Return to Simplicity in the Language Classroom

I have recently attended two local online events, namely the conference Učíme jazyky online and an event organised by the Digitální lektoři duo. Both events were very useful, enlightening and actually served as a wake-up call for me. I had recently been through a professionally strenuous time, teaching a Business English course and a Czech-for-foreigners …

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Ten Ways of Using Pictures in the Digital Classroom – Focus on Form

This article is written both for my colleagues that teach EFL and CzFL. It is in English, with some occasional explanations/examples in Czech. The underlying principles should be the same for each of the languages. Over the years, some of my most faithful students, both for EFL and CzFL have reached an upper-intermediate level, breaking …

Writing Tasks – TBLT and Others

Recently I have been trying to encourage my (mostly but not solely Czech) students to write more and in this post I’d like to describe some of the practices we have been doing. I only just now realised that distance learning naturally lends itself to TBLT writing, as learners, deprived of the opportunity to speak …

More Speaking, Please

Teacher: What do you want to do in class? Student: Speak. I need to practise my speaking. Teacher: Ok, what do you want to speak about? Student: Eeh? Ahem…Not sure. (Thinking: You are the teacher, you tell me). Step forward if you’ve never had this conversation. The vast majority of my students want to speak …

Changing the Focus in Extensive Reading

Something I nearly always try to include in my lessons is a “Book Club” – a fancy word for the simple activity of choosing a graded reader for my class and reading it in the lesson, chapter by chapter, as well as listening to the audio version provided on the MP3. I can’t really explain …

Lesson Module – Ancient and Modern Communities

(Mix of TBLT – CLIL – skills-based lessons) Writing just a very quick blog post, because I am so busy and haven’t got the time to write a longer piece, but I’ve felt so good about this module that I’d like to share. It’s one of the modules I’ve designed for my general English classes …

Course Planning: Removing the Guesswork

It seems to me that most of the posts I write are about course planning. The other day though, a Czech teacher of English asked in one of our private Facebook groups how to plan a conversation course in English; and I realised there can never be enough written on planning courses, especially those where …

Small Talk Around the World

This is a summary of an #ELTchat that took place on Twitter on April 17, 2019 and then ran in a slowburn mode for the next 24 hours. I took part in it because I had recently suggested discussing the topic. The idea had taken shape in the comments under a blog post on Small …

TBLT Lesson – Small Talk

I didn’t freak out the same way as I did last year when I was going to teach the High-Int Office English class how to welcome visitors and do small talk. This lesson was going to be for the Low-Int Office English course, which my institution runs this semester, and I had been asked again …

Another Handful of Handy Handout Tips

I’ve recently started using some cool hand-out strategies that I’d like to share with my regular readers. As you know I wrote another post on worksheets which was fairly popular and I guess everyone likes useful tips so here’s a quick post. How to save paper I am at a risk of making a fool …