ELT World » methodology

Reasons for and against Reading Aloud

david — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 06:20:00 +0000

Should we get our students to read out loud? This is an emotive question and has provoked a great deal of response over on the forum, both for and against. Check out the discussion here.

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Using Kinesthetic Learning Activities to Improve Comprehension

david — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:30:00 +0000

Kinesthetic learning by Adam Waxler

Did you know that while many students are visual learners and many others are auditory learners, most students actually prefer a combination of visual, auditory, AND kinesthetic learning.

So what is kinesthetic learning?

Simple…kinesthetic learners are those students who typically memorize facts by walking/pacing, they learn by doing, and like to move around frequently.

Here are three teaching tips for kinesthetic learning:

1. Do activities that allow for movement

I often have my class set up into “stations”. Students move from station to station completing an activity. For example, when studying “colonial life”, I have the desks arranged into eight different stations and each station represents a different aspect of colonial life (pictures and written information are provided at each station). Students then have five minutes to complete an activity at one station before they move onto another station.

2. Use simulations or “act-it-outs”

Give students a chance to work together in a group to create and perform a short simple skit. When studying the “Roaring Twenties” I split the class into several groups with each group receiving roughly eight “slang” terms from the 1920s. Students then have 5-10 minutes to create a skit using those slang terms. After students perform their quick skits we can discuss what we learned about the 1920s based on their performances.

3. Reviews games

Many review games provide the opportunity for movement. For example, I create a large-size concentration/memory game board on the classroom floor using vocabulary terms from the current unit. Students need to get up and move to the center of the room to physically participate in the game.

Remember, while students have different learning styles…effective teachers combine various teaching strategies to meet the various learning needs of all their students…including kinesthetic learning activities.

About the Author

If you’re looking for more kinesthetic learning activities make sure to sign up for Adam Waxler’s FREE Teaching Tips Machine Newsletter @ http://www.TeachingTipsMachine.com.

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Tasks: Context, Purpose and Use: TBLT 2009

david — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:41:00 +0000

‘Tasks: context, purpose and use’
The 3rd Biennial International Conference on Task-Based Language Teaching
13th-16th September, 2009

Under the auspices of the International TBLT Consortium and the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, you’ve still got more than a year to cobble together a decent excuse to visit the Lake District for this TBL extravaganza.

The first international TBLT conference was hosted in 2005 at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the second international conference on TBLT was hosted in 2007 at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. As in the two previous conferences, the organisers look forward to bringing together researchers and educators from around the world to share and learn from one another’s innovations and research in task-based language teaching, that is, of course, assuming that there’s anyone out there who still has anything new to say about this methodology.

Plenary Speakers at the event will be Geoff Brindley (Macquarie University, Australia), Zoltán Dörnyei (University of Nottingham, UK), Bernard Mohan (University of British Columbia, Canada) and Lourdes Ortega (University of Hawaii, USA).

The conference will be held in the university’s self-proclaimed ‘well-equipped’ conference suite. The nearby city of Lancaster has a distinguished historic castle and boasts several jewels of Georgian architecture, you’ll be pleased to know. It’s within 30 minutes of the Lake District, beloved of walkers, fell runners, rock climbers, painters, poets and writers. The campus is also close to a spectacular coastline stretching from Glasson Dock, a couple of miles away, through Morecambe Bay to the coast of the Southern Lakes, and also lies within easy reach of the Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales. Seriously, though, this is a lovely part of the world and if you can swing funding from your boss this could make for a pleasant experience all round

For more details, visit the conference website.

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What is a Lesson Plan?

david — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:26:00 +0000

Finally, I continue my occasional series of files that aim to make the world of ELT a better place. For those of you new to the world of teaching, this new PDf file might give some pointers as to what lesson plans are all about:

Sorry for the lack of tasty treats recently, there’ll be more along soon.

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Methods of teaching foreign languages

david — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:24:00 +0000

Hi. This post has moved here.

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Essential books for the DELTA: Part ONE

david — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:51:00 +0000

One of the best things you can do if you’re thinking of doing the DELTA is to do plenty of reading before you start. Below are some great books that will be invaluable to you when you embark on the course. I’ll be discussing more books that’ll be helpful for you over the next couple of days.

Click here to see my first recommendations.

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Guide to the TOEFL

david — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:01:00 +0000

I’ve just launched a new section of the blog, my guide to the TOEFL exam, starting off with my 5 essential texts for the TOEFL exam.

If you have any experiences, good or bad, of the TOEFL, I’d love to hear about them and put your thoughts onto the blog!

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Teaching Grammar with Road Runner

david — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:23:00 +0000

Those of us with a bit of experience in the ELT game know that TV programs are a great resource for teaching the present continuous tense, they lend themselves so nicely to explaining what is happening right now, at this minute.

I really enjoyed this very creative piece of work, which I’m sure will go down e-very well the next time I have to tackle this tense in the classroom…

This is the work of the Grammar Man Comic website.

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Teaching approaches: using L1 in class

david — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:54:00 +0000

In my guide to English Teaching section of the blog, I’ll be looking at everything you want to know about teaching languages: Classroom management, English for specific purposes, Grammar and vocabulary, Professional development, Teaching approaches, Teaching materials, Teaching skills and Teaching technologies. First up is an article on the use of the mother tongue in the language classroom:

The issue of whether or not to use the mother-tongue (L1) in the English (L2) classroom is a complicated one. Somewhere along the line (probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s) the idea came into fashion that using the mother tongue in the language teaching classroom was a bad thing. Everything should be done in the target language, giving the learners maximum exposure to that language (in this case English). This probably coincided with a time when ELT publishers realized that it would be cheaper to mass produce text books in which all the instructions were in English, and then ship these off to every country in the world.

In Teaching Monolingual Classes (1993), Atkinson offers ‘a careful, limited use of L1′ to help students get the maximum benefit from activities which in other respects will be carried out in the target language. The mother tongue might be useful in the procedural stages of classes, for example:-

• setting up pair and group work
• sorting out an activity which is clearly not working
• checking comprehension

Read the rest of the article at David’s guide to English Teaching.

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