ELT Experiences

Experiences of an English Language Teacher

Category: Vlog (Page 1 of 2)

Why Should Teachers Blog?

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The-Beginners-Guide-to-Blogging

Last week, I was inducting some new teachers into our school: preparing them for their teaching career for the year ahead. We looked at various areas about teaching: classroom management, get to know you activities, games in the classroom, etc. The final area we looked at was about continuing professional development (CPD). We looked at formal and peer observations, attending workshops, contributing to workshops as well as blogging. All teachers with varying years of experience, including a teacher who had just completed her CELTA (or equivalent), had only come across the mainstream websites related to English language teaching (TEFL.com, Dave’s ESL Cafe or Teaching English) yet had not really considered blogging a tool for CPD.

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Real English Lesson: Functional Language

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I recorded this lesson at my work of a fellow teacher preparing learners with functional language for debates and expressing points of view. It was a great lesson and I was so grateful being able to observe and record such a valuable lesson. I now thought that I will share this lesson with you all to see how my colleague is able to engage, motivate and support learners during a lesson. Enjoy!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvqf1_Wa2BE?ecver=2]

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Improving Spelling with Elementary Learners

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Hello all. It is almost the Lunar New Year, so a huge congratulations to those readers from China and the Far East who will be commencing their celebrations soon. Today, we are looking at how to improve spelling with elementary or low-level learners, particularly if they are from an Arabic background.

It is notoriously difficult to improve or develop an Arabic learners. There are some important things you could consider incorporating in class such as unscrabbling letters to make the words, removing the vowels from words and students have to write them in words and, one of my favourite activities, using Scrabble tiles in class. Watch the video below to see how I use them in class by getting learners to review spelling and vocabulary.

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"How Filming Lessons Could Completely Change Professional Development (Modern English Teacher

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The latest article published in Modern English Teacher focuses more on the latest filming that I have focused more in the past few months. Have a read to find out a bit more how teachers could film their classes for their own personal CPD as well as sharing ideas with out English teaching professionals from around the world.

Perhaps I should focus on a future article about how to edit and upload a video to a website which promotes video sharing such as YouTube. For example, I have to spend hours editing the video, rendering it, upload it to YouTube and then finally add effects and thumbnails. It takes a lot longer than you think but it is rewarding to see so many people deciding on watching some of the videos.

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New Video: Getting Students to Write

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Happy New Year all! May I wish you all the very best of luck for 2017!

It has been a very busy few months for me. Unfortunately, I have not focused too much time on the blog. So apologies. It is always difficult juggling between a full-time job, getting videos uploaded on YouTube and dedicating time to this blog. I really appreciate your support and I thank you for your patience.

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The Ultimate Way to Get Students Debating

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Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to observe one of my colleagues teach her Intermediate class with no material what so ever. She told me that she was going to get her students debating in class. I have always had difficulty getting my students to communicate and I thought it would be a great chance to see how another senior teacher encourages learners to communicate and debate naturally. It was the first time that I had been able to take away some ideas for teaching for next time. What made it even more valuable was that I recorded the lesson with my video camera – with her consent.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Mc0rcKb_M&w=560&h=315]

What I really found useful was the fact that the teacher did not use any worksheets or handouts and used all the students in class to elicit possible pros and cons for the debate. Here are the stages for preparing learners to debate and follow a similar lesson structure.

  1. Elicit possible statements for agreeing and disagreeing
  2. Board up these statements on one side of the whiteboard
  3. Choose a topic and divide the class in half
  4. One half of the class think of positives of the topic and the other half think of negatives
  5. Pair a student who focuses on positives with a student who focuses on negatives
  6. Get the learners to use the functional language on the whiteboard
  7. Monitor for feedback at the end of the lesson and prompt learners to use the functional language
  8. Stop the debate and then get students to decide who in their group won the debate and why
  9. Repeat the debate again but with a different topic and pair different students together
  10. Provide feedback and end the class

This is a great activity for Pre-Intermediate learners and above. Try it out next time and see whether you got your students speaking. A huge thank you to Lisa for allowing me to record her lesson.

 

How to Teach Dictogloss: Example Video

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Earlier this week, I was teaching a wonderful afternoon class of elementary adult learners who were really enthusiastic and engaged. Their enthusiasm and commitment to communicate made up for their lack of language ability. I decided, for their second lesson, to tell them a story and made a dictogloss activity. The main focus for a dictogloss is for students to listen to the story a number of times and then, in a group, to rewrite the story using any of their notes. I was so pleased with their progress and the amount that they had written from my story.

If you are unsure what dictogloss is, then the video below will help how to incorporate into your future lessons.

Have you ever tried dictogloss before? Do you have any questions? If so, don’t hesitate.

Workshop Video: "Top Tips for Young Learner Teachers"

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Last week, I gave a talk on teaching young learners. Finally, I have managed to upload the video of this workshop and it is available for all my followers. The slides for this workshop is available here and please ‘Like’ it and ‘Subscribe’ for more updates. If you have a question, feel free to leave a comment on the video. Thanks for all the support.

5 Top Grammar Books for the CELTA Course

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In this video, I look at my favourite 5 grammar books for the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) course.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaZZcgxoro8&w=560&h=315]

What are your favourite CELTA grammar books? Would you recommend any other grammar books? What grammar books do you refer to when preparing a lesson?

My Top 5 Grammar Books for the CELTA Course:
» Teaching English Grammar: http://amzn.to/1thGm56
» Grammar for English Language Teachers: http://amzn.to/25Sj2th
» Practical English Usage: http://amzn.to/1PkxZL4
» English Grammar Today: http://amzn.to/1YijxdI
» 700 Classroom Activities: http://amzn.to/1PkxIYt

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