types of questions The importance of teaching reading: Teaching reading in the English language course should include the following set of learning goals: 1- enable students to read a wide range of texts in English. 2- develop awareness of the structures of the written English texts. 3- develop the ability of criticizing the content of texts. Leoxicon: About me I’ve been involved in ELT for more than 12 years in all sorts of roles: teacher, examiner, teacher trainer, senior teacher and materials developer – mainly with the British Council in Tel Aviv but also Cyprus and Turkey. In recent years, teacher training missions have taken me to Azerbaijan, Armenia and other countries in the region where I had a chance to meet, work with and learn from some wonderful and dedicated teachers and teacher trainers. Currently I am a lecturer giving courses to pre-service and in-service teachers in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), teaching methodology, vocabulary teaching and using technology in the classroom (the latter by demand rather than by choice). My other interests – as you can tell from the contents of this blog – include corpus linguistics, lexical approaches to language teaching and using video in the classroom – the topics I’ve written articles and materials on for the British Council and BBC’s TeachingEnglish website.
Dragon Quest! A Google Slides Interactive Story Growing up in the 80’s meant reading loads of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. They were fun, and a little scary, and you died pretty much every time, but they got lots of kids into books. A while back I decided to bring this idea off the page and into the 21st century by using Google Slides to create an online, interactive story. Often we think of Google Slides in terms of linear presentations, with one slide after another in order.
* Motivation 1 An article by Dörnyei and Csizer (1999) “Ten commandments for motivating language learners: results of an empirical study” in the LTR journal ( (see the Articles section of this website for a copy) predates all Dörnyei’s more recent work, where he develops an “integrated theory” of motivation (see, for example, Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (2011). Teaching and researching motivation (2nd ed.). Harlow: Longman). The authors say in the abstract “Two hundred Hungarian teachers of English from various language teaching institutions were asked how important they considered a selection of 51 strategies and how frequently they used them in their teaching practice. Based on their responses we have compiled a concise set of ten motivational macrostrategies, which we have called the ‘Ten commandments for motivating language learners’”
Blog IATEFL Slovenia 2016 photos A few shots taken during the 23rd IATEFL Slovenia conference, held in Terme Topolšica on 3 to 6 March read more How we work now (How we teach now) I read an article from Guardian Weekend with excerpts from a few ‘secret office diaries’ – here’s my take from an ESOL teacher perspective read more
8 Ways to Supercharge Google Docs with Drawings On the 8th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… 8 Docs Drawings. Note: This post is part of my "12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: "12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017". 100 Things You Can Do To Improve Your English - Langports Hester is a teacher at Langports’ Gold Coast campus who has strong beliefs about education. She has set up her own website and blog to help her students. She has set up her own website and blog to help her students Her blog for this week is a list of 100 things you can do to improve your English. Have a read of the below list and we are sure you will find a lot of helpful tips to improve your English! Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Be confident.
it's NOT about what the teacher does with technology Bruce Springsteen: "When we kiss…" Not just going through the motions! You could probably say I've had four different though overlapping careers — in language teaching, language teacher training, technology and ELT management. The first of those I retired from (after 35+ years) a few months ago, though the number of contact hours I was doing was limited; teacher training I'm retiring from at the end of this month; management I got fired from (to the relief of all involved!) many years ago; which leaves only another 10 or so years in technology to do (I'm only (?)
10 commonly made mistakes in vocabulary instruction Please note: this post was written in collaboration with Steve Smith of and Dylan Vinales of Garden International School. In this post I will concern myself with ten very common pitfalls of vocabulary instruction and with ways in which they can be easily pre-empted. Mistake1 – Shallow encoding practices As already mentioned in many previous posts of mine, a to-be-learnt word lingers in our Working Memory for no longer than two or three seconds immediately after we hear it. Thus, in order to commit it effectively to Long-term Memory, we must perform some form of rehearsal. 5 Good Teaching Habits As teachers and learners, we all expect different things from learning and teaching. Some learners expect language-heavy courses, full of grammar and with lots of teacher explanation. Others anticipate a more social learning approach, where they play with the language and acquire it through practice, practice and practice.
Seven steps to vocabulary learning You might expect that, after having been exposed to a word in ten, twenty, or maybe at the very most thirty, contexts, a learner will gradually piece together the word's meaning and start to use it correctly, appropriately and fluently. Classroom context Seven steps to vocabulary learning Conclusion Classroom context Of course we cannot expect a learner to acquire difficult words in the same way as a young child acquires their first language, but, perhaps as teacher we can somehow help learners to arouse their 'learning monitor' by, for example, providing rich contexts containing the target language and by giving our learners time to reflect on what the language item means. In this way teachers can use the EFL classroom to replicate the real world and nurture strategies to help students understand and produce difficult language items which often seem beyond their grasp. Seven steps to vocabulary learning Here are some practical steps that I have used to help my students. Paul Bress
How to get a distinction in your Delta module 2 Background Essays I suppose the title could be considered clickbait, but the idea is to try to help you to do well during Delta module 2. I got a distinction in my first three Background Essays, and imagine LSA4 (which is externally assessed) was up to the same standard. You can do it too, and I think the following tips and reading suggestions will help. There are two things that I think can help you do well at the Background Essays.
About tekhnologic – tekhnologic I’m a language learner as well, and I try my best to find time to learn Japanese and French, although I am not always successful. Personally, I find reading is the best way to learn as I am absorbing vocabulary in context with a story and can notice grammar patterns. Why is my blog call tekhnologic? Books - 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind So, what do you want to be when you grow up? That question may appear a little trite, but think about it for a moment. Are you--right now--who you want to be, what you dreamed you'd be, doing what you always wanted to do? Be honest. Sometimes people find themselves achieving victories that are empty--successes that have come at the expense of things that were far more valuable to them. If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.