If you are a busy English language teacher or trainer looking for support and development materials for your classroom, we can help you with this weekly collection of links to free materials from our British Council websites for teachers.
In the first article I wrote for this guest writer spot, I looked at all the basic questions we can ask about being an English language teacher trainer, educator or mentor. I chose the question for discussion, 'How do I know if I am ready to be a teacher trainer?' This time I would like to take the question, 'How can I do my job?'.
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Writing stories is an exciting and creative activity and yet students often seem resistant to undertaking this task. I think it is important to break the task down into small stages so students don’t get discouraged, and place emphasis on the creative part.
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Compiled by Shelagh Rixon and Richard Smith of Warwick University, the Directory of UK ELT Research 2005-08 contains information on 857 research outputs from 52 institutions. This covers books and chapters in books, articles in journals, conference papers, doctoral theses, and unpublished research, as well as funded projects.
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There are lots of activities for Halloween on LearnEnglish Kids, the British Council’s site for young learners, which you can use with your students to mark the occasion. They range from a song about a Scary Skeleton to a story about a Haunted House, from a Halloween facts quiz to a selection of terrific games and activities to do!
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Sometimes I find it difficult to manage time especially when teaching grammar. A good teacher always knows how to manage his time, but as far as I’m concerned, I wonder whether they have understood the lesson, that's why I tend to do a lot of drills and a lot of exercises; because of that, I lack time. What should I do?
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One of the wonderful things about a site like this is that if we, as teacher trainers, have a question we want to ask of our professional community, we can put it out on the ‘cyber waves’ and have the chance of getting responses from all over the world.
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The following activities focus primarily on fluency and are suitable for intermediate level and up. They will give you a chance to get to know the class, break the ice and estimate their language level. Try not to correct them too much and be available to help with vocabulary needs.
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This is a great game to revise vocabulary and you can use it with any age group and any level by changing the category headings. It really gets students focused and working on task as a team and can be a saviour to fill the last ten minutes on a class when you have run out of ideas!
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Did you know English is not the only language native to the UK? You can find out about other UK languages on these pages. In addition to general background, there are some teaching ideas and resources.
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There are lots of activities for Halloween on LearnEnglish Kids, the British Council’s site for young learners, which you can use with your students to mark the occasion, from a song about a Scary Skeleton to a story about a Haunted House.
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'Bend it like Beckham' is better known as a film, but Nharinder Dhami's book of the same name follows the film faithfully, even reproducing some of the dialogue. The materials in this kit are based on the pivotal Chapter 7 of the book, and also make reference to the film.
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I have integrated self-assessment into the continuous assessment in a formal way. My questions to you is do you use self-assessment with your learners? Do you use continuous assessment? If so, how and does it work for you and your learners?
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After publishing lesson materials with a controversial theme on TeachingEnglish, we received a comment from a site user saying such issues shouldn't be dealt with in the classroom. What do you think?
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Which of the labels do you prefer? Which works in your context? What implications are there to the one you have chosen or that you are stuck with? And what do all these people, no matter what they are called, have in common?
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This lesson offers a variety of activities based on recent (2008, 2009) British round-the-world travellers; a cyclist, a running granny and a teenage sailor. The lesson includes a short reading, a role play and finally a more open-ended discussion about young people and travel.
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Teaching children takes a great deal of skill, patience and preparation, so this first tip is all about getting prepared and how to cope in your first few lessons. The tip includes lots of practical advice and a list of the ‘top ten tips for successful teaching’.
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To find more teaching articles and materials visit www.teachingenglish.org.uk and Language Assistant
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