This is a staple of pre-intermediate EFL grammar lessons, and it’s rather been done to death over the years. However, this is the materials-light/ dogme lesson I use to practice this important and useful grammar point with learners. It works best in a classroom, but would be equally at home in an online class. Lead-in … Continue reading Grammar lesson plan (A2+): present perfect simple vs. past simple
Following the completion of my DipTesol, I’ve taken the bull by the horns and made the transition to Director of Studies. I’ve moved from one of the largest English language school groups in the UK to a small, but growing, private language school in Manchester. I realise that this has come fairly early on in … Continue reading The Loneliness of the Director of Studies
If you’re at all familiar with the ELT industry in the UK at the moment, you’d be familiar with euphemisms like “a period of transition” and “challenging market conditions”. It’s all a far cry from the boom years of four or five years ago. That’s not to say that things are in dire straits just … Continue reading Don’t develop yourself out of a job
I’ve recently completed an online course in using online games in the language classroom, run by Cambridge and eltjam.com. One of the major things that I took away from the course was that games that include what could be called a sandbox element, or an open-world structure where you are free to wander, create and … Continue reading Sandboxes, EFL and CLIL
Teaching IELTS isn’t always fun, especially at Christmas time: when everyone else in the school is having a class party and watching Christmas specials of Mr Bean, you’re still slaving away at the coalface of academic English. So this year, I’ve tried to plan something that will satisfy the need to bring some of the … Continue reading Christmas IELTS!
As I described in my last post, I’ve recently finished the teaching practice of the DipTESOL. I wanted to share one of the lessons I created for the course, which was based around using Twitter to complain about service during a holiday. The students I was teaching were all young adults who were learning English … Continue reading Reading and Writing lesson plan: tweets, complaints and compound nouns
The past few weeks have been some of the most intense I can remember in my teaching career. I’ve written more than 30,000 words, been seemingly glued to my laptop way into the wee hours, and drunk a lot of instant coffee. Yes, I’ve just finished the teaching practice element of my Trinity DipTESOL, along … Continue reading DipTESOL practical
At school we recently had a week of classes themed on “the media”, and something that struck me from the conversations I had was that people don’t really consume media in the way that they used to. They either don’t pay for anything, or if they do, they aren’t paying for anything tangible, just … Continue reading Subscriptions and Language Learning
All teachers need to take breaks from time to time. Continue reading All change
A busy few weeks have meant an unavoidable hiatus on the blog, and unfortunately also meant that I missed this year’s IATEFL conference in Glasgow. However, I’ve been trying to catch up on what I missed, and one of the talks that grabbed my attention was this one by the great Jamie Keddie, on the … Continue reading “The unhealthy noise in our profession” – Teacher Talking Time
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