Training myself to be curious
“The more courses I take and the more I learn, the hungrier I feel for more knowledge. It’s like training myself to be curious.”
Learning for learning’s sake is a rewarding experience. And once you start learning, it’s difficult to stop. The trick is to choose a subject that you really care about and know what you...
During my long career in ELT I have attended numerous seminars, conferences, workshops in Greece and abroad and I still do. As I reflect on all those events, I am so grateful to the amazing teacher leaders I have encountered; their impact on my own practice was immeasurable. I returned to my classroom reinvigorated and ready to shine my own...
Some of the topics featured in this month's ELT NEWS
The CiELL project team is developing open educational resources based on comics that are highly visual and free for English Language teachers and learners to use. - Learn more about this amazing project by reading the related article at ELT NEWS April issue.
How hard is it to...
Teaching English to young learners
Early learning of English in the school context is becoming more common in our days. However, for a class of youngsters to flourish we need to create a pleasant climate in the classroom where kids can communicate through movement and play. The best way of working with very young learners is to set goals and...
Language testing is a powerful social tool used by language policymakers to promote a desired and favoured section of society as winners and accepted ones, and the rest as losers, failures and rejected ones. Though voices have been raised against the door - keeping nature of tests and attempts have been made to make testing student - and...
Learners carry around dictionaries not grammar books
In the current issue of ELT NEWS we focus on vocabulary learning. Vocabulary is central to any language because without sufficient vocabulary students cannot understand others or express their own ideas. A favourite quote of mine comes from linguist David Arthur Wilkins who said: “While...
What would you expect from a nurse from Greece who works in a hospital in the UK? To be able to talk about the environment in English or to give an English speaking patient clear and detailed instructions on how to take medication? You’d expect from a Greek hairdresser who runs a beauty salon in Nottingham to be able to explain the latest techniques they...
Teaching to the test
Standardized tests are primarily associated with large-scale tests administered to large populations of students.
A standardized test is any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the same way, and that is scored in a “standard” or...
Why Are Teachers Underappreciated?
Most people have a kind of metaphor in their minds when they think of teachers and what they do. They see something like a conduit. Educators are people who know things and can pass that information along in the same way a pipeline moves a fluid from one location to another. In this case, the “fluid” is knowledge or...
Is it possible to learn a foreign language online?
I always wanted to learn foreign languages especially French, Italian and Spanish. Alas no time…Getting two university degrees, working and raising my two sons was not an easy task.
My first attempt to learn French was quite an experience. It was some ten years ago when I enrolled in a French course...
What is teaching and its future?
Where does the word ‘teach’ derive from?
Origin
According to Oxford Dictionary ‘teach’ derives from old English tǣcan which means ‘show, present, point out’, and is of Germanic origin. It is related to token, from an Indo-European root shared by Greek δείχνω ‘show’, δείγμα ‘sample’.
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In theory...
Improve Classroom Behaviour
We need a culture where pupils learn from their behaviour mistakes as much as from academic ones. I have no issues with the fact that clear structures need to be in place in schools to challenge negative behaviour and promote positive behaviour. In fact, children who have the most extreme emotional and behavioural needs are...
How do you restart, refresh and refine your English?
More and more adults are signing up for English classes either to receive a certificate, refresh their long-forgotten skills or just be able to use English for professional or personal reasons. While teachers might think adults will be ‘easier’ lessons because they are mature, more disciplined and know...
Do we need coursebooks?
Coursebook selection and evaluation is a complex and multifaceted task. Especially at a time when the market is inundated with a host of coursebooks for the teaching of English as a foreign language, selecting a suitable coursebook becomes a critical process, since it can have an enormous impact on students’ engagement...
Teaching Young Learners
t takes a special person to teach English as a foreign language. It takes an even more special person to teach English as a foreign language to young children.
Young learners can be a real pleasure to teach because they do not feel stressed by their studies and approach everything with youthful innocence.
At this point in their...
Graded Readers: an underexplored thesaurus
My interest in Graded Readers began when I ran my own language school back in the 90s. I made a very brave decision at that time; I inserted a course between the end of one level and the beginning of the next to improve skills, using one Reader over a period of a few lessons. I had realised that students were...
To Test or Not to Test? That’s the Question
For many people testing is a symptom of a very sick education system because all our educational energy is taken up with covering the content of the test, developing test taking strategies and preparing the students for their exams. Where, in all that, is the education of the individual?
There are lots of...
Supplementary Materials, Do they work?
Course books are regarded as the core of teaching materials in the classroom and serve as pivotal role to facilitate the instructors’ teaching in the classroom. Penny Ur has described a textbook as a principal basis for instructors to follow on a systematic manner to carry out teaching in a language course.
What...
SHOULD WE FOCUS ON TEACHING OR CONTENT?
We live in an era where everything (almost) is instant. Social media, the internet and technology in general has made us seek for instant approval, instant satisfaction and instant everything. If you want to buy something you go to Amazon or Skroutz and in a few clicks your order is processed. If you want instant...
In the past two decades there has been a temptation to simply try to get through formal and foreign language education unscathed, to focus on the language exams success data and get the best possible place in the local market place. But this short-term outlook is a barrier to genuine improvement of the human resources we have in our country.
In formal...
