Here are new additions to The Best Resources For Learning About The Ebola Virus: Doctor Infected with Ebola Asks That Experimental Serum Go to Sick Colleague Instead is from The Atlantic. What would happen if Ebola came to the United … Continue rea… - 6 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 4:55pm -
New York Times columnist David Brooks is at it again, demonstrating the rapidly growing public face of Social Emotional Learning as a “Let Them Eat Character” strategy (which I wrote about in The Washington Post — The manipulation of Social …… - 6 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 4:31pm -
Here are two videos that I think show people exhibiting “flow.” I’m adding them to The Best Resources For Learning About “Flow.” Let me know if you have other suggestions. - 12 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 10:48am -
I’ve been doing some research and writing on the concept of “flow” (and continue to interested in hearing suggestions of movie/TV scenes where the characters are exhibiting it). In re-looking at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s TED Talk (which I’v… - 13 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 10:00am -
The Good Country Index is an interactive map that ranks each country in a variety of areas, including culture, science, prosperity, etc. The rankings are based on data from the United Nations, and you can find more of an explanation … Continue read… - 18 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 4:49am -
Though I wish it didn’t use the term “illegal immigrant,” I’m still adding this infographic to The Best Resources About The New Push For Immigration Reform: Courtesy of: Infographic World - 22 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 1:09am -
Here are new additions to The Best Resources On How Exercise Helps Learning: Here’s How Kids Can Get Better Grades is from TIME. Can Exercise Close the Achievement Gap? is from Pacific Standard. Study shows elementary and middle schools can … Con… - 22 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 12:49am -
Every month I make a few short lists highlighting my choices of the best resources I through (and learned from) Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog. I’ve already shared in earlier posts several new … Continue r… - 1 day ago, 31 Jul 14, 2:48pm -
Here are some recent good posts and articles on educational policy issues: “Stupid, absurd, non-defensible”: New NEA president Lily Eskelsen García on the problem with Arne Duncan, standardized tests and the war on teachers is from Salon. The Pr… - 1 day ago, 31 Jul 14, 2:36pm -
Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was searching for a good way to have students create mapped timelines. The idea is to have students be able to create timelines whose events are directly matched to locations on maps. Doing this… - 31 mins ago, 1 Aug 14, 10:28pm -
Shells on a beach in Maine.It is the last day of July and I'm wondering where the summer has gone. I bet that some of you are wondering the same. And my friends in the southern hemisphere are probably ready for summer by now. As I do at the end of ev… - 21 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 2:29am -
In a post earlier today I shared the news that Fotopedia is shutting down. Fotopedia was a good place to find great images of U.S. National Parks. The National Parks Service's Digital Image Archive is an alternative place to find images of U.S. Natio… - 21 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 1:39am -
Design and Development of Educational Technology is a new edX course starting this fall. The six week course is part of the EdTechX series from the MIT Education Arcade. The course is designed for people who are interested in learning about the histo… - 22 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 1:25am -
Since its launch in 2009 Fotopedia has been one of my favorite places to see beautiful picture stories about national parks and natural wonders. Unfortunately, Fotopedia has just announced that it will shut down on August 10. The web service and all… - 22 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 12:51am -
Ocenaudio is a free audio editing tool available to use on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. The free software enables you to create audio recordings from scratch and or edit existing audio files.Once the Ocenaudio software is installed on your comp… - 22 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 12:34am -
Yesterday at the Ed Tech Teacher Summit in Chicago I gave an updated version of my popular presentation Discovery, Discussion, Demonstration. Douglas Kiang was kind enough to share his sketch notes of my presentation. A screenshot of Doug's notes is… - 1 day ago, 31 Jul 14, 11:51am -
Haiku Deck, the popular slideshow creation tool, has recently added a long-request feature. You can now sync edits to your slideshows between your iPad and the web version of Haiku Deck. In the updated version of the iPad app all of your presentation… - 1 day ago, 31 Jul 14, 11:30am -
Last week Google removed the need for a plugin to participate in Google+ Hangouts. This week another feature was added that makes Google+ Hangouts a little more school-friendly. Now you can eject guests from Google+ Hangouts. Participants who are in… - 2 days ago, 31 Jul 14, 10:55am -
To get back at someone means to get revenge. Here's an example:Let's get back at Tom tomorrow! We'll put vinegar in his drinking water.Well, that's not the most mature thing to do, but, let's face it, people like to take revenge or 'get back at'… - 86 days ago, 7 May 14, 9:12pm -
You'll likely hear a number of idioms with the verb 'go' used in everyday speech when doing business. For example:easy come, easy go = Money is earned money is spent / Don't worry about the cost. It's easy come easy go around here.go like clockwo… - 91 days ago, 2 May 14, 7:14pm -
If you are an intermediate to advanced level learner, you'll find these two vocabulary gap fill quizzes challenging. The first focuses what goes into successful parenting. The next provides a short situation in which a squatter helps the police. Give… - 21 Apr 14, 8:04pm -
If you are in the medical profession, or if you live in an English speaking country, you'll need to communicate effectively and understand specific questions about your / your patient's health. These dialogues provide practice conversations and key v… - 19 Apr 14, 7:05pm -
This lesson will help you write your very first sentences. Follow each step reading the description and you will learn how to write three different types of sentences. For example:Mary is tall. Mary is a student. Mary is a tall student.This is… - 17 Apr 14, 10:11pm -
Learning parts of speech can be a real challenge for beginners. However, learning to recognize just four - noun / verb / adjective / adverb - will greatly help them develop a feeling for the structure of English. Use this parts of speech lesson to as… - 14 Apr 14, 8:46pm -
Sometimes you might have to insist on your point of view. Someone who has the final word ends the conversation forcefully:I said we're going to finish the project. That's my final word!Learn how to have the final word using phrases and structur… - 12 Apr 14, 8:26pm -
One of the main tasks in any grammar class is teaching tenses. For many students, the tenses are especially challenging because their native language may lack a focus on the time aspect of tenses that is so prevalent in English. These guides have bee… - 9 Apr 14, 6:11pm -
Here are two new gap fills that will challenge any upper level student. First, we have a story about a man who decides to buy a boat. It's packed full of unique vocabulary and sure to be a challenge. Next, learn 15 new phrasal verbs with this gap fil… - 4 Apr 14, 8:13pm -
Today we are answering the question: What is a dilemma? To find the answer, let’s look at the possible definitions. Dictionary.com defines a dilemma as a noun that means either… a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternati… - 29 days ago, 4 Jul 14, 5:34am -
How to Form Regular Past Tense Verbs In today’s class (see VIDEO below), I’m talking about the four basic ways to form regular past tense verbs. In regular English verbs, they will always end in -ed. However, you may need to make a couple adjust… - 46 days ago, 17 Jun 14, 12:49am -
Elite Member Class – Preview Video As you may know, we recently launched our Elite Member Classes for a low monthly cost of $29.99. This introductory rate is coming to a close tomorrow at MIDNIGHT. The price will increase to $59.99 per month and $4… - 94 days ago, 30 Apr 14, 1:34am -
We have a few different video playlists that you may find helpful and I wanted to go ahead and put them all in one place. Tongue Twisters Phrasal Verbs US Citizenship Questions Advanced VocabularyVideo Playlists from Free English Lessons - The best… - 99 days ago, 24 Apr 14, 3:23pm -
Online Classes Start on Thursday! I am SO excited to announce that after months of hard work and preparation, we will be launching weekly classes, starting this Thursday! I will be teaching these high-quality, university-level classes that you can wa… - 22 Apr 14, 12:28am -
What does it mean to giggle? The dictionary defines the verb giggle as… laugh lightly in a nervous, affected, or silly manner. In this video I use the word “cute” to describe my son giggling. No matter how you define the word, it is easier to s… - 12 Apr 14, 10:42am -
Today’s post joins English language learning with a passion for music. It’s written by our friend Alice Morell, creator of MyMusicBox.org. It’s titled “Who Knew Madonna Could Teach English?” because Alice uses 3 Madonna songs to make an Eng… - 10 Apr 14, 1:54am -
How to Write an Effective Topic Sentence When you write an academic paragraph in English, you should probably start by writing the topic sentence. The topic sentence is essentially a 1-sentence summary of the paragraph. It clearly outlines the main i… - 8 Apr 14, 2:06am -
Is texting ruining your English? According to a poll taken by Kaplan International, 63% of English language learners don’t think so. The good news is that world-renowned linguist David Crystal doesn’t think it’s had a negative effect on languag… - 2 Apr 14, 4:03am -
I connected with James and his business partner Kris around a year ago, and if you are a regular reader of this blog, you will remember that Kris wrote a guest post last year (click here to read it). I was excited to get one of the guys back to talk… - 22 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 1:03am -
There was an article popping up in my various social media feeds the other day called, “Why Everyone Should Be On Twitter.” I then realized it was by Mark Barnes, another fellow presenter in the TTO MOOC. I then read some more of his stuff, aske… - 18 days ago, 14 Jul 14, 10:59pm -
Rich Kiker was one of the presenters at the Teachers Teaching Online MOOC hosted over at WizIQ. I learned a lot watching his presentation, and as the number one voted Google Apps Trainer in the world, I was eager to interview him so he could share hi… - 29 days ago, 3 Jul 14, 9:43pm -
Wednesday, 25th April was a strange day for me. And for countless other people too. When I checked my website analytics I thought there was a mistake. I was used to getting 500+ visits a day to my website, the vast majority of these coming thro… - 36 days ago, 27 Jun 14, 12:10am -
I love featuring teachers who are doing their own thing online, giving others an opportunity to share their story and and their ideas, inspiring us all as we strive to succeed. Today I bring you Stephen Mayeux from ESLhiphop. I’ve known Steve for… - 51 days ago, 12 Jun 14, 12:24am -
In January, I wrote a post looking back on 2013 and also talked about my English teaching goals for 2014. Writing down this helped me process what I wanted to achieve and created some accountability. I also hoped that it would inspire others to get… - 60 days ago, 3 Jun 14, 12:02am -
In my last post, I talked about how to use Google Hangouts on Air to teach live language lessons to an unlimited amount of people. Since then, I have received a lot of questions from people in my community about what platform is best to use when tea… - 14 Apr 14, 11:53pm -
I had my first experience using Google Hangouts on Air this week. I’m happy to say that it was successful both in terms of the presentation I gave and the technical side of things. I did A LOT of research and testing to ensure that everything went… - 28 Mar 14, 11:26am -
When talking with Drew Badger, it is soon obvious just how knowledgeable he is about marketing. He has built a successful online course that solves a big problem for English learners: becoming conversationally fluent. He also has a very successful Yo… - 30 Jan 14, 9:53pm -
As promised, blogging resumes shortly… but in a new site and with a new format. You can find the new blog here: it’s called The (De-) Fossilization Diaries, and charts the attempts I’m making to improve my faltering Spanish. Hope to see you the… - 23 Aug 13, 5:31pm -
So this is it, folks: I’m closing down the blog for the summer… and for good. After 3 years, 150 posts, nearly 7000 comments, and innumerable hits, visits, views, however you want to describe and count them, plus one e-book spin-off (but no sign… - 9 Jun 13, 3:00pm -
A teacher educator in Norway reports on how she has used ideas from my book How to Teach Vocabulary (2002) on an in-service course for local primary and lower secondary school teachers. Mona Flognfeldt writes: ‘I have shared with my students a lot… - 2 Jun 13, 3:00pm -
A couple of weeks ago the University of Barcelona hosted a week-long course on Gesture and SLA, run by Dr Marianne Gullberg, Professor of Psycholinguistics at Lund University in Sweden. Marianne has to be one of the leading experts on gesture and lan… - 26 May 13, 3:00pm -
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendos, The blackbird whistling Or just after. Wallace Stevens, ‘Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird’. It’s spring and the male blackbirds are in full throat. I wa… - 19 May 13, 3:00pm -
A recent ELT Chat on using corpora suggested that what might be helpful for teachers coming to online corpora (such as COCA- the Corpus of Contemporary American English) for the first time would be some kind of screencast, demonstrating some of the m… - 12 May 13, 3:00pm -
What you do need to know in order to be able to teach? The question concerns not only teachers, but also teacher educators and methodology writers, since the way we answer it impacts on the design of training programs and their related materials. Do… - 5 May 13, 3:00pm -
This was written by a young American woman, visiting Europe for the first time, and speaking the German she had learned at school. It describes an experience many second language speakers will attest to: the turning point – that moment when suddenl… - 28 Apr 13, 3:00pm -
Three excellent presentations at IATEFL this year, each of which referenced Dogme, got me wondering. The first, Conversation-driven or dialogic methodology? ELT Classroom talk, was given by Dr Phil Chappell, from Macquarie University in NSW. Phil sta… - 21 Apr 13, 3:00pm -
How do you check your students’ comprehension of a concept or skill? Stacey Hughes, former teacher and current teacher trainer in the Professional Development team at Oxford University Press, shares some ideas for checking students are on the rig… - 2 days ago, 30 Jul 14, 6:46pm -
Ian Brookes is a freelance writer and editor based in Scotland. He has edited a number of dictionaries and has written books about spelling, writing, and punctuation. In this post, he looks at the origins and use of animal-related adjectives … Cont… - 4 days ago, 28 Jul 14, 7:39pm -
This is the fourth of a six part series of articles from two ELT professionals who have successfully done just that: Mike Hogan and Bethany Cagnol. Here, they share advice on how to handle the tricky subject of pricing your services and billing c… - 8 days ago, 24 Jul 14, 7:14pm -
Andrew Dilger and Sophie Rogers, former English language teachers, are part of the Professional Development team at Oxford University Press. In this tongue-in-cheek post, they consider some of the issues that any self-respecting ‘bluffer’ should… - 10 days ago, 22 Jul 14, 7:56pm -
In the second of a three-part series on teaching EAP, Edward de Chazal, a freelance consultant, author and presenter, looks at effective listening strategies and appropriate materials to support students in their chosen disciplines. Listening i… - 15 days ago, 17 Jul 14, 7:08pm -
Teacher trainer, Freia Layfield, offers some practical ideas to bring CLIL into the young learner classroom. Categorisation tasks (science) Bring a selection of flashcards to class. Draw two large circles on the board. Label them with two different… - 17 days ago, 15 Jul 14, 5:48pm -
Many people travel to foreign countries for vacation. They spend two weeks in Italy, France, or another place. They see many museums, festivals, and important places. The vacation is interesting but very tiring. In fact, people need a vacation when t… - 35 days ago, 28 Jun 14, 8:24am -
The Internet has become an important part of most people's lives because it's used for communication, information, and entertainment. Billions of people around the world send e-mails, chat online, read the news, and even play games. However, some peo… - 38 days ago, 25 Jun 14, 9:17am -
Oliver Curry studies evolution and the future, and he has an interesting idea about the future of the human race. He suggests that in 100,000 years, humankind will split into two species. In addition, one group will be the haves, and the other group… - 39 days ago, 23 Jun 14, 11:57am -
Archaeologists study ancient ruins around the world. They go to Egypt, China, Mexico, and many other places to study the history of people a long time ago. But ruin hunters don't need to travel far, because these people explore modern, abandoned buil… - 42 days ago, 21 Jun 14, 8:32am -
Do you like challenges? Do you like extreme sports? How about mountain climbing? Maybe the Seven Summits Challenge is for you.The Seven Summits refer to the seven highest mountains on each continent. Climbing all seven is the challenge. The seven mo… - 42 days ago, 21 Jun 14, 8:31am -
Everyone knows Facebook. You can write updates about your life, post pictures, share information and music, and more. It has a huge impact on everyday life for millions of people.There are many people who dislike Facebook, though. Facebook collects… - 47 days ago, 16 Jun 14, 7:44am -
New Entry: 'Present Perfect Practice Game- Meetings' has just been added to the Lesson Plans area of UsingEnglish.com. - 2 days ago, 31 Jul 14, 12:26am -
New Entry: 'Much of the data that we need are corrupted.' has just been added to the Language Polls area of UsingEnglish.com. - 2 days ago, 30 Jul 14, 11:21pm -
New Entry: 'Looks like a goat exploded' has just been added to the Slang area of UsingEnglish.com. This entry is only available in our members' area. - 4 days ago, 29 Jul 14, 12:48am -
I just finished a great book that anyone planning on moving cross culturally should pick up and read. The book, Foreign to Familiar, is short (127 pages), incredibly helpful, and fun to read. The basic premiss of Foreign to Familiar is one we all int… - 43 days ago, 19 Jun 14, 11:00pm -
Today’s guest post comes from Jeffery Nelson, the creator of a great new blog called Living Bilingual. After you enjoy the article stop by and visit. ———- Language skills are hard to measure. There is an innate subjectivity in analyzing a l… - 13 Aug 13, 12:27pm -
Today I am excited to share another great guest post from a regular EDLL reader, Arabic expert and language lover Saqib Hussain. You can find out more about Saqib and about Arabic at Arabic Studio. For now, enjoy the post! ————- OK, so… - 26 Jul 13, 5:06am -
I have been an admirer of Jana Fadness for a number of years now and so was excited to be able to interview her a few weeks back. Her blog, Adventures of the Directionally Challenged shares here experiences as a language learner, a traveler and a t… - 4 Jul 13, 5:11am -
Perhaps you are familiar with Tim Ferris’ “4 Hour” series of books. In today’s guest post, Allan Ngo of Money in Mandrin unpacks a few lessons he took away from The 4 Hour Chef. Enjoy! RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!!!!! Your alarm clock blares! POW… - 24 Jun 13, 11:16pm -
Today’s guest post is from Noel van Vliet, the writer behind SmartLanguageLearner.com. It was certainly a timely post for me as I’ve been struggling amidst part time jobs and being back in the states to stay connected with learning Turkish an… - 10 Jun 13, 8:20pm -
I am honored to be one of the keynote speakers at the Teachers Matter Conferences 2015 in Sydney, Australia and Rotorua, NZ.Although still a few months away, this is a... - 11 days ago, 22 Jul 14, 9:58am -
Alan November‘s Building Learning Communities in Boston is one of my favorite conference. The sheer stimulation to my thinking and creativity, the networking with so many brilliant minds, the sharing... - 12 days ago, 20 Jul 14, 10:41pm -
I had the pleasure of meeting Bob Greenberg, the mind behind The Brainwaves Channel at BLC14 in Boston. Bob has been traveling the US and the world to film and... - 13 days ago, 20 Jul 14, 3:15am -
I presented Global Pedagogy, Not Just a Project at BLC 2014- Building Learning Communities in Boston, MA. It’s time to move beyond the “wow” factor of a global project designed... - 14 days ago, 18 Jul 14, 10:27pm -
A couple of days, Dan McCabe mentioned me in a Tweet… I took a look at the conversation preceding the “challenge” to “sketch it”. Below is the result and... - 22 days ago, 10 Jul 14, 9:25pm -
I am a documenter, I have always been… maybe it is in my blood… …from keeping diaries from an early age on, being the family letter writer, to taking pictures... - 31 days ago, 1 Jul 14, 9:46pm -
Technology is allowing teachers to not just tear down the walls that surround their classroom, it also is allowing improved ways to present content. For the language classroom, images are an essential tool to generate conversation, contextualize voca… - 52 days ago, 11 Jun 14, 2:46am -
The “50″ lists created over the last year have been a huge hit with teachers. So happy to know that these simple ideas are being used in classrooms everywhere. That’s what web 2.0 is all about. I thought it would be great to list them all in on… - 57 days ago, 5 Jun 14, 7:42pm -
{this is part of the “Captive Mind” series of blog posts – publishing online and decommercializing thought.] This piece of reflection was inspired by a former professor of mine – Dr. Gerald Gutek, professor of education, Loyola University and… - 59 days ago, 4 Jun 14, 1:04am -
“I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.” ― George Orwell, Why I Write I’ve been… - 7 Mar 14, 7:16pm -
I’m presently enjoying life deep in the highlands of Guatemala. It’s why I haven’t been posting regularly and fanatically. All things at their own time and pace but I’ll be back in the new year – loud, clear, full of posts! I’m taking Spa… - 21 Dec 13, 7:33am -
Forwarded from a young person, who got it from an acquaintance: just got an email that said "Address is correct…" like are you sad? are you upset? why the fuck are those extra periods there? dear people over 25, stop using ellipses for no reason li… - 3 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 7:48pm -
Jack Healy, "Defying Death in Utah Arches: A Thrill Too Far?", NYT 7/30/ 2014: Even though his son died trying to swing, Mr. Stocking said he opposed any closing. “You can’t legislate people from not having fun,” he said. “They’re going… - 4 hours ago, 1 Aug 14, 7:29pm -
Paul Rolly, "Blogger fired from language school over 'homophonia'", The Salt Lake Tribune, 7:29/2014: Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such… - 1 day ago, 31 Jul 14, 7:25pm -
I don't know any Hebrew. So when I recently saw a comment in Hebrew on a Google Plus page of discussion about Gaza tunnel-building that I was looking at, I clicked (with some forebodings) on the "Translate" link to see what it meant. What I got was t… - 1 day ago, 31 Jul 14, 7:17pm -
From Arun Tharuvai, via his Twitter account, we find that Intersecting Bubbles has this brief but fascinating post on a multilingual notice: "Shell Petroleum thinks that Hindi is English written in the Devanagari Script ". It describes a routine no… - 2 days ago, 31 Jul 14, 1:30am -
K. Gorman et al., "Children's Use of Disfluencies Distinguish ASD and Language Impairment", IMFAR 2014 (emphasis added): This study compares the relative frequencies of "uh" and "um" in the spontaneous speech of children with ASD (with or without co… - 2 days ago, 30 Jul 14, 7:24pm -
In these ‘method talk’ postings I am sharing paragraphs I have recently been writing about issues to do with methodology and teaching. They are attempts to ‘call things as they are’ and to reflect both a ‘con-sensus’ and ‘common sense… - 23 days ago, 9 Jul 14, 5:42pm -
Last Saturday Sugata Mitra gave a plenary at an international teachers’ conference. When it was over a proportion of the audience gave him a standing ovation, but an equal number refused to get to their feet and a proportion of the ‘remaining sea… - 8 Apr 14, 12:50am -
I was reading the Guardian yesterday and came across a short interview with the singer Sheryl Crow during which she responded to the question ‘what have you sacrificed for your art?’ with the answer “my love life. I think whatever you give your… - 13 Feb 14, 3:31am -
I was very taken with Luke Meddings’ recent blogpost about the tensions between education and big business (amongst other things). He suggested that whereas we teach to reach students, to help students reach their potential, others see teaching as… - 17 Dec 13, 1:05am -
Someone (let’s call him Marc Prensky!) once came up with a rather neat description of the difference between some kids and some older people. The former, he suggested, were digital natives who grew up with technology all around them as a given –… - 23 Nov 13, 4:01am -
As October faded into November I found myself giving talks at the fabulous TELLSI conference in Mashad, Iran, immediately followed by a stint at the IGA conference (Instituto Guatamalteco-Americano) in Guatemala City, and then MEXTESOL in Queretero,… - 19 Nov 13, 1:44am -
Image by Peter Megyerion Flickr (CC BY 2.0)My interest in experimental practice was piqued at the TESOL France’s last annual colloquium where I attended interesting sessions on the topic by Mike Harrison, and Christina Rebuffet-Broadus and Jennie W… - 61 days ago, 2 Jun 14, 4:17am -
Photo by Tzvi MellerAs much as it seems counter-intuitive, teaching new vocabulary in semantic sets (e.g. jobs: doctor, teacher, lawyer etc. or colours: red, blue, yellow etc.) does not facilitate learning. As far back as in the 1990s, research show… - 84 days ago, 10 May 14, 1:18am -
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research also needs a lexical revolution to free itself from the shackles of grammar tyranny. Rant alert!Photo by richardoyork on Flickr[CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]I was recently asked to give a talk at a conference on the top… - 19 Apr 14, 7:49am -
Image by @sandymillinvia eltpics on FlickrFor the first time since it was last held in Harrogate (2010), I didn’t go to the annual IATEFL conference this year and - like thousands of other English teachers who couldn’t afford to go to the largest… - 13 Apr 14, 10:25pm -
Sinclair's seminal work - the bible of corpus linguisticsIn this post I would like to defend linguistic corpora and their relevance to the ELT field which Hugh Dellar raises doubts about.Years ago before I became familiar with corpus tools (corpus as… - 15 Mar 14, 4:00am -
Photo by @aclil2climb via eltpicsBinomials are two word expressions (strong collocations) such as "dead or alive", "give and take", "law and order". In this activity inspired by a short film activity on FilmEnglish, students become more aware of bin… - 7 Mar 14, 6:37pm -
Is adaptive learning ethical? Is it OK to experiment on one set of learners to improve results for another? Do EdTech companies have a higher duty of care to their users than regular businesses? - 14 days ago, 18 Jul 14, 9:19pm -
At ELTjam, we’re always interested to hear from people who are developing ELT products outside of the traditional publishing framework. For this post, we’re delighted to welcome Curt Ford to the blog to discuss his app American Voices. Over to C… - 17 days ago, 15 Jul 14, 8:31pm -
Last week I had the pleasure to facilitate another Open Space event within a TESOL / ELT conference. This time in Joao ... Continue reading - 88 days ago, 5 May 14, 11:51pm -
Originally posted on unwrapping the education box :This is a joint post between Willy Cardoso and Divya Madhavan on questions about ELT professionalism.… - 18 Apr 14, 7:30pm -
To deny that there is a conflict in contemporary ELT, particularly but not exclusively in the ‘importing’ of new techniques associated ... Continue reading - 28 Feb 14, 8:00pm -
1. Is it the role of language teachers to address social issues in the classroom? Why (not)? 2. If languages ... Continue reading - 9 Jan 14, 10:33pm -
ACIM 2014 - San MarinoThis post is a bit different from my usual ones on my blog and it focuses on a very special trip I made last week.K and I travelled to San Marino by motorbike to attend the 6th ACIM motorbike meeting. ACIM stands for Aprilia… - 17 days ago, 16 Jul 14, 1:03am -
This post has been a long time coming.... I kind of lost track of time the past few months, and for some reason, I did not have much inspiration, pure and simple. My days of being on a constant roll, of blog title headings popping up all over the… - 74 days ago, 19 May 14, 9:50pm -
I would like to highlight an upcoming online event next weekend which may be of interest to my readers, especially those of you who are bloggers, or are interested in becoming bloggers. Below is an extract from the introduction to the session in… - 9 Mar 14, 2:47am -
Sunday February16th marked the final day of the exciting five-week EVO Crafting the ePerfect Textbook session. It has been a truly exhilarating and educational experience, connecting with over 500 teachers from around the globe. I was helping the… - 22 Feb 14, 7:32pm -
This weekend Friday 7th February to Sunday 9th February promises to be an exciting couple of days for educators around the world.It is the Connecting Online's 2014 E-conference, which is free to attend. It is all hosted on the WizIq platform. Speak… - 7 Feb 14, 12:58am -
You can now register for free to participate in this year's Electronic Village Online sessions! The registration period is from January 6th - 12th. Week one kicks off on Monday January 13th. Each session lasts 5 weeks until February 16th. This will… - 10 Jan 14, 9:36pm -
I spend almost all of my professional life doing one of two things: observing the work of trainee teachers on Celta initial teacher training courses, or observing the work of Celta tutors in my role as an appointed Assessor for the Celta award. Both… - 8 days ago, 24 Jul 14, 4:00pm -
Dogme ELT has been around (in the sense of having a name and a movement of people who recognize it as a legitimate and defined approach to teaching languages) for the best part of 15 years at this point of writing; what this means is there are a sign… - 19 Jan 14, 10:32pm -
Usually when (it) is so simple we say, “Oh, I know that! It is quite simple. everyone knows that.”But if we do not find its value, it means nothing. It is the same as not knowing. - Shunryu Suzuki in “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” - I am not s… - 9 Oct 13, 6:22pm -
Movement is the destruction of balance. I don’t know who I originally heard this from, but it was in the context of running theory. The idea is that in order for a physical body to move in any direction, it cannot be in a position of balance. That… - 22 Jul 13, 2:34am -
A 20-minute exploration of how conventional treatment of the”rules” for using the passive voice (as, for example, presented in coursebooks or standard student grammar books) misses the chance to introduce learners to a simpler, more elegant and m… - 17 Jun 13, 5:00am -
