Teacher Development and CPD, Teaching lexically. No Comments on Target Language and planning

Target language will be a familiar term for anyone who has studied a course such as CELTA or Trinity Cert TESOL, but it is a core idea for many teachers practice, even if they are unfamiliar with the term.  It basically refers to the language that we plan to teach. I’m not against having a goal for a class or even having language in mind that you think will be useful for your students. However, in this post I want to outline some of the problems that arise when we let the target language dominate our thinking and actions above other goals. Choosing language for learners...

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More activities to revise language in class at low levels

Written by Andrew Walkley on . Posted in Beginners & Low levels, Classroom Activities, Lesson planning, Revision, Teaching lexically. 4 Comments on More activities to revise language in class at low levels

Why do activities to revise language in class? Teachers sometimes see class time as only for ‘new’ input. Revision is for students to do at home. I understand that idea. It also depends a bit how long your class is. If you have one 50 or 60-minute class a week, maybe that makes some sense. And students do have to take some responsibility, right? Ultimately, languages are truly learnt and certainly become more ‘real’ when students study and use the language outside class. But then many students set aside 3 or 4 hours of their week to do a class, so expecting a huge amount extra is not...

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Meet learners’ needs by following language desire paths

Written by Andrew Walkley on . Posted in Exploiting Exercises, Grammar, Opinions, Teaching lexically, Uncategorized. No Comments on 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. Desire paths: a metaphor for meeting all the learners’ language needs while using a coursebook 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 route which I have now discovered is called a ‘ desire path’. But as I did so, I started thinking that the this kind of path, which you see all over the place, could be a kind of...

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