TEFL All Inclusive

  Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash Many of you will be aware that I was running an online book club during the first lockdown, here in the UK, and that this continued afterwards. Recently, I have been looking again at the research that I completed into extensive reading as part of one of my assignments for the DipTESOL, as I sometimes feel that the students are initially needing a more structured approach to their reading, to avoid them becoming overwhelmed and demotivated.  I looked in particular at my research on Literature Circles. I have used these successfully in the past with Primary School aged children (aged about 9 -11 years old in the UK), and I decided that I would try this approach to lessen some of the barriers to reading that my students have been encountering. Literature Circles are defined as, ‘a group of students gather together to discuss in depth and share ideas about a piece of literature they read’ (Hill 2007, p. 1). Harvey Daniels was instrumental in the develop

                                                                    Photo by William Olivieri on Unsplash My students were interested in visiting one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites on a virtual tour, to be able to explore a place of cultural or physical significance that would not normally be possible for them to visit. I decided to take them to a country that none of them had ever visited – China- and we set off to visit The Great Wall of China! For this virtual tour I used quite a few different resources to give them the best experience possible. Several of these ideas were inspired by a webinar I have just attended as part of the excellent Macmillan Back to school series: Key Tools and Approaches to Hybrid Learning, on 12 th August. The presenter was the always amazing Russell Stannard. I sometimes use Google Earth to set the scene and as Russell Stannard reminded us in the webinar, it really brings the place to life. So, we zoomed in on The Great Wall of China, and the

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash Do you make use of translation in your classroom? And if so, to what extent? Translation became marginalized for a prolonged period of time, largely as a reaction against the Grammar-Translation Method.   This method, derived from the Classics and Latin and Greek, involved translation as a key component. Students were occupied in memorizing lists of vocabulary and grammar rules and translating literary texts into English. This method was very teacher centred and made extensive use of L1. It fell out of fashion for its failure to focus on context or communication. The main emphasis was on reading and writing and it was often seen as extremely boring and unmotivating. The decline of the Grammar-translation Method led to approaches such as the Direct Approach and Audiolingualism and subsequently to more Humanistic approaches. These placed more emphasis on communication and instruction was predominantly in the target language, with limited or no use

Photo by NASA on Unsplash We took off for a literally out of this world experience this week, with a virtual tour to the International Space Station. This is an absolutely wonderful virtual tour to go on, which I have done several times now, and I highly recommend it as an exciting, memorable and educationally and linguistically rich experience. The learners are always motivated and surprised to visit the space station, which would under normal circumstances take between 6 and 48 hours to reach. It flies at 17,500 miles an hour at a height of around 250 miles above the earth and has been continually occupied since 2000 by astronauts, who carry out research that is not possible to do on Earth. The choice of activities in this tour is  especially designed to support learners who are taking the IELTS test or preparing for further academic study. Of course it would be of interest and relevant for general English learners too. The level required for understanding the videos and the r

Firstly, I have to say that I’m not a great fan of using worksheets. I think that there can be a lot of disadvantages and negative aspects, and they are often used without a thought to their suitability for the learners involved. Pre-made worksheets can be demotivating and unrealistic, in that they will focus exclusively on the target language in unnatural utterances. They can also tend to promote a more teacher-centred classroom, with a focus on the ‘correct’ answer and may give the false impression that language is always neatly packaged like this. There is often little interaction, communication with others or thought required to complete many worksheet. Have you ever have noticed that, after the lessons, worksheets sometimes tend to end up either in the bin or left lying on the table in the classroom, as they leave the room. Have you ever walked into a class to be confronted by this situation from a previous class? For the students who carefully file them away to take them home,

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash It's the height of the summer here in the UK, so what better time to head outside (virtually) to experience the atmosphere and animals at the world famous Edinburgh Zoo, in Scotland! This famous zoo is set in over 82 acres of hillside and has over 2,500 animals – many of which are endangered species. It is especially well known for its daily penguin parade and the fact that it is home to the only giant pandas   in the UK. The students were excited to have the opportunity to see some of the six live webcams - panda, penguin, tiger, koala, snow monkey and lion.   Our virtual tour started with a brief whole group discussion of whether the students had ever visited a zoo and if zoos were popular in their countries. Some skepticism was expressed about the animals being kept in captivity, so it was clarified that this particular zoo is more of a wildlife sanctuary and is part of one of Scotland’s leading conservation charities. This was fol

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash I know that for many teachers, attempting to teach pronunciation online has been one of the most challenging aspects of suddenly moving all classes online, due to Covid-19. Many people worry that they will not be able to provide a clear model and that they will not be able to hear or see all the learners. Problems which can be magnified if cameras are turned off and connections are poor or intermittent. There is the additional problem online of having a time lag, and this can be prone to add to the confusion. Sometimes teaching pronunciation does not tend to rank very high on a teacher’s list of priorities in face to face classrooms, perhaps for reasons of insecurity with their own pronunciation model and lacking the knowledge of what to teach, as well as the feeling that many of their students would prefer to have the time spent on working on the four skills etc. Therefore, with the move to online teaching pronunciation work can be even more negle