Earlier this year, I stepped back into the primary school classroom to teach two groups of young learners (one group of mostly P3s and another group of P6s) as part of my studies and assessment on the Trinity College London Teaching Young Learners Extension Certificate (TYLEC) course. Even though I...
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22nd July 2019By Laura Wilkes
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9th July 2019By James Pengelley
So you're looking for writing lesson plan ideas, and you're not sure where to start. Does any of this sound familiar? Yes, but writing is boring. Is it? Sure, but writing could be time spent in class doing fun speaking tasks. Who said you can’t do both? But my students get... -
2nd July 2019By Sharon Maloney
Ever feel like your students are stultifying, bored and demotivated? Maybe it’s not the subject, but your teaching. Competing for the splintered attentions of our learners has never been harder. It has now become a chronic situation, familiar to all teachers when struggling to motivate learners... -
25th June 2019By Bryan Holmes
The IPA stands for the International Phonemic Alphabet and is used in ESL to address pronunciation issues by isolating difficult vowel sounds, consonants or diphthongs. Problem areas can then be addressed by identifying the manner (the way in which the sound is produced), place (position of the... -
18th June 2019By Bryan Holmes
Don't forget to visit our CPD training calendar for upcoming training events! English language teaching can be separated into systems, skills, and phonology. Systems refer to grammar, whereas skills denote reading, writing and listening, and speaking. Phonology incorporates elements of... -
11th June 2019By Bryan Holmes
Many non-native English speakers have problems recognizing and using the different intonation patterns in English. For an instructor, it’s crucial to raise the learners’ awareness of intonation because it performs a function, as well as indicating an emotion. Teaching this aspect of phonology... -
4th June 2019By Bryan Holmes
‘Receptive Skills’ (also known as ‘Passive Skills’, or reading and listening) are often contrasted with productive skills (speaking and writing). When learning a new language learners tend to develop their receptive skills first and then acquire productive capability. It’s a complex... -
28th May 2019By Bryan Holmes
Teaching TEFL classes in Hong Kong can present a bit of a conundrum. In a culture that prioritises grammar instruction and accuracy over fluency, reading tasks are often seen as a series of questions to which the answers simply need to be copied straight from the text. However, reading...