Johanna Sterling: Site Review

April 20, 2009 in Uncategorized | No comments

Joanna Sterling’s site has been in existence for many years and is thoroughly recommended for teaches and learners alike.

Activities for learners  include: spelling activities, parts of speech, English jokes, advice about improving speaking as well as links for students.

For teachers the site includes: lots of practical ideas, the Portable Electronic Dictionary,remedial spelling, helping students to learn the vocabulary we teach them, the vocabox, make homework an effective tool for learning and links.

The Vocabox article on this site is attributable to Joanna Sterling who has retrospectively given permission for me to use it here. The original article can be found here: http://www.elgweb.net/articles.html.

One of the featuers of Joanna’s work is her focus on actually helping learners learn the vocabulary that we teach them. I fully agree with her.

Teaching Speaking Tactics

February 18, 2009 in skills, speaking, syllabus, vocabulary | 1 comment

When learner’s can’t speak, what can they do? Avoidance is a common strategy. Learners either change the topic, or clam up completely.

However, there are a number of other strategies that can help learners and, if used judiciously, are probably more benaeficial. Read the rest of this entry »

Phonology: features of connected speech

October 28, 2008 in phonetics | No comments

This series of posts explore some of the features of connected speech with the following aims.

  • To revisit and consolidate old knowledge by
    • creating a list of common features of connected speech in English.
  • To provide a reasonably accessible resource for others to use so that it may be used to
    • give weight to the argument that phonetics is an important classroom tool.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dictation

October 23, 2008 in dictation | No comments

Ian White a highly respected member of Izmir University of Economics’ Teacher Training Team (Turkey), facilitated an excellent session on dictation in which a wide variety of views were expressed on dictation. Sorry for any additions or omissions, Ian. Read the rest of this entry »

PPP: a small addition

September 25, 2008 in methodology | No comments

Sometimes the presentation phase of a lesson can take up most of a lesson. What percentage of an overall lesson do you spend in presenting particular language point and what percentage do the learners get to actually use the language? Half of the lesson, or just five percent of the lesson time?

Do the learners really need all of this input to get the language point?

Read the rest of this entry »