Uncategorized

One of the first sites that I created was a photo gallery with commentaries in Spanish to show my friends and colleagues in Latin speaking countries what I had been up to.

Recently I learned that a colleague from the University where I work will be going to Baku, so I thought that I would put up these pictures for some time.

There are lots of photos (click on the photos to see them full size), music and even film. The photo in this post will take you to the welcome page of the Azerbaijan site, so you will navigate away from the English language site.

Here is a link sent to me by Robert Ledbury. The site is created by Phil Quirke (any relation to Randolph Quirk?) as part of his PhD with Aston University.

‘Welcome to the site that aims to give EFL/ESL teachers studying for Masters and Diplomas all the support they need. Be it quick answers to specific questions, reading lists, content support, good links, book reviews or just someone to scream at, we hope it is all here.’

http://www.philseflsupport.com/ 

The link has been added to the links page under ‘Teacher Development’.

Easier said than done. A test writer has very few friends and often finds that it is impossible to do the job to everyone’s satisfaction.

But it is clear that it is imperative for test writers to be very clear in their own minds what it is that they want to test and what the purpose of the test is. Too often, teachers decide that they will write a test for their learners, so they sit down and begin writing it, stopping when they feel the test is sufficiently long. Read the rest of this entry »

Two questıons to ponder:

1. The effect of a test on teaching or learning is known as washback [or backwash in testing in the USA]. [Alderson and Wall, 1993: 17]

The backwash hypothesis seems to assume that teachers and learners do things they would not necessarily otherwise do because of the test.

In their article [Does Backwash Exist], Alderson and Wall question whether testing does have as powerful an effect on teaching as has previously been assumed.

What is your view on this?

2. Baker [1989] has a section in his book entitled The Pass Mark Problem: Is Norm-Referencing Wicked?

When you set a class a test, how do you decide what the pass mark is going to be?

Read the rest of this entry »

Keys ideas:

• a teacher must insist and expect responsible behaviour from the students
• maintain adequate classroom discipline
• both students and teachers have rights

Read the rest of this entry »

This approach, put forward by Glasser, is a mixture of interactionist, humanist and behaviourist approaches.

Read the rest of this entry »

The original and fundamental assumption behind this approach was that parents and teacher’s control children’s behaviour and this can have a very negative effect on child development. There is a long tradition in psychology that supports this type of classroom approach. A student centred approach intends to encourage independence and to allow children to choose their own behaviour.

Read the rest of this entry »

In order for learners to achieve the target 2000 words as quickly as possible, they will need a rich and nourishing vocabulary. Some words will be taught by the teacher and other words will be learnt incidentally in extensive reading and listening activities. Many learners prefer a list of target words to learn. How can these word lists be used to maximize learning? Read the rest of this entry »