As you’ll know if you’ve read the ‘About’ page, this blog started as a catalogue of tried and tested activities; a catablog, if you will. It then expanded into areas such as DELTA, EAP, and most recently EAL, along with a bunch of reflection. A blog focusing on EAL has just been merged with this […]
I produced one of these for my students. Sharing it here in case yours would like it too. Click on the image to download it. In case you’re interested, the sample essay here was written by ChatGPT. (By the way, what text book do you use for IELTS? We use National Geographic’s Complete Guide to […]
Who says summary writing tasks have to be boring? My class don’t love summaries but they did love this lesson. The aims of this lesson were set by my students after filling in the ‘POST’ side of their post-mocks exam wrappers. They wanted to be more confident in identifying the key points in a text, […]
Practising paraphrasing is so important for our students: it requires them to know vocabulary and to manipulate structures successfully. Doing it in pairs or groups means they have to be explicit about the process, further advancing their confidence and control. If you can name it, you can tame it! It is of course a skill […]
Who’s been in a language class where you were either frustrated by the slowness of others to see patterns, or frustrated by not being able to keep up because you hadn’t yet learnt how to see the patterns? (This frustration actually put me off going to language classes and I ended up reading things like […]
Have you tried exam wrappers? I recently learnt the term ‘exam wrapper’ through some EduTwitter posts. In case you haven’t come across it yet, it’s a short form (or ‘metacognition worksheet’) that students fill in before a test, designed to help them evaluate their learning and think about what they can do to prepare for […]
Cut-ups and Kaboom! Students often struggle to distinguish between formal and informal language, and also to produce appropriately formal language when appropriate. Given that academic language is generally formal, and that my students need to be able to write texts of varying registers for their IGCSE E2L, it’s worth some time focusing on the features […]
Do you find your students sometimes struggle to develop their responses to prompts for Speaking exams? I used the “My Place In The World” idea to help students to broaden their thinking. (This could also be used to develop ideas for essays.) First I asked them to consider this question: Why is education important? and […]
“The first rule of EAL is to talk about EAL” As Head of the EAL department, one of my responsibilities was to deliver a short session on teaching EAL pupils at a summer-time meeting of NQTs held annually at our school. Instead of standing at the front and lecturing people on something they definitely had […]
A Hive of Activities 