Once a cheater…

/ Exam training, New to ELT

Recently, I got involved in exam invigilation at the University of Palermo. Students were sitting different types of exams in English at A2-B2 levels. They were given a tablet, signed in with their student login details and started their exam. They followed their own pace, finished within their time limit depending on their exam type, there was no introduction into how to conduct oneself under exam conditions, there was noise and there was cheating. Some students kept on their coats saying that it was cold (there were 27 degrees in the exam room), we are talking about big puffer jackets

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Be critical – but never criticise without a reason

/ Lesson tips, New to ELT

I’ve been working as a Cambridge Speaking Examiner (SE) since 2015 and one of the most important things that I learnt from the SE notes was to always ask the question ‘Why (not)?’. Whatever question we ask our candidates, we always follow up with ‘why?’. You might think that it’s easy to give a reason why you like or dislike, agree or disagree, but it isn’t always so simple. What’s more, having an opinion cannot be taken for granted either: it’s a skill that needs to be learnt and developed. Now, let’s stop for a second: repeating what you were

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Know Your Tools

/ New to ELT

For the last two years, I have asked my students to write an essay answering the question whether school prepares one for work and life. Every single student gave a negative answer: No, school has very little to do with whatever is coming after. Surprise, surprise: school has never prepared for the life after. It has always given some basic skills and knowledge, but practical experience has rarely been transmitted. So, it’s really up to you to get ready for whatever job you’d like to get. What does it really mean? Let me give you some examples. As you know,

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Dear AI, don’t write us down so quickly. Regards, Language Teachers

/ Lesson tips, New to ELT

I might be unemployed soon, thanks to the AI, at least this is what some AI developers suggest. Some technological advancements have really revolutionised our lives, so we, language teachers had better prepare to learn programming languages soon. In the meantime, though, I’d like to argue for the necessity of language teachers. This article aims to show you some examples where the human factor outweighs numeric information, where a computer at today’s time cannot substitute a person. I’m going to talk about entry testing, the first encounter between a teacher and a student and in particular, their motivation to learn

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Back to school – back to technology… struggles

/ Lesson tips, New to ELT

This week was about welcoming students back to our online or face-to-face courses. More than half of them are pre-teens or teens, so it’s always a moment to understand how fast kids grow, how fast they change. Another ‘Aw’ moment is to realise that although students might not be involved in active English studying, their brains seem to connect concepts unconsciously. This applies also to adult students: a short break benefits their fluency and accuracy in speaking, as if the brain had played puzzle with the bits and pieces we had elaborated together – even in the absence of the

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Meritocracy in language schools – a utopia?

/ New to ELT

On the occasion of my 20th birthday as a teacher, I started to make a mental inventory of the most relevant and/or mind-forming experiences of my professional life. After a list of some ‘bests’ (see article here), today I’d like to talk about meritocracy in language schools. Premise: Meritocracy here doesn’t consider a political system in Michael Young’s sense or the idea that ‘everyone has the right to express their opinions’ but only ‘those opinions are listened to and decisions are then made based on those that are deemed the best’ (read Wired article HERE). Meritocracy in this reading means

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Best of 2003-2023

/ New to ELT

In September 2003, I started teaching languages.20 years ago…Long time, no doubt. In these days, I’ve been organising my teaching materials and while doing so, memories came back to me. I reflected on old friends/colleagues/mentors, the books that had just come out when I got my degree, I thought about the way I prepared lessons 20 years ago and how I do it today. I remembered sending my CV to several language schools in summer 2023 and heading to my first job interview in September (which was actually a disaster). I can still recall some of my doubts, my determination

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BE A ‘MISTAKE MANAGER’, Alias Ways of ‘Error Correction’

/ New to ELT, Teachers

Just one word before we start When I was a teacher trainee, I was trained among others in ‘error correction’. Recently, I came across a synonym, which I personally find a bit sophisticated: ‘mistake management’. Things might be reinvented and renamed, we are still speaking about our good old ‘error correction’. It is, however, important to distinguish between mistake and error.

Improve Your Pronunciation & Listen To English Varieties

/ Lesson tips, Listening training, New to ELT, Teachers

Students often struggle with listening because of their pronunciation. Since they mispronounce words, they expect a different pronunciation and cannot recognize words because they are pronounced differently. It is not unusual that they don’t recognize words because the speaker’s pronunciation is different from the one they are used to (usually the teacher’s pronunciation). Students very often prefer one variety of the English language, e.g. British, only because they have had British teachers in English. However, English has many varieties.So, it’s essential that you approach pronunciation and varieties from the first lesson at A1 level.

ESL LESSON TIPS – WHAT TO DO IF…

/ Lesson tips, New to ELT, Teachers

ESL teachers are always supposed to write a lesson plan, to know what they are going to do in their lesson. However, the biggest part of the job is ‘on the stage’. Your authentic interest in your students, your skill to improvise, your sense of humor, your problem-solving skills will weigh more in your evaluation than the perfection of your lesson plan. However, to be good at problem-solving and improvisation, you need to prepare mentally (anticipating problems). Here are some ‘What to do…’ questions for you:

NOT A BIG DEAL: IT’S ONLY A CONVERSATION CLASS

/ New to ELT, Teachers

WHY TO STATE THE OBVIOUS? In 2006, I decided to go to a language school and study Italian. I had already had a good intermediate level in Italian at that time, but I understood that I needed some guidance. While I could read, watch TV (ergo listen), study grammar or vocabulary at home, I still needed somebody to do conversation with. So I started to explore what language schools had to offer. In Florence, it was no problem to find Italian courses for foreigners. However, this experience turned out to be shocking.

BTW, LESSON PLANNING

/ New to ELT, Teachers

INTRODUCTION One question on my job interviewer list is whether the candidate can handle more levels/age groups and different types of courses in one day. Most candidates answer automatically yes. However, a normal teaching day in our part of the world looks like this: pre-scheduled courses start at 3pm, 4.30pm, 6pm and 7.30pm (e.g. two YL, a one-to-one and finally an adult class) and you might be even lucky to get an individual lesson before that (let’s say 1.30 to 3pm). It can easily get overwhelming to sit down and write four-five lesson plans in a row for the coming day. You may not know

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TEACHING OBSERVATION NOTES OF A D.O.S.

/ New to ELT, Teachers

ALIAS DON’T TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED After years of daily classroom routine, teachers tend to do things automatically, without even noticing that they do these things that way. These can be even bad habits (talking to students while continuously wandering about the classroom, using monotonous tone when giving feedback or just repeating ‘good job’ even after a mistake, etc.) and a supervisor after a classroom observation can (and should) help notice and correct them. However, there is a long list of good habits we usually do without thinking about them. When in 2011 I was asked to coordinate 12 teachers

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WHAT MAKES A GOOD TEACHER CANDIDATE?

/ New to ELT, Teachers

What are the qualities of a good teacher? Have you ever asked yourself this question?This post is addressed to teacher colleagues who the first time would like to teach English to non-native speakers. They might even have some qualifications, but without job search and classroom experience they might end up disappointed after a job interview. So let me give you some food for thought about why being a good English speaker is not enough to be a good teacher candidate?

WYSIWYG – From your CV to a Teaching Job Offer

/ New to ELT, Teachers

You might be a new teacher applying for your first teaching job. Or even more, you’ve already gained some experience and a good reference letter and you might only be browsing the net for interesting destinations where to teach. But for some reason, nobody or only a few D.O.S. recognize your potentials, even though you have been sending your CV in group mails to numberless language schools in the last couple of weeks? You even tackled two or three phone interviews. Well, then stop for a second, read what your potential supervisor might think on the other end of the wire and

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10 TIPS HOW TO PAIR UP STUDENTS

/ Lesson tips, New to ELT, Teachers

The dynamic of a lesson depends very much on the variety of used social forms (individual work, pair-work, group-work, whole class discussion, etc.). However, students often get stuck with the same partner. Asking students to work in pairs is good, but without swapping pairs, it is not as efficient as expected. Here are 10 tips on how to pair up students: