Jan 20, 2020 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Lexis, Opinions Beyond word lists: eight ways to get more from the OUTCOMES Vocabulary Builder One of the more innovative add-ons that accompanies the OUTCOMES series of General English coursebooks we wrote for National Geographic Learning is the Vocabulary Builder, which is often just known as the VB. The main idea behind the Vocabulary Builder was to provide both teachers and students with a list of language covered on each […]
Jan 17, 2019 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions Translation: Tackling the Taboo part 2 In the first post on tackling the taboo that surrounds using any form of translation in the language classroom, I unpacked my own slow conversion, considered the roots of the English-only dogma, and explored why such positions were unsustainable. Today I’d like to move on to more practical matters and simply share seven activities that […]
Dec 23, 2018 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions, The state of our profession Translation: tackling the taboo As a native speaker teacher working in a multi-lingual teaching context in the UK, I am perhaps an unlikely convert to the cause of translation in language teaching, and it’s been a long and winding road that’s brought me here. Back in 1993, when I did my four-week CELTA course, there was certainly no mention […]
Feb 14, 2018 Classroom Activities, Opinions, The state of our profession Teaching deaf, hard of hearing and visually impaired students As someone who spends a fair amount of time meeting and working with teachers in different contexts, I get asked all manner of questions and have become very aware of the limitations of my own knowledge. If anyone asks me my thoughts on teaching kids or young learners, I try to be open about the […]
Oct 28, 2017 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Opinions Complicating the coursebook debate: part 4 In this post, I’m going to look at how I would use the material from Outcomes Intermediate that I mentioned in my previous post. As I would generally tend to do, I am going to look at the material in the order it is laid out in the book, but let me reiterate that this […]
