Clines in Language Teaching
Delayed Error Correction
Routines with Young Learners
My one-to-one student just wants to chat
Timelines in EFL
Tag Archives: ELT
Tweaking your Boardwork
What do you do with the vocabulary that comes up in a lesson? Where do you write it on the board? Many teachers keep an incidental vocabulary column at the side of the board and this can have many advantages. … Continue reading
Posted in Desserts, Sides
Tagged #eltwhiteboard, boardwork, collocation, EFL, ELT, incidental vocabulary, phonemic script, pronunciation, substitution table, tweak, whiteboard
26 Comments
Getting to Know You with an Acrostics Poem
We have new courses starting this week at school so I thought I’d share my favourite getting to know you activity to use with a new class. The original idea of using an acrostics poem came from a session by … Continue reading
Posted in Mains
Tagged acrostics, EFL, ELT, first lessons, getting to know you, icebreakers, poetry
6 Comments
Tweaking Delayed Error Correction
One of the most difficult tasks for teachers is listening to the learners when they are speaking and finding appropriate things to give them feedback on. A common approach is to provide a delayed error correction slot when the learners … Continue reading
Posted in Desserts
Tagged #eltwhiteboard, EFL, ELT, error correction, feedback, speaking, tweak, upgrading language, using the whiteboard
16 Comments
M/F/P – Meaning, Form and ?
When analysing language and presenting it to students, we are often told on teacher training courses that we need to look at three areas: meaning, form and pronunciation (m,f,p). In many language lessons I have observed, the ‘p’ is the … Continue reading
Something Authentic – My favourite song for hypothetical language – Young Rebel Set
I’m sure every EFL teacher has their favourite song to use when working on conditionals. Mine is by an indie rock band from the north east of England called ‘Young Rebel Set’ and the song is called ‘If I was’. … Continue reading
50/50 correction: My favourite error correction technique
A simple but effective technique for on the spot ‘hot’ correction. Look at these example classroom interactions: Student: I /laɪked/ Paris very much. Teacher: You /laɪked/ or /laɪkt/? Student: /laɪkt/ Student: I have never ate Chinese food. Teacher: ate or eaten? … Continue reading
Posted in Sides
Tagged 50:50, EFL, ELT, error correction, feedback, hot correction, mistakes, pronunciation
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Starting with a Definition
An easy and surprisingly engaging way to lead into the topic or theme of a lesson can be to get the students writing a definition of the word central to the topic. Â Many lessons and units in coursebooks have titles … Continue reading
Posted in Starters
Tagged definitions, dictionary definition, EFL, ELT, lead in, setting context
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Warmer of the week: ladder race
Let’s start the ball rolling with a warmer. This is a good one for reviewing a recently studied lexical set (e.g. weather) or to introduce a topic by quickly brainstorming vocabulary connected to the theme of the lesson. It’s very … Continue reading
My first blog post!
I’ve finally decided to join the 21st century world of ELT and start blogging. There are now dozens of blogs out there with the musings and reflections of EFL teachers around the world and I decided that if I were … Continue reading
Recipes for the EFL Classroom 