Feb 26, 2025 Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Developing materials, Opinions, Teaching lexically Planning lessons: chat is an outcome too. When we talk about planning lessons that have an outcome, teachers often misinterpret this as meaning all lessons should have a clear practical benefit. They may feel that following an action-oriented approach (as follow the CEFR calls it), means we should only design or select tasks where students role-play practical activities, resolve problems, or reach […]
Feb 14, 2025 Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Teaching lexically, Uncategorized How should I use my coursebook? With principles! It seems that most teachers see the value of using a coursebook, but the bigger question is: how should I use them? That was my conclusion from reading a recent post on LinkedIn by Katherine Bilsborough. She asked for English language teachers who were anti-coursebook to explain why they were against using them. As it […]
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 input. […]
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 […]
