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 […]
Sep 24, 2021 Classroom Activities, Lexis, Opinions 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 yourself. Over to Patrick. In order to improve their English, students need exposure to lexically-rich […]
Sep 2, 2021 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions 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 a year since I wrote these words: ‘I”ll talk a bit more about my approach […]
Mar 1, 2021 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Opinions, Pronunciation, Twenty things in twenty years Twenty things in twenty years part ten: the main point of focusing on pronunciation in class isn’t to improve pronunciation! Pronunciation is quite possibly the most neglected area of language teaching that there is. In many of the classes I’ve observed over the years, I’ve seen little or no attempt to work on pronunciation and where it IS focused on, it’s often instinctive attempts at correcting mispronounced discrete phonemes of the kind we’re all so […]
Jan 22, 2021 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions 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 use of specific grammatical structures drilled into their heads through repeated mini-lectures, homeworks, pages of […]
