Archive for the ‘Teaching grammar’ Category

A huge change in the way English is being taught in Oregon, apparently:

“Schools have begun explicitly teaching the grammar, rules and structure of English. And they are doing it in a carefully ordered way, making sure that students don’t miss any of the building blocks of how English verbs are conjugated, words are ordered, conversations are expected to proceed and sentences are constructed.

‘For a long time, we just read to them and exposed them to English and figured they would pick it up just like native speakers do,’ said Danelle Heikkila, who directs the English Language Learner program for Gresham-Barlow schools.

‘But the state has asked us to . . . make sure that we teach them about English, about the rules and forms and structures of English.’”

So the revolution is: teachers teach rather than “letting students discover themselves through the language” or some such 

And the results? (more…)

As people searching for Xmas themed lessons seems to finally be over, here comes the New Year worksheets to ease yourself back into your classes with: (more…)

Full details of this shocking story here.

Bored of Xmas before it’s even arrived as usual, so here comes with the New Year theme ones instead:

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Looking for TEFL Xmas activities is like writing the list of presents you want from Santa- once you start there seems to be no end…

One really nice real-life task (because Santa exists in real life!) - sending emails to Santa. Students will also get a reply, apparently:

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Will get onto combining grammar mistakes and Xmas lessons in a bit, but first: 

I’ve become a bit of a cultural relativist in my old age, even accepting stuff that drives other people nuts like Japanese English, but this time of year seems to bring out the grumpy old traditionalist in me. The fact that there’s been quite a lot of telling about an English Xmas in my lessons could be just because Japanese students tend to love that kind of stuff (maybe because anything that mentions the rest of the world is an escape from Japanese reality at the same time as being a reinforcement of why Japan is different and special). What seems to reflect something deeper is the fact that I’ve found myself actually correcting them on the “errors”of how Xmas is done in Japan- several times on the same points to different classes! Apparently these are the things that happen in Japan that test my limits of acceptance of difference and stir as much deep discomfort in my soul as female circumcision or animal cruelty: (more…)

Don’t know how and when it happened, but no kids’ classes at all this year so had no chance to see their happy and snotty little faces when doing the lessons below, but WiseHat lessons are usually very stimulating for both teacher and students, very occassionally in a slightly odd way! (more…)

More to come over the weekend, but here are a couple of stocking fillers to keep you happy until you can open the big lesson plans under the tree on Sunday or Monday:

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Stephen Fry gets heavy with the grammar correction (not recommended viewing for CELTA trainees!)

Room 101- Grammar Bullies (recommended viewing for 74 year old Applied Linguistics professors)

Problem hotels fun roleplay (some and any/ Travel English/ complaining and dealing with complaints)