I designed this creative visualisation activity on a project where it was ultimately not used and I’ve got permission to share it here. It could potentially be included in a workshop on presentation skills or as a stand-alone activity run in a team huddle or meeting. Have you ever used creative visualisation? What sort of ..read more

My blog is undergoing some changes so lots of things will be temporarily unavailable.  It’ll hopefully be back in a more user-friendly avatar. Thanks for understanding ..read more

Here’s a quick post about an app I’ve just started exploring. Adobe Capture is a free smartphone app with in-app camera that lets you do a lot of really interesting graphic design edits. I’ve been looking at the ‘shapes’ function which converts images into pen and ink-type illustrations. Here are some examples of things I ..read more

I recently met Dr Atanu Bhattacharya who has an intriguing hobby; he’s been collecting English language learning resources published in India in the pre-Independence area. While I think that’s a fascinating area of research, I’m more interested in the experiences of early English language learners from the colonies of the former British Empire. In a sense ..read more

I bought a number of books from the stalls at the IATEFL exhibition in Liverpool. In fact, most of these are from Multilingual Matters who I’ve been following for some time on Twitter and it was only at the conference that I’d discovered that they had their own publishing house. As I was rearranging them ..read more

  Webinars tend to be scheduled at or around 3 pm UK. This was perfect when I was in India because they’d be at a very comfortable 730/830 pm. Now that I’ve moved away, they’re all at midnight or in the wee hours of the morning. I ought to have caught more live ones when ..read more

I joined the course looking for a way to learn something new, but I came out having found my passion … my calling. I am interested in the professional experiences of former CELTA trainees for lots of different reasons. It might be because of their academic backgrounds, their prior teaching experiences or the sorts of ..read more

This quick activity uses Pseudo-design titles, a website that lampoons the often florid and bombastic job titles people have in the UX/design industry. It could be used with learners on a pre-sessional course who are heading into a design/technology focused degree or  more generally with business learners. It’s probably best for an upper-intermediate or advanced ..read more

Academic qualifications do not place as much importance on critical feedback during teaching practice, as is available on the CELTA, and for me, that is reason enough to take the course. This is part of series of interviews I’m doing with CELTA trainees in India to explore their professional journeys after they complete the course ..read more