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First Lessons : Establishing Classroom Culture
It’s the beginning of the academic year here, and new classes are starting up. And despite having taught for years, I still feel nervous before meeting a new class. Groups of students are a bit like...
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Five Picture Games
Pictures can be invaluable in the classroom for stimulating discussion. Here are five ways they can be used. I’ve been using them all for the last thirty years, and they’re certainly not all original....
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Framework Materials for General Purpose Classes
Framework materials (Ellis and Johnson, 1994), are activities in which learners are given a structured context as a stimulus for discussion, but provide the content themselves.One such activity,...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Monopthong / Dipthong / Tripthong
A monopthong is a single vowel sound - the monopthongs used in English, with examples of the words containing them, are :/æ/ hat/ə/ met/i:/ read/ɪ/ ship/ʊ/ book/uː/ too/e/ bed/ə/ reader/ɜ/ː...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Transactional and Interactional Functions of Language
Brown and Yule (1983) suggest that language has two main functions : interactional and transcational. The interactional function is concerned with the maintenance of social relationships for example,...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Rhotic Accents
A rhotic accent is one where the speaker pronounces a post-vocalic /r/ (ie one occurring after a vowel) that occurs in the written form but is not pronounced by speakers of non-rhotic accents. For...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Rhotic Accents
Rhotic accents are those where a post-vocalic "r" (ie one occurring in the written form) is pronounced. This does not happen in non-rhotic accents.For example, the words where,hard and butter would be...
View ArticleAn ELT Notebook : Participle Forms / Gerunds
English has two participle forms - the so called "present" and "past" participles. However, as we will see below, these names are misleadinng and the forms actually have no conection with tense or...
View ArticleAn ELT Notebook : Corpus / Corpora
A corpus (plural : corpora) is a database of samples of real language (either written or spoken) stored on a computer which can be used to investigate language use. For example, the British National...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Reference and Substitution
In each of the following sentences, the second highlighted element forms a cohesive tie with the first. A pro-form is used to to replace a word, phrase or clause used earlier in the text, thus avoiding...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Top-down processing
Using pre-existing "knowledge of the world" - eg knowledge of discourse conventions, topic, cultural or social norms - in order to interpret meaning while reading or listening. For examples of how...
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Teaching Multiword Verbs
If you're doing Delta Module Two, have a look at the following example of a background essay written for a Language Systems (Lexis) Assignment, by one of our past candidates, Ben Corcoran, and...
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Developing Fluency at Intermediate Level
If you're doing Delta Module Two, have a look at the following example of a background essay written for a Language Skills (Speaking) Assignment by one of our June 2015 candidates, Jane Sabey, and...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Skimming
Grellet (1981:19) gives the following definition of skimming :When skimming, we go through the reading material quickly in order to get the gist of it, to know how it is organized, or to get an idea of...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Notional Syllabuses
A notional syllabus (also called a notional/functional syllabus) is one whose language content is organised according to meanings which the learner needs to express, (making requests, expressing past...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Voice - Active and Passive
Richards (1985:308) defines voice as : The way in which a language expresses the relationship between a verb and the noun phrases which are associated with it. In English there are two types of voice :...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Tag questions / Question tags
A tag question is a question formulated as a statement with the operator and subject (a question tag) following. The sentences below are all examples of tag questions, while the underlined section is...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Hedging
Hedging is the use of tentative lexis or grammar to lessen the definitiveness of a statement. It can be used to add a tentative tone to a statement, thus making it less direct and more polite - eg...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : Idioms
Idioms are fixed expressions which form a lexical chunk in which the meaning is not literal and which often cannot be understood from the individual words that make up the idiom. They usually occur in...
View ArticleAn ELT Glossary : A-Priori Syllabus / A-Posteriori Syllabus
An a-priori syllabus is one which is designed before the course is taught, and uses selected materials and activities achieve the previously determined objectives. Any course following a coursebook...
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