Apr 24, 2020 Grammar, Opinions, Twenty things in twenty years Twenty Things in Twenty Years Part Four: the way I was taught to teach grammar crippled my understanding of grammar! I feel it best to warn you in advance that this is a post that could potentially spiral wildly out of control! It may also, I fear, contain themes I’ve entered into from slightly angles during other posts in this series. This is down to the fact that this is a topic that’s exercised me […]
Apr 22, 2020 Grammar, Opinions, Twenty things in twenty years Twenty Things in Twenty Years Part Three: kicking the grammar habit As I’m sure I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my induction into English Language Teaching via a four-week CELTA at Westminster College (and, indeed, my subsequent year-long part-time DELTA) left me with that very same affliction that so many of our students still find themselves stuck with a bad case of: Grammar Anxiety. The whole main thrust of […]
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 […]
Apr 20, 2020 Opinions, The state of our profession, Twenty things in twenty years Twenty Things In Twenty Years Part One: Falling Into A Me-Shaped Hole In much the same way as I once found it inconceivable that I’d ever suffer the indignity of reaching the terrifying age of 30, so it seems preposterous that I’ve now racked up well over twenty-five years in English Language Teaching! In acknowledgement and commemoration of this, I’ve decided that I shall attempt to blog […]
