“Aren’t teenagers too self-conscious to speak English?” “Do they care about the contents that do not appear in their school tests?” “Well… I wouldn’t want to get into that area…” I have been teaching teens as well as pre-school and elementary school children at my language school, English Square, in Japan, for the last 20 [...]
Posts under ‘Stuff All EFL Teachers Should Know’
Images à la Dogme (by Chiew Pang)
I must admit that when Barb invited me to submit a guest post, I felt I wasn’t worthy of such an invite. Later, I thought… if she’d felt that I had something to contribute, well, then I couldn’t very well let her down, could I? Besides, one has to step out of one’s comfort zone [...]
Moving Beyond “Do you like?” (by Randy Poehlman)
Getting students to express preference and to make choices is as easy as holding out a red pencil and a blue pencil and letting them choose, then providing practice and drills based on the language that facilitates that choice.
How culture matters
If you walk into a neighborhood in my part of Japan, you’ll see a display like this somewhere near the entrance. It’s a map showing all of the houses in a neighborhood, and the names of families who live in the houses. Do you have something like this where you live?
Lexical Chunks for Kids (by Mark Kulek)
Mark left a comment on a recent post of mine (How Context Matters) that intrigued me, about using lexical chunks with his young learners. I asked him to expand on his comment in a guest post, and Mark was kind enough to agree. ~Barb
Students Picking Pics (by Randy Poehlman)
When students are able to choose which images best represent the content of the lessons, they are instantly more engaged and they become far more active. Students can tailor the themes to their particular interests, or the general interests of their classmates, far better than a teacher can select relevant photography and illustrations. This bottom [...]
Personal experiences of a new TEFL teacher (by Anna Greenwood)
I thought that a one month TEFL course and the fact that I am a native speaker of English would be enough to equip me to teach English. As I started to teach in Nepal, and later in India I slowly learnt many lessons myself. The most important lesson I learnt was to be genuine [...]
How Context Matters
What are these? How are they used?
Rocco’s Day: A student-generated story activity for literacy practice
Though experience and through language we learn. Experience needs language to give it form. Language needs experience to give it content. ~Walter Loban Children learning English as a foreign language tend to develop oral language skills before they become literate. In countries like Japan, where the grammar structure and writing system of English is so [...]
Classroom Management: stuff they didn’t mention in teacher training (by Marc Helgesen)
The way to become a teacher is to be a teacher. It is a truism in education that the way we become good teachers is through experience. The things we learn in certificate programs and grad school help, of course, but it is the act of teaching that gives us the skills we need.
