We often present at ELT conferences and events. Just select the title below if you're looking for the handout or download from a talk or workshop you have attended.
The slides from the talk can be found below. Also, check out the 'Materials' section of this website to see full downloads, including audio in some cases, and lesson plans for some of the activities demonstrated in the talk.
On the surface of it, unscripted language is a total mess, and it's a wonder that anybody can understand any of it. It stops and starts, interrupts and stumbles, slows and accelerates, and generally breaks all the grammar rules you’ve ever learnt. So, how can we help learners to make sense of it?
(pdf of slides below) Proverbial wisdom tells us that if you give someone a fish, they can eat for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, they can eat for a lifetime. It’s a message about the long-term value of learning new skills and becoming independent. A similar thing could be said about pronunciation and dictionaries.
The slide show of this talk can be found on the PDF below. In this talk, we will focus on pronunciation at three levels – 1 sounds, 2 words, and 3 phrases. For each of these, we will look at some of the typical problems for Italian learners, and try out some fun activities for raising awareness of these.
It’s nearly time for the 38th TESOL-Spain National Convention, where this year, as well as catching up with friends, I’ll be presenting on Learning Listening: The challenge of unscripted language.
I'm delighted to be presenting at TESOL Spain this year on the topic of pronunciation. This year, we'll be looking at individual sounds and things we and our students can do with them, including experimenting and imagining, representing and exploring, and playing and communicating.
See a video of this talk here. Each language has a repertoire of sounds which are used to make meaningful distinctions. When teaching the sounds of English, we need to keep that practical purpose in mind.
What is motivation and what can we do in class to nurture it? In answer to the first question, I will present the various facets of motivation on a map with the four main corners being content, aspirations, learning and classroom. In answer to the second, we will try out some specific classroom ideas relating to each of the four corners.
