Tag: TESL

Teaching Tips Episode 9: Nine Ways To Teach Vocabulary

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In this Teaching Tips Episode, I look at Nine Ways To Teach Vocabulary for the English classroom. In this video, I attempt to share nine ways (not ten ways) to teach vocabulary in the classroom. The nine ideas include:

Using Flashcards
Drawing Pictures on the Whiteboard
Using Word Families
Matching Definitions
Highlighting Wordstress
Removing Vowels
Teaching Common Collocations
Matching Opposite and Related Words
Playing Language Games
THERE IS NO TEN!!! (my mistake)

What do you think is important for students when they are learning vocabulary? How do you teach vocabulary in the ESL / EFL classroom? Let us know in the comments section below.

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What would you like to see in the next Teaching Tips video next week? Let me know in the comments.

See you next week, on Tuesday at 7pm (UK time), for Teaching Tips.

Previous Teaching Tips Episode: The Phonemic Chart.

Five Ways for Teachers to Talk Less and Students to Talk More

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It can always be difficult in prompting learners to talk or respond to questions, particularly if they are not used to it. Teachers can try a number of things: games, rewarding behaviour or input, reminding learners of class rules, offering some form of carrot (a movie at the end of the week) or the threat of homework. For English teachers, it can become quite challenging particularly should one have the same students throughout the year.

There are some reasons why learners can be naturally quiet in the classroom, but encouraging them to interact can improve their progress However, the more the teacher talks, the less the students talk. What is more, you do not want your students to come to class just to listen to you. So Annabelle Fee offers some suggestions: five ways for English teachers to talk less and students to talk more.

How To Survive as an English Teacher in China by Kim Ooi

/ Martin Sketchley / 1 Comment

Teaching in China is becoming more and more of a popular destination for teachers of English who are keen to earn a decent salary and developing their career in English language teaching. Looking at recent job posts on this website, the majority of the job submissions are from China. So, what is the best way to survive as an English teacher in China? In this blog contribution, Kim Ooi attempts to answer this question.

Making The Most of Conferences

/ Martin Sketchley / 1 Comment

It is that time of year where a vast group of English teachers venture to the UK to continue their professional development for the IATEFL Conference. This year it was held at Glasgow. I believe it was five years ago, in 2012, when I went to the IATEFL Conference in Glasgow to give my talk based upon my research for my MA in Dogme ELT. You can read more about my dissertation and research in this post.

Anyhow, attending conferences can be overwhelming, challenging and intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. This post looks at the best ways to make the most out of conferences and how to make the most of your time.

Teaching Ideas for Word Stress

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“Pronunciation Practice Activities” by Martin Hewings

So the past few months, I have been focusing more and more on pronunciation for all levels of learners, no matter whether they are young learners or adult learners of English. Anyhow, I tried out a new lesson idea today which was partly inspired from the wonderful book, “Pronunciation Practice Activities“, written by Martin Hewings. I would recommend any teacher worth their salt to purchase this book, as it offers some great pronunciation lesson ideas which could be incorporated into class immediately.

Most teachers would identify word stress with the teaching of new vocabulary or as a technique to support pronunciation for problematic lexical items. This is all well and good but it reminds me of a teacher reacting to issues rather than proactively focusing on areas of language learning. Personally, if a teacher is able to develop a lesson based around pronunciation and developing learners’ awareness of pronunciation, so much the better. There is by no means anything wrong by reacting to pronunciation issues as they arise but I think it would be a nice change of focus when we remind learners that there are some basic principles that they can learn no matter how large or small the lexical item. Nevertheless, lets look at one lesson idea which is published in “Pronunciation Practice Activities“.

"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.