Blogs
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Spring has sprung!
Tui was first with the news – as usual – even before dawn. Then, in an instant, the morning sun, which yesterday had to shaken grumpily out of its slumbers, was blazing through the ranchsliders, daring me to press ‘snooze’. And last night’s rain had miraculously metamorphosed into an exuberant rainbow. more…
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Working with difficult language areas
This week’s tip is related to the previous one: our teaching is not synonymous with students’ learning. Here are some ways to help students gain a fuller understanding of tricky new language, some of which might help to ‘activate’ it too:
• ‘Little and often’ is a useful motto. When ‘new’ more… -
Travelling the road to discovery
Auckland is blessed with a full, radiant moon. But does that mean there’s a full moon everywhere, floating simultaneously over desert sands and frozen tundra, not just our own boggy fields? Why don’t I know these things? I can only comfort myself with the quote from Einstein that opens our more…
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Banishing the myth
The most shocking realisation in my teaching career was being forced to acknowledge that teaching does not equate with learning.
As a teacher, you may focus in on a language structure – either in a single lesson or over a series of several – only to then hear your students misusing more… -
How to approach the present perfect 2
Following on from last week’s tip (present perfect for unfinished past), this week we look at how to introduce the second use of the present perfect: past experiences, states and events where when is less important than what.
Putting the present perfect in context is crucial to aiding understanding. I like more… -
Partnership, protection and participation
Happiness. What a fabulous theme for a lesson! Our Global voyagers will learn, as they stop off at Unit 6, that it’s not all about fame and fortune. No, happiness, it seems, is made up of three indefinable – but refreshingly universal – elements: relationships, beliefs and purpose.
Armed with this more… -
Home and away
This weekend, New Zealand stayed at home and watched the rain do its thing – which gave me ample time to make myself at ‘home and away’ with Unit 8 of Global pre-intermediate. Of course, as immigrants, I and my students here are both ‘home and away’ at the same more…
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How to approach the present perfect 1
The present perfect does not translate into other languages simply and neatly, and often causes conceptual problems for students. I prefer to introduce the present perfect for unfinished events or states initially, eg I’ve been a teacher for many years. This most clearly demonstrates the link between past and present, more…
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Spending time with Time
Has another week already passed? You know, I daren’t close my eyes in case I miss another decade! Time was very much a central theme of two enjoyable events I was lucky enough to see here in Auckland this week. One very old – the play Romeo and Juliet by more…
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Energising the gapfill 2
Last week’s tip looked at a fun way to inject new life into a gapfill exercise, making it hopefully more memorable for students. Here are one or two variations.
1 With a monolingual class, get students to do the same activity but this time, instead of ‘beeping’ or ‘banana-ing’, get them more… -
Energising the gapfill 1
Gapfill exercises occur with relentlessly high frequency in coursebooks, and other supplementary materials. They are a useful, quick and focused way to check or diagnose students’ knowledge of a lexical item or a structure and, from an author’s perspective, they are also quite easy to write! Here’s my favourite way more…
