Most of us have experienced mishearing song lyrics. For example, in Bob Dylan’s song, instead of The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind, we might hear The ants are my friends, they’re blowin’ in the wind. It should come as no surprise that, in our listening classes, what our listeners hear is often similarly surreal! And yet many such mishearings probably go unnoticed.
In this article I talk about problems encountered by students 'doing' listening. I share some results from dictation activities, which have opened windows into listeners' minds and brought the results of listening into the classroom for inspection.
Students in different educational settings, for example, private language institutes or mainstream education, present teachers with different motivational challenges. I’ve taught learners in both settings and found that Expectancy-Value theories, the most researched factors in the area of motivation, have helped me generate and maintain motivation in my classrooms.
In this second TESOL SPAIN article on the Common European Framewrok of Reference (CEFR), I consider the scaling of communicative proficiency using traditional lables (for example Elementary or Pre-intermediate) and CEFR levels (A1, A2, etc.).
This is the first of two aticles, written to provide contextual background for the TESOL SPAIN 25th National Convention, theme: Access Europe: Language as a Common Currency.
This article gives a step-by-guide for teachers who would like to use authentic audio recordings with B2-level students in the classroom. Along the way, it mentions the various challenges a non-expert listener might experience, and explains how we can devise confidence-building activities which address these problems.
IATEFL young learners sig journal CATS, Spring 2000
Writing has a bad reputation in many schools, for both teachers and students. For the teacher, it means marking a pile of compositions and they are almost always worse than expected. For many students, writing is a boring chore and an “opportunity” to make a lot of mistakes.However, we believe that writing can be a very interesting and involving activity for students of English.
IATEFL young learners sig journal CATS, Spring 2000
Writing has a bad reputation in many schools, for both teachers and students. For the teacher, it means marking a pile of compositions and they are almost always worse than expected. For many students, writing is a boring chore and an “opportunity” to make a lot of mistakes.However, we believe that writing can be a very interesting and involving activity for students of English.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 3, 2010, pages 190-193
In this article, I look at several techniques and approaches we could use to help learners perceive the value of general classroom activities and to experience success in the communicative tasks we ask them to do. When used together, these techniques and approaches can generate, maintain and protect motivation.
In 2004, after giving a presentation on the Eurpopean Language Portfolio (ELP) at the TESOL-Spain National Convention, I was invitied to write a series of articles for English Teaching professional (ETp) http://www.etprofessional.com.
