ELT methodology

Four tips to help you teach C1/C2 students

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I don’t think I have ever taught or observed an advanced lesson that went seriously wrong, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise. C1/C2 students know a lot of English, which usually helps our lessons run relatively smoothly. However, time and time again, I have walked out of lively, fun, seemingly trouble-free C1/C2 lessons, wondering how … Read more

Reading tasks: three common pitfalls

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Most of us like to use authentic, hot-off-the-press texts in class from time to time. This entails not only choosing relevant, level-appropriate material, but also devising tasks that will help students to get as much out of the text as possible. However, writing good comprehension questions is trickier than meets the eye. Here are three pitfalls to watch … Read more

Teaching verb tenses with timelines

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I’ve been telling teachers to use timelines for as long as I can remember, but, strangely enough, they used to play a lesser role in my own classroom practice. I believe this has a lot to do with my baffling inability to make sense of anything that bears the slightest resemblance to a map or a diagram. But some years ago I decided that it was time to put away my fear of shapes and patterns and dust off my old, long-forgotten verb tense timelines.

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Teaching vocabulary: three useful tips

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In an EFL/ESL context, teaching vocabulary is not the same as teaching new words.

Up until fairly recently, I didn’t pay too much attention to how I taught vocabulary. My main concern was to help students understand and produce grammatical structures as accurately as possible. Teaching vocabulary was some sort of byproduct of whatever grammar or skills work I happened to be doing at the time.

Cut to 1997, when teaching vocabulary gained more prominence in my career. Way back then, I began teaching and devising courses in which grammar was supposed to play a less central role.

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