Book review – 50 Activities For The First Day Of School
50 Activities For The First Day Of School, published by Alphabet Publishing, is, as the title suggests, a highly practical resource book for teachers looking for ways to add some variety to their first day activities. The author, Walton Burns, has created this ebook as a handy guide containing a variety of tasks mainly for lower level learners, although they are easily adaptable for all abilities and ages. In fact, one of the book’s main strengths is the flexibility the activities have, and it’s easy to imagine them being tweaked for use in any lesson. Walton starts with the most … Continue reading Book review – 50 Activities For The First Day Of School
Songs In The Key Of ELT – New York I Love You
It’s time for the third part of my extremely occasional series of lesson ideas based on songs, especially the kind of songs that don’t usually appear in coursebooks. Here’s a song by one of my favourite bands of all time…
Artist: LCD Soundsystem
Song: New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
Written by: James Murphy Continue reading Songs In The Key Of ELT – New York I Love You
Book review: Punctuation…? by User Design
Readers of this blog will remember a previous post in which I argue that punctuation errors by students shouldn’t be ignored… There is a temptation to ignore (punctuation errors) which must be resisted, I think. It’s very easy to think that the priority must be the vocabulary and grammar, and while I would agree with that, it doesn’t have to come at the expense of form. If the students are writing in the first place, they need to understand that in a professional capacity, which is how most students will use their writing abilities in English, poor writing can create … Continue reading Book review: Punctuation…? by User Design
Think! – It’s All In The Mindset
In this follow up to my earlier post on mindsets, Carol Goodey reviews Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential by Carol Dweck. In my original piece, I reflected on an infographic which described an open vs a closed mindset, and laid out some ideas for how a teacher could encourage their students to adopt the former, with the aim of helping them reach their language learning objectives. Now Carol reviews the book that inspired the image, and gives us a more detailed look at how it can affect us as educators. In James’s earlier post, he shared a … Continue reading Think! – It’s All In The Mindset
Think! – Two Mindsets
This post was previously published on a now defunct blog called Think! Language And Culture I used to write. I’ve dusted it off and republished it here for your reading pleasure.
This post was previously published on a now defunct blog called Think! Language And Culture I used to write. I’ve dusted it off and republished it here for your reading pleasure.
If there’s an attitude that I want this series of Think! blog posts to encompass, it’s right here in this infographic: Continue reading Think! – Two Mindsets
Punctuation Matters!
This post has been written in coordination with the latest episode of the TEFL Commute podcast, which I produce with Lindsay Clandfield and Shaun Wilden. You can listen to the episode on our website by clicking here. Occasionally I’ve had a student who doesn’t seem to realise that punctuation, capitalisation and spacing are actually things that really matter when writing. Spaces are deposited at random places. Commas are used in between what should definitely be two different sentences. Sometimes punctuation is omitted completely, and you’re left with a piece of writing that resembles a stream of consciousness that you have to try … Continue reading Punctuation Matters!
The End Of An Era
If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, or follow me on social media, you should be aware of my involvement in BELTA. BELTA is the Belgian English Language Teachers Association, which I co-founded in 2012 with Mieke Kenis and Guido Europeaantje, and have been president of since its inception. I won’t tell you the full story of how BELTA started here, you can find out more on our website. Suffice it to say we started it from scratch and in four short years we have hosted 3 annual conferences with plenary speakers including Jeremy Harmer, Luke Meddings, Hugh … Continue reading The End Of An Era
