I became interested in ChatGPT because it has become such an issue in pre-sessional courses. There are great, valid, concerns about ChatGPT in education but, when used appropriately, it can offer some interesting benefits. Continue reading
This is the first FutureLearn course I’m taking, it’s been created by Central Queensland University. I want to understand how to encourage creative thinking in classes, particularly when with EAP students, children and teenagers as teaching creative thinking is becoming more of a feature in mainstream education. Continue reading
One common question asked throughout Adrian Underhill’s course was how could we adapt the activities for our more serious courses, the ones whose students tend to have very particular and definite aims in mind, such as Business English courses?
What is a word box?
It is class specific. You will need a different box for each class. During, or at the end of each class, someone needs to transfer each new item of vocabulary (word, collocation, phrase) onto a slip of paper and put it in the word box. You can either transfer the words yourself or ask a student to take responsibility for it.
Each word or phrase should have number of syllables, stress, phonemic transcription, and word class marked on one side of the paper. On the other you will need to write a definition, an example sentence and, if you’re teaching a monolingual class, a translation.
In EFL we talk about two types of reading Extensive Reading and Intensive Reading. Intensive reading is what usually happens in the classroom: reading to answer comprehension questions or to teach ‘reading skills’ such as skimming and scanning. Extensive reading is reading for pleasure, often fiction at around or just below a learner’s language level. Ideally extensive reading texts should be 98% known vocabulary.
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To teach (verb) from the Old English ‘taecan’ meaning ‘to show, to point out’.
To learn (verb) from the Old English ‘leornian’ meaning ‘to study, read, think about’.
We tend to see teaching as an active, dynamic activity and learning as a passive one, as if the learner were just an empty vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge. But perhaps, if we look at the etymology of these words, we have not always seen it this way.
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