Teaching Tips
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A day with a difference 2
Last week we looked at some ways in which you can incorporate change into your teaching. Here are some more suggestions.
• Use an approach or technique which is new for you, such as a dictogloss, a transformation exercise, a mumble drill (where students just repeat the target items repeatedly ‘under more… -
A day with a difference
As teachers, our behaviour can easily become ritualised. Sometimes I stand back from my teaching and realise that I am ‘stuck on the same track’; that my teaching is becoming a little too predictable.
Forcing change or difference onto your teaching is the most obvious way to respond to this. Here more… -
Exploiting the dictionary: quick mini-activities 2
Last week we looked at how to incorporate dictionary work, in response to lexis issues arising in class. Here are a few more ideas.
• Choose a word / phrase from the lesson which the students have had problems with, eg *He arrived to there; *She gave me some good advices. more… -
Exploiting the dictionary: quick mini-activities
Dictionaries are a great tool in the classroom. I tend to use them as a way of rounding off or padding out a stage; catering for early finishers, rather than as a large ‘dictionary slot’ per se.
The suggestions below will hopefully serve as a reminder as to how you can more… -
Fish, fruit, flower
This is a game which I played as a child, and you are likely to be familiar with, perhaps under a different name, such as Town and Country. I wonder, though, if you have played it in your language classes? I find that my students of all levels really like more…
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Transformation exercises: writing ideas at sentence level
Last week we looked at using a text as a springboard for writing. This week’s tip focuses on sentence-level writing, which can be used with any genre of text. Transformation is often considered the domain of higher-level classes but I also find it useful at lower levels.
Transformation tasks require more… -
Reading to writing with narratives
A few weeks ago we had a tip entitled Reading to Speaking. Readings often lend themselves perfectly to writing activities too. I find opportunities for writing are often overlooked in some coursebooks, and that some teachers are averse to writing, perhaps because they think their students will be reluctant to more…
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David Crystal – English as a ‘global’ language?
A new video this week from our series featuring Professor David Crystal. Here he is discussing the need to teach English as a ‘global’ language to learners, with a focus on the receptive skills.
Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments below. The complete more… -
Comprehension questions – alternative task types
Comprehension questions or true / false exercises are the two most common ways of getting students to work with a text and to demonstrate that they have understood the main message. Often coursebooks themselves can overuse these two task types. Here are a few alternatives, though bear in mind that more…
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Compiling useful lists 2
Last week we looked at collating lists of problem language or pronunciation for your students. You could also create ‘public’ lists of language, which could form a class poster of some kind, to be added to at intervals as relevant examples come up in the lessons. Incidentally, this also provides more…
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Responding to students’ own linguistic problems: activities
Last week we looked at collating different students’ problems over a string of lessons. These errors can then be focused on in various ways:
- Spot the mistake – Compile a hand-out with 7-11 sentences, each with one mistake which students try to correct, e.g. The doctor gave me a more… -
Compiling useful lists 1
Some people are compulsive list makers. Although I am not, there are some lists that I use in class. We probably all make lists of words that come up in the lesson, to recycle in later classes, or lists of grammatical problems that might come up, particularly in students’ written more…
