Category Archives: skills

Teaching Speaking Tactics

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.
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Strategies for listening, note taking and discussion

These notes are based on a presentation given by Theresa Doğuelli University. The presentation was after sales service from Oxford University Press on the Lecture Ready series of academic English text books. The aim of the book is strategy training and this was where Teresa began her presentation. The differences between a strategy, skill, plan and [...]
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Some more speaking activities

Do you teach speaking with few or no materials? Here are some speaking activities that you can try with your classes.
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Some speaking activities

Here are some more activities, some of which you can use with little or no prepararion. These are activities that I have found by dredging my computer directories. I there fore do not know the sources fo these activities. I would be happy to give any credit where it is due. Lying: an icebreaker air off students. [...]
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TBL – a rough guide

This post is intended to give the most cursory idea about what exactly task based learning is.
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Fifty Links for learners

Here is a selection of links for learners to use for their own language learning purposes. There are links to resources under the following categories: language links topics: Texts to read and listen to, pronunciation practice, spelling practice, … listening: over 400 activities. native speaker: VOA Special English – limited to 1500 lexical items. on line [...]
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Automaticity in reading

Following are a number of statements extracted from What Research Has To Say About Reading Instruction
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What is meant by automaticity and automatization?

automatic largely or wholly involuntary, especially as with a reflex acting or done spontaneously or unconsciously automatize to make automatic [noun derivations: automatization the process of making automatic; automaticity the state or condition of being automatic]
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Activity: vocabulary tennis

This is an activity that requires no setting up and can be done at the drop of a hat just the kind of activity that I love to have in my toolbox! Essentially, the idea is to promote automatization through quick responses, under moderately stressful conditions. Aim: learners will recycle vocabulary and/or create short sentences under [...]
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Writing sub skills

1. Manipulating the script of the language: handwriting, spelling and punctuation. 2. Expressing grammatical [syntactic and morphological] relationships at the sentence level. 3. Expressing relationships between parts of a written text through cohesive devices [especially through grammatical devices such as noun-pronoun reference].
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Listening sub skills

1. Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding word formation and contextual clues in utterances and spoken text 2. Recognising and understanding phonological features of speech [especially those forms associated with supra-segmental features]
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Reading sub skills

1. Basic reference and information-finding skills [e.g. title, using contents page, index. footnotes, bibliography, chapter headings and sub-headings, chapter summaries] 2. Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding word formation and contextual clues
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Reading – a list of text types

Reading narrative texts Reading factual texts [such as descriptions, announcements, memoranda, advertisements, notices, reports, menus, and agendas]
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