CPD Course 6: ChatGPT in the Language Classroom

The course I took on online teaching mentions PeacheyPublications.com as a good source of online tools and materials. I haven’t had much time to explore the site as I got distracted by this course it offers on teaching with ChatGPT. This has been a recurring topic in pre-sessionals and the course is only £40 so I signed up.

Continue reading

CPD Course 6: Teaching English Online

Another FutureLearn course in association with Cambridge University Press & Assessment.  This one was really useful. It’s worth taking courses on online teaching regularly as everything online changes so quickly. The courses need to be updated regularly too. This one seems to be quite up to date although they do mention Edmodo at one point which is now obsolete (and I miss it – Google classroom is not the same).

Continue reading

De-mystifying the Phonemic Chart

When I started teaching the chart seemed practically incomprehensible to me. Even as I grew to understand it (and Adrian Underhill’s layout is the only one that seems to make sense) it felt like a great cognitive load to place on students (‘Think English spelling is hard? Now learn all these symbols!’). The DELTA, if anything, made it seem less accessible (unvoiced bilabial plosive, anyone?).

Adrian Underhill, though, strips all that away through use of gesture and mime, by focusing on the chart as a ‘geographical map’ of the mouth which helps locate the physical movements we make in production, using simple prepositions of place to describe movement. Continue reading

Performance: Humanizing the Classroom

On this course with Adrian Underhill we are preparing a poetry festival for the last class. Each day we start each session with a poem read by Adrian or another student.

I confess when I first read this on the course description I was a little wary. I love poetry but was unsure about its place in the classroom. It appeared to me perhaps as a bit of a throwback to those 70s EFL texts I was so obsessed with when I started out as an idealistic 19 year old – Mario Rinvolucri, Pilgrim’s, NLP in the classroom etc. All these years on I guess I’ve become more cynical and jaded.

Continue reading

The Life Game

NOTE: This ‘game’ has grown organically over the years as various teachers have made observations & contributions (I don’t claim sole authorship).

The Life Game is my favourite ‘getting to know you’ type activity because it:

  • requires few resources
  • is easy to set up
  • is based on students’ real experiences
  • is actually interesting
  • is genuinely ‘bonding’ & establishes a nice class atmosphere
  • gives me a good idea of the students’ speaking level/ability to communicate
  • gives me a good idea of the students’ interests
  • with adjustments can be made to work with any level post beginner.
  • works well with one-to-one classes as well as larger groups.
  • can last anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 1/2 hours with pre & post activities.

Continue reading

Teaching Teenagers

I’ve recently been working with a non-native English speaking English teacher from Spain on a home stay English refresher course. She’s taught English to adults for many years in a language college but in September will be teaching High School students. Like most of us who’ve become comfortable with a certain age group, she’s feeling some trepidation. We had a lot of conversations about teaching teenagers.

Continue reading