I got my first teaching job in 1984, working at a large boy's secondary school in El Obeid, Sudan. This experience made it very clear to me that there's a lot more to teaching English than just being able to speak the language!
Follow the link to see my review of Adam Brown's Pronunciation and Phonetics in the ELT Journal. (I'm sorry to say that this item is now in the membership section of the ELTJ but you can read more in the Articles section.)
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.
In a profession of many specialist interests, it's important to keep the big picture in mind in order to maintain a balanced and proportional outlook. Enthusiasms are great, but need to be kept in context. With this purpose in mind, I have been developing conceptual maps of aspects of ELT - so it's beginning to turn into an atlas. Click below for:
This is a fun rap activity for young learners, focusing on the vocabulary of odd jobs which kids might do. It will help them to retain vocabulary, practice pronunciation, and get a bit of movement into the classroom.
Spoiler alert! Read no further if you´re going to attend this talk and rather like surprises! In this talk, we will take a playful approach to the teaching of pronunciation. We will see how the playfulness may lie one the one hand in the materials we use, as in the case of word-play, rhymes, chants and so on, and on the other hand, in the tasks we set up, as in the case of games and puzzles.
Pictures are like silent stories. Silent because they are non-verbal. Stories, because they are pregnant with content to talk about. For these two reasons alone, they are extremely useful in English language teaching. In this talk, we explain these and more advantages of pictures, as well as demonstrating different activity types for use in the classroom.
You have to pay attention to learn. So what kinds of classroom materials and activities motivate learners to pay attention? In this presentation, we will see motivation theory in the form of a map of an island with four main regions – subject, aspiration, learning and classroom. We will explore these regions and try out some classroom activities which illustrate them.
Songs are a particularly useful resource for ELT. They have language, motivational appeal and great mnemonic power. In this presentation, we will look at different ways in which we can unlock their potential. We will try out a series of activities to use before, during and after the song.
