If you want your students to be able to say ‘I can speak English’, they need speaking practice in class. But this often turns out to be difficult and messy, and many teachers avoid it. In this workshop, we will classify the practical problems of speaking practice activities into three kinds, relating to:
In this talk I will highlight some patterns in English language classroom talk. I will suggest how these patterns arise, and what their implications are for language learning. I will conclude that it may be better not to talk like a teacher sometimes.
(I have also presented this talk at TEA (Canary Islands) and as a plenary at CETA (Cordoba, Spain))
Too often, we treat writing as mere grammar practice. But writing is communication too. In this workshop, we will look at classroom tasks which focus on meaning and content in writing, and not just form. Lot’s of imaginative and creative ideas to take away!
Songs have long been popular with language teachers. They demonstrate language in a memorable, motivating way. However, all too often, the exploitation is limited to gap filling. In this workshop, we will look at other ways in which they can be used in the classroom.
In this You Tube Video, Mark demonstrates a series of different classroom activities for presenting and practising the contrast between the vowel sounds in live and leave.
We looked at 8 features of pronunciation which are of particular relevance for Spanish speaking learners of English. These included vowels, spelling of vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, word stress, phrase stress patterns, tonic syllables and connected speech. Each feature was explained, contrasted with Spanish and demonstrated with an example game.
