Category Reflection
Language patterns & the UK Linguistics Olympiad
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 […]
Exam Wrapper for Listening exams
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 […]
EAL Conversations
“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 […]
Am I a subject teacher or a support teacher?
The role of an EAL teacher in independent schools can be confusing for both the teacher themselves and their colleagues throughout the school. Although it seems obvious now, it took me quite a while to figure out that actually my fellow EAL teachers and I have 3 distinct roles. a support teacher, helping those learning […]
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 […]
We’re not in TEFL any more, Toto.
If you’re anything like me, you get a lot out of putting your ideas and thoughts into writing. It allows you to process what’s going round your head and writing it down means you are forced to make it into a fully-formed thought. In doing this, you create something solid. You can go away and […]
My TEFL story: back to the beginning
I have been encouraged by a friend to write #myteflstory, and I’m nothing if not obliging, so here we are. Five years ago, give or take a few months, I had given up my media production manager job in White City and was just getting started on my CELTA course in Wroclaw (/vrɒtswɑːf/, more or less). […]
Language, Memory and Storytelling
The themes of sessions I chose to go to at the NATECLA conference, although they focused on different topics, seemed to have in common something to do with the roles identity and memory play in language learning: we want to use language to express ourselves and we need to remember what to say and how to […]
A Hive of Activities 