Over the past 200 years or so, English has grown to become the lingua franca (shared language) in a huge range of industries. The fields of media, engineering, medicine, shipping, air travel, international business and commerce all rely on English as the common language which can facilitate...
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6th June 2017By Tom Garside
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30th May 2017By Tom Garside
Word lists are a widely-practised teaching tool for vocabulary study, but any student who has worked with them will tell you that memorising lists of words is a very time-consuming method that does not really help students to learn words deeply, or to use them appropriately. The main problem with... -
30th May 2017By Bryan Holmes
If you have been teaching for a few years you may thinking it’s time to complete a Trinity DipTESOL or a Cambridge DELTA. Doing either one will broaden your professional horizons while making a huge leap in your professional development. This is considered a rite of passage in the industry... -
23rd May 2017By Sharon Maloney
Dragon Boat Festival, also known as the Double Fifth due to its position in the lunar calendar, has been celebrated in many countries in Asia for more than 2000 years. Legend tells of a famous poet, Qu Yuan (340-278BC), renowned for his patriotism and honesty. He wrote many masterpieces, showing... -
16th May 2017By Eve Conway
It’s Friday afternoon. You are presenting a grammar explanation of the past perfect to your class but when you look up, your teens are staring at the screen of their smartphones, chatting to their neighbor, or even resting their heads down on the table with a sense of pre-weekend lethargy. Sound... -
9th May 2017By James Pengelley
We’ve all been there before: 5 minutes before class starts, the panic sets in. Will I have enough material to get me through the lesson? You flick the photocopier on and madly scan through the activity book to see if there is a crossword, a puzzle, a reading text that you can take as back... -
2nd May 2017By Bryan Holmes
Listening is one of the most problematic skills for an ESL learner to acquire. This is because skills are developed over time and with plenty of practice. As a result, this can be a frustrating experience for learners since significant improvement is difficult to ‘prove’, whereas for instructors... -
25th April 2017By James Pengelley
Last year we described some of our best ideas for teaching writing, and making writing lessons fun. We couldn’t have been happier with the response…nearly 5,500 readers have visited, shared and commented on this post, making it one of our most popular contributions on the blog. But, as...