While thinking of ways to reduce our environmental impact, as part of a scholarship opportunity which I'm sad to say alas for me wasn't successful, I started to think about rethinking my whole approach to teaching to take the paperless classroom to the next level. While my idea went no further in the competition, I [...]
For many of us, the classroom is more than just a physical space, it is also a psychological construct where we have self-imposed strict rules of how to act, behave, conduct a lesson and respond to our learners. As we develop as teachers, I'm sure most of us will admit that we are guilty of [...]
Part 3 of the Key English Test (KET) focuses on communicative interaction, students need to choose the correct responses in a dialogue. This sounds easier than it is, as it's not just a straight forward question-answer match, but requires students to know a range of conversational phrases, as well as having good analytical abilities to [...]
In 2019, we are aware more than ever of how fundamental it is to reduce our environmental impact. To not actively try is simply irresponsible, especially in the ELT industry where we are particularly guilty of using vast quantities of paper. Each and every one of us can do our bit, so here are 10 ways to [...]
Dependent prepositions are a crucial part of English. Being able to correctly use them with their adjectives, verbs or nouns is important, not only for the speaking and writing exams but also in the Use of English paper, particularly in parts 1 and 2 where a good knowledge of dependent prepositions can help you to [...]
Silence is not a word that sits very well with most language teachers. After all, we teach how to communicate, it's second nature to want to fill gaps with words. I know that when I first started teaching I wanted to fill every second of the classroom with some form of noise, whether it be [...]
Cambridge English Proficiency Exam (CPE) tests a wide variety of lexical terms; collocations, idioms and phrasal verbs. To do well you need to be able to use an extensive range of expressions, combined with advanced grammatical structures. Here are some particularly tricky sentence transformations (Part 4) which test your knowledge of the use of the [...]
Successful communication hinges upon the ability to express yourself, whether it be by spoken fluency, gesticulation, music or art. Having lived in Italy for the past ten years, more feelings and messages are conveyed through a series of body movements than through the accompanying stream of loud and passionate words that follows them. In fact so [...]
Art is a wonderful medium to use in the ELT classroom, it has so many incredible benefits as well as being fun and engaging. So here are 10 ways that you can use art in your lessons. Dictadraw Dictadraws are a great way to get students explaining things. It can be the teacher describing a [...]
2019 finally seems to be the year when people are standing up and taking notice of the devastating effect we are having on the environment. The entire ELT industry seems to be finally taking a little more responsibility for its environmental impact and, as we step away from the photocopier and embrace more environmentally friendly [...]
Languages are as alive as the people who speak them. They live, breathe, evolve and are influenced by their social and historical context. Therefore, a rigid non-flexible approach is ineffective in teaching as in order to own a language our students need to live it. We, as teachers, need to make sure that we do [...]
The Cambridge Young Learner's Flyers exam includes two different types of cloze activites where the students' grammatical and lexical knowledge is tested. Activities such as this one below will help students to think carefully about language patterns and to notice the most common ones which regularly come up in these cloze exercises. Download pdf version [...]
Learning lessons from TEFL 