As a teacher it is ultimately up to us to decide what our students should be learning… but on the other hand, it’s also up to the student to let the their teachers know what they could be learning. This is where needs analysis comes into play.
Teachers aren’t mind readers as much as we pretend to be and we will quite often need a kick in the right direction when it comes to understanding our students’ wants and needs. This is particularly the case when it comes to English for Specific Purpose (ESP) classes. It’s fine to teach engineering English, but which engineering? This is one of the things we need to find out and getting that information doesn’t need to be a complicated process. Click here to read more.. »
The Zone of Proximal Development is a concept that was introduced by Lev Vygotsky and is still one of the foundations for educational development together with Piagetian theory. I’m personally a big fan of the Zone of Proximal Development and it’s little brother, scaffolding. Whether this is teacher-initiated or self-guided scaffolding it doesn’t matter… finding your own zone or the zone for your students is integral.
Much as Krashen’s Input Hypotheses focuses on comprehensible input, the Zone of Proximal Development has this same notion at it’s core. Click here to read more.. »
Assuming you’re interested in be a professional teacher – as opposed to a backpacker that has no actual interest in teaching but needs to pay off student loans back home – then here are a few thoughts on different TESOL qualifications and how useful they may be.
First up, I may as well point out that to work in a lot of countries your don’t technically need a teaching certificate and just a BA/BSc will do… but you do intend on being professional right? Click here to read more.. »
What are the aims in the classroom when we teach pronunciation? Or more importantly, what should the aims be?
Many a school policy is designed to teach the “native” model of pronunciation, but is this a realistic notion? Not only does research suggest that the so-called “native” models of English are amongst the least intelligible but the model itself is often unattainable. Click here to read more.. »
Age old advice has been to keep a diary or journal as a way to improve your writing and general language skills. The problem with this advice has often been the inability to find someone to offer you corrections. Meaning that you’re quite often reinforcing errors.
That’s kind of a problem!
How to solve this mild problem… Use the internet to your advantage. There are dozens of language exchange websites and portals around these days and I’ve tried out quite a few of them over the last few years. Some are useful and practical, others not so. I’ll give you a few inside tips so you don’t waste time registering at some of the places I’ve found less useful…. But by all means, use other sources; you may have more success than I did elsewhere… maybe my profile just isn’t appealing enough 
Click here to read more.. »
