“There's just not enough time!” Ever said that? Funnily enough most ELT teachers have. Read my latest guest blog on elt.training here to find out what you can do about it and how you can gain both time and motivation to realise your goals.
When thinking about successful learning classroom management is key and in my opinion, the best way of achieving a harmonious classroom is by building a classroom community. Creating an environment where students feel safe and supported means creating the correct environment for language learning. Language learning means growth through making mistakes and that will only [...]
Reflection is the most important part of personal develop and the only way to foster a growth mindset, as I’ve written about here and here. So it’s no surprise that I jumped at the chance for a 5 day CPD challenge, which ELT.training have been running on their Facebook page. But what have I learned? [...]
As I lie on my sunbed with my toes covered in sand and nothing but my two small children to disturb my daydreams, I can truly understand the importance of maintaining a good work-life balance. While this would appear obvious to most, it’s something that as teachers we tend to forget as the lines between personal [...]
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 [...]
Learning lessons from TEFL 