A few days ago, I decided for the first time ever to deliver a grammar auction activity to my group of learners. I had never done this activity before but had done variations from it: awarding points for correct answers, etc. In this blog post (and video below), I would like to share my tips to ensure that you are able to deliver a fantastic grammar auction lesson.
Tag: YouTube Video (Page 1 of 2)
Getting your first EFL job can be quite a challenge but needn’t be. In this post, we look at how to get your first EFL job after the CELTA and what resources are available. There is also a YouTube video which accompanies this post.
One of the biggest challenges is seeking a position as a newly certified EFL teacher. There are some opportunities available in certain countries which allow new teachers to flourish.
One thing that can trouble teachers is how to teach reading skills in an engaging and interesting way. When I was learning French or German at school, my teachers would give us a block of text – not all that I could understand – some comprehension questions and let us get on with it. Fast forward 25 years, and I have created some techniques to ensure that reading is dynamic and exciting.
One of the benefits of being an English language teacher or involved in TEFL is the opportunity to travel around the world. Not many other jobs offer the opportunity for people to travel, learn about a culture or learn more about the language. One country which is very popular for many EFL teachers is Turkey with its rich and immersive culture. In this post, Emre gives his top ten tips for working in Turkey.
Those dreaded first lessons do not have to be stressful. Watch the video below for some ideas on five icebreakers in the EFL classroom.
What activities or techniques do you incorporate in your first lessons? Have you tried any ideas in the video?
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.
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.
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.
- Elicit possible statements for agreeing and disagreeing
- Board up these statements on one side of the whiteboard
- Choose a topic and divide the class in half
- One half of the class think of positives of the topic and the other half think of negatives
- Pair a student who focuses on positives with a student who focuses on negatives
- Get the learners to use the functional language on the whiteboard
- Monitor for feedback at the end of the lesson and prompt learners to use the functional language
- Stop the debate and then get students to decide who in their group won the debate and why
- Repeat the debate again but with a different topic and pair different students together
- 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.
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.
Here’s my latest video looking at five of my favourite websites for TEFL employment.
Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe for more, so you can be the first one to watch it!
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