Not on Celta’s Charlie Ellis takes a light-hearted look at some of the afflictions suffered by EFL teachers. https://www.etprofessional.com/the-afflictions-of-tefl Photo by Swapnil Potdar on Unsplash The post Do you have TEFL-eye? appeared first on ..read more

Leo Jones has been prominent within the EFL world for at least four decades, as a teacher, teacher trainer and author. He’s a prolific writer of course books and other EFL texts. As noted in a previous blog entry, his classic early works Notions in English and The Functions of English remain well worth revisiting. They were part of an attempt to to produce course material in line with the idea of a notional-functional syllabus, as outlined by figures such as D. A. Wilkins. Like all of his books, Notions and Functions are language rich with a real emphasis on the range of useful and authentic e ..read more

 A previous post looked at Tom Nelson’s use of board games in the EFL classroom. In this post we hear from Kip Webster about how he extracts the TEFL-magic from board games in his classes.  Kip discusses his use of board games in the classroom, what EFL potential they have and some of the difficulties he has faced in using them. What was your first experience of using games in the classroom- can you recall which games you started with? Were they games specifically designed for EFL or games you adapted for the classroom? I first used EFL-designed board games with kids but early experi ..read more

Scaffolding is a concept in language teaching that is covered on CELTA and similar courses for people training to be language teachers. However, it’s a concept that’s worth looking at again after some time in the classroom to question if you’re doing it enough (or too much!) and what different ways you can do it. What is scaffolding? Put simply, scaffolding is something you use to support your learners in the class. Scaffolding is often used to support particular learners who need extra support (those with a lower level than the rest of the class) or when your learners are taking on a particul ..read more

In previous posts on the blog we’ve recommended that teachers reflect on their teaching through note keeping and journaling. We believe that it can be both a cathartic experience but also help track our evolution as a teacher. As Jen Tan commented in her guest blog, ‘reflections give us tangible evidence of how we have grown’. Getting into the habit of journaling on a regular basis is not that easy but many find it profitable. In his Learning Teaching Jim Scrivener recommends that teachers regularly carry out ‘Lesson self-assessment’. His book (pp397-388) includes a list of useful prompts such ..read more

Games are  a common feature in ELT classrooms. They are often an engaging way to present and practise new language. There are a number of excellent books of EFL games which will be found, well-thumbed, in most staff rooms. Classics include Grammar Games by Mario Rinvolucri and Games for Grammar Practice by Maria Lucia Zaorob and Elizabeth Chin. The internet is awash with pages  devoted to EFL games – some of the games are great, some deeply ordinary.  In addition there are a number of board games which have been designed specifically with the ELT in mind – games such as Absolut ..read more

In this blog, Stephen discusses his experience of working with an overconfident student, and suggests four ideas for working with such learners. Leave a comment if you have any other advice to share on working with an overconfident student. What happened I had been working with Zhang, an overconfident student who bluffed his way through errors, for a couple of months when it happened. He put his pen down and picked up the little electronic translator gadget (the first iPhone was still a few months away). Typing furiously, he finished his message and then handed the device to me. His Chinese ch ..read more

Charlie’s recent post about Nick Robinson’s appearance on a podcast got me thinking about how radio has influenced my teaching. In fact, one of my favourite ELT resources is not from a textbook, but my 101 Interesting ESL Conversation Topics, adapted from a list on a late-night radio show. The Questions We Tend To Ask If you flick around your radio dial, you’ll often find radio stations that want their listeners to call in and talk on the air about something. Very often, I find these programmes quite dull, as they ask questions that provoke rather uninteresting responses. Things like ‘What’s Y ..read more

There are several features of connected speech in English. It’s important for you to understand them as a teacher so you can help your learners understand when listening to fast speech, and perhaps to produce it too. Your learners don’t need to know the technical names for these, but our connected speech examples and rules on how they work should help you be able to teach them effectively! Want ideas about how to teach pronunciation and connected speech? Check out our blog on How to really teach pronunciation Consonant-Vowel Linking (Catenation) When one word finishes with a consonant sound an ..read more

While listening to the recent edition of Matt Forde’s excellent The Political Party podcast with the BBC’s Nick Robinson I was struck by how much of it resonated with my life in ELT. Nick Robinson has been a prominent British broadcaster for over 25 years and is currently one of the main presenters of BBC Radio 4’s ‘flagship’ Today programme. Robinson also presents his own podcast, Political Thinking, which consists of lengthy, reflective interviews with leading political figures.  Though the podcast was focused on the role of the media in politics and the art of political interviewing, m ..read more