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 […]
Oct 13, 2017 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Lexis, Opinions On the over-use of concept-checking questions: part 2 I recently wrote a post outlining why I’m not a fan of using concept-checking questions – CCQs – when dealing with vocabulary and if you’ve not read it, it may make sense to go there first before continuing. I ran through several reasons I find the continuing use of CCQs problematic when applied to vocabulary, […]
Oct 6, 2017 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Lexis, Opinions, The state of our profession On the over-use of concept-checking questions: part 1 There aren’t many things that I think should be comprehensively banned from EFL classrooms, but the use of closed CCQs (Concept-Checking Questions) for items of vocabulary is one! For those of you unfamiliar with CCQs, they seem to have come into the ELT mainstream via International House and the very early teacher training courses offered […]
Sep 22, 2017 Opinions, The state of our profession Something better change: taking a stand against gender bias in ELT Earlier this year I spoke at the very first International Language Symposium in Brno, the second-biggest city in the Czech Republic. Prior to the conference itself, I’d agreed with the organisers that I’d be doing a plenary and a workshop, saw that several people I knew from the ELT world would also be there and […]
