Viral videos, snarky memes, and a cat that is so grumpy it puts all other crabby felines to shame, these are but a few of the pop culture elements that make millions drop what they’re doing to check out the latest craze. Why are these things so addictive? What makes them so irresistible?

Three middle-school-aged boys draw pictures in chalk on a blackboard on a bright Saturday afternoon. “Write the word below the drawing,” I say. The word applegoes under the apple, tree under the tree. Afterward, they practice with vocabulary flashcards for a half hour. At a bathroom break, all three bolt down the hall in search of a soccer… Continue reading Teaching English Language Learners: A Complex Endeavor

Too often when we consider how to connect science and literacy, we think about using literature to support science. Maybe it’s reading a fictional book with a science theme, or exploring a biography of a famous scientist.

What has grammar go to do with conversation? Michael McCarthy takes a look at corpus data to explore how grammar influences how we organise information and use tenses in natural conversation.

Disrupting our definition of Business English in the 21st Century In a recent Washington Post article entitled ‘The surprising thing Google learned about its employees – and what it means for today’s students’, it was reported that Google had carried out a survey into the key characteristics for achieving success as a Google employee. Surprisingly, knowledge… Continue reading Teaching more than English – giving students the professional skills to succeed

2 Evidence-Based Learning Strategies Setting Up Effective Group Work 5 Ways to Use Picture Books to Teach Grammar and Vocabulary Using Cloze Activities in the ESL and ELL Classroom Using role models to promote values in the teen classroom Investigating idioms in the Cambridge Learner Corpus Flipped Classroom Approach | What is all the fuss… Continue reading ELTWeekly Volume 10, Issue 7

I often say to my students, “If a test is the first time you’re made to think about or with the class material, we’ve both probably failed.” Learning is effortful and requires cognition. As their teacher, I need to ensure that I provide my students with opportunities for demonstration of learning in the classroom.

Research supports what we probably already knew about student collaboration: It’s integral to learning. We know that collaboration helps students build their interpersonal and social and emotional skills. We know that students don’t learn facts in a vacuum; social learning helps them build a more meaningful understanding of the world.

When it comes to teaching grammar and vocabulary, it’s important to have models for students to follow. Unfortunately, finding models can be difficult. Sentences taken from standard worksheet often come out of context and novels or non-fiction books are often too long to make pulling sentences from them effective. Where do you turn when you… Continue reading 5 Ways to Use Picture Books to Teach Grammar and Vocabulary

Whether you’re testing reading comprehension, helping students learn new vocabulary words, or improving listening skills, cloze activities may help. These fill-in-the-blank passages work for students at multiple levels. The reading level of the passage and the difficulty of the vocabulary words you choose help determine the difficulty of the activity.