Monthly Archives: March 2018
16 things I learnt from the BAISIS Conference 2018
Since starting my job as Head of EAL at my school, I have been lucky enough to attend a couple of BAISIS conferences. BAISIS is the British Association of Independent Schools with International Students. It was reassuring to meet people doing the same thing as me, partly because a lot of the information and resources […]
Speaking challenge: focus on accuracy
My IGCSE students have been preparing for their mock Speaking exams recently – and the real thing is just after the holidays. We’ve spend time focusing on developing answers, on using a range of structures and on using vocabulary to show “shades of meaning” but the students needed to work on their grammatical accuracy. This […]
All teachers are teachers of Academic English
I was lucky enough to secure a slot during a teachers’ meeting last week. Unfortunately it was just before an announcement giving details of a radical change to our timetable, so I know there were some anxious minds in the room. The main points I made were as follows: We all speak two Englishes – […]
Learning how to ‘do’ EAL
How did you come into EAL? How did you learn / are you learning how to ‘do’ it? If you’re like me, you came to EAL from a TEFL background or somewhere else in ELT – EAP, ESOL, etc. Others I have met have come to it from an MFL background, and I imagine mainstream […]
A Hive of Activities 