Blog posts in March 2012

Here we've got ideas, observations on ELT, including Mark's Pronunciation Blog and loads of conference and speaker reports...

Interview on Radio Exterior

Monday - March 26th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Annie McDonald
Event date: 
Friday, March 23, 2012 - 16:45
English Language radio broadcast - creative ways to teach English

On March 23rd, 2012 we were interviewed by Frank Smith and Alison Hughes at Radio Exterior for Face to Face about Creative ways to teach English.

Classroom Codeswitching

Friday - March 16th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Mark Hancock presenting in Poland

In this short video, Mark explains the reason for code-switching between Polish and English in an information gap activity. For more on this topic, see the article "Behind Classroom Code Switching: Layering and Language Choice in L2 Learner Interaction".

  • Classroom interaction

English Pronunciation in Use - New edition!

Wednesday - March 14th, 2012
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Event date: 
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - 09:00
English Pronunciation in Use - new edition March 2012

New Edition of English Pronunciation in Use, out just last week! There's plenty that's new here, including a much clarified approach to tonic stress placement, and a section focusing on receptive pronunciation (ie, pronunciation for listening), including variation and accents.

  • Pronunciation

An undesirable effect of testing?

Monday - March 12th, 2012
Posted by: 
Annie McDonald
Why do you think the 'I' of the poem constantly failed exams

Just found the poem below by Brian Patten, one of the Liverpudlian Beat poets from the 1960s, on the IATEFL TEA in Istanbul blog.

Why do you think the 'I' of the poem constantly failed exams? And, what can we test writers learn from this poor person's experience?

 

Test writing and CEFR levels

Monday - March 12th, 2012
Posted by: 
Annie McDonald
Measuring levels

I’ve just got back to work after attending the extremely successful 35th TESOL-Spain National Convention in Bilbao. From the various talks I went to, I gathered that some teachers and test writers are using coursebook materials to help them devise tests and examinations which are pegged to CEFR levels.

Just what IS a 'framework-friendly' course?

Wednesday - March 7th, 2012
Posted by: 
Annie McDonald
CEFR

Nowadays, many courses claim (either directly or indirectly) to be compatible with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). I'd always thought that there must be more to this than simply using the CEFR levels to situate a course.