May 6, 2015 Opinions, Pronunciation, The state of our profession Politics, pronunciation and the pursuit of perfection Tomorrow is election day here in the United Kingdom, and it looks set to be one of the most unpredictable results in many, many years. Depressingly, one of the key features of the political landscape over the last few years has been the rise of UKIP, a party for whom an exit from the European […]
Apr 26, 2015 Classroom Activities, Lexis, Opinions Asking more: why some questions are better than others There’s an old saying that claims questions are never dangerous – only answers are. Well, a recent presentation I saw by Jim Scrivener gave me pause to reconsider this received wisdowm and to ask whether some questions might be if not exactly dangerous, than at the very least far less useful, productive and worth learning […]
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 […]
Mar 31, 2015 Exploiting Exercises, Resources Van Gogh’s ear and wordlists We’ve had a suggested adaptation of some material from a teacher, Amber Nowak, in the Netherlands. It’s a little bit different to what we initially envisaged here in that Amber has already exploited the material in the book, Go for It 3, by David Nunan by extracting and focusing on vocabulary in a text about […]
Mar 27, 2015 Lexis, Opinions, Vocabulary Choice The Lexical Approach and natural selection Today we’re pleased to be able to bring you a guest post by Dr. Ivor Timmis. Ivor works at Leeds Beckett University and has always been one of the people we most look forward to hearing speak at conferences. Ivor has been involved in ELT for around 30 years – as a teacher, teacher trainer […]
