Teaching Tips
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Taking feedback
I remember with great clarity when one of my students complained that the level of challenge was not great enough for her. Another student heard her complaint and promptly said the same! That was a difficult moment for me, one which obviously needs to be read in context, but it 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 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 more…
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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 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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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 more…
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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…
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Lesson plan: hindrance or help?
Is the lesson plan like having a ball and chain around your ankles? Some would argue that it limits a teacher’s ability to respond to students. In focusing on getting through the plan from A–D, any deviation off the pre-determined route is viewed negatively by the teacher. Thus, any sort more…
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I remember when …
I used to spend hours preparing a lesson. I was newly qualified, teaching in my first post overseas, and fired up with a passion for the subject. My planning time was at least equal to, if not more than my contact time with the students, for at least the first more…
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Sentence stress 2
How to provide more opportunities for students to listen intensively was the subject of the tip two weeks ago. The following suggestion kills two birds with one stone: it practises intensive listening and also raises awareness of sentence stress. It can be adapted for any level. In my experience, by more…
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Sentence stress 1
A few weeks ago (12 March) we looked at how to work on word stress. This tends to be easier to practise than sentence stress, probably because the units of sound are smaller and generally less variable. However, spending time on sentence stress is also very valuable, particularly with a more…
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Intensive listening
Intensive listening is a skill which I believe to be overlooked in many contexts. Historically, one could argue that there was too much intensive listening, at the expense of general comprehension. However, nowadays coursebooks and teachers may have shifted too far in the other direction with the focus mainly on more…
