What’s a common homework assignment or part of the so-called on-going assessment? Getting your students to write a diary is a pretty safe bet. We’ve all requested it and most students will deliver.
The diary is used as a reflection of general speech and trying to get the student to find their own voice in their L2. [...]

Here’s an activity that incorporates three skills in one: listening, writing and speaking… with some reading thrown in if you twist it a little bit.
The steps are pretty simple, it’s simple to incorporate and easy to control.

use a recording of a conversation with the question parts removed… so basically you are playing a one side [...]

Culture in the classroom.. is this something that the students need or want? This argument can very much go both ways and much of it relies on what exactly your students want, but one model for the classroom isn’t likely to please everyone… as you’re not doubt aware.

On the one hand we have the ongoing [...]

I’m sure if you’ve been a teacher for any length of time you will have stumbled more than once at creating a valid and reliable test for your classroom. The question is, why are we always struggling along attempting to reinvent the wheel? Countless people before us have researched and implemented successful assessments for the [...]

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 [...]

Planning a lesson can be hard work. It may even take longer than teaching the lesson itself when you’re still a novice teacher. For example, my first ever week of teaching took me around 3 hours of preparation each day for just 5-7 hours of class.

Imagine having to work 9-10 hour days just to [...]