My teaching career began in Liverpool, way back in 1979, where I worked as a secondary school teacher of History. I taught all ages and levels, but found myself particularly intrigued by the challenges of pupils who seemed to lack motivation.
Pictures are great for writing, because they provide lots of content, but leave it up to the students to express it in words. When we wrote Pen Pictures, there were a few books of picture stories for writing available, but they were very dated, having something of a post-war flavour. And they were mainly for narrative, under-representing other forms.
English Result was first conceived in 2002, five years before the first book in the series saw the light of day, and nearly a decade before the series was complete. We set to work at the suggestion from OUP, and decided to write the adult coursebook that we ourselves would want to use.
Many learners of English are now required to take an end-of-course speaking test, which teachers have to design, administer and assess. In this presentation, we’ll examine characteristics of practice tests which provide useful pointers for in-house test design.
ELT teachers have used attainment tests for many purposes - to evaluate, assess, or even threaten students! But they can also be a force for motivation. We will investigate how typical tests and question types (mainly testing grammar) may impact on student motivation, and look at ways to design, adapt and use them to increase their motivational value.
In this workshop, we’ll analyse some of the challenges language learners face when listening to authentic texts. Then we’ll take a walk through a listening lesson, trying out and discussing the different types of tasks which ‘teach’ listening, and help learners aspiring to B2 level become more effective, confident and autonomous listeners.
If you’re motivated to do something you value what you’re doing, and if you value what you’re doing you’re motivated – you’ll attend to the task at hand and be more likely to achieve success. In this presentation, we’ll briefly examine the nature of motivation alongside different aspects of courses we teach.
Cultural awareness seems to be making a re-appearance in the language teaching and learning literature. In this workshop we will focus on the ‘new look’ cultural awareness – intercultural competence (ICC). We will situate its growing importance and discuss what it entails. We will also take a look at a selection of classroom materials and briefly consider assessment of ICC.
The tasks, texts and activities in English Result Upper-intermediate have been desgined to take a strong B1-level students to B2 on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR, see ma
English Result Intermediate is designed to take a strong A2 level learner to B1 or B1+ on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) scales. The core syllabus (see Resources bel
