Archive | English Teaching Methods

Know what my biggest mistake as a teacher was?

I was married to only one teaching methodology.

And just like any marriage, I needed to spice things up after a while.

When I started teaching some 20 years ago, my …

Ever get tired of seeing the same old teaching routines?

I can still remember my old high school French lessons.

Every day our teacher served up the same menu: Memorizing verbs, answering worksheets, taking dictation and repeating, repeating, repeating.

But …

How often have you repeated the following sentence to your students?

English isn’t pronounced as it’s written, nor is it written as it’s pronounced.

While for about 15% of English this is true, there’s another 85% where the letters …

You’ve heard of it: “English Only.”

The tenet that in your ESL classroom the only acceptable language will be English.

But let’s take a moment and think about English Only.

Only is an adverb that limits. Having its origins in …

“You are really…bringing me over, man.”

You may not have seen the classic 1980s movie “Better Off Dead.”

But if you teach teenagers, you could probably relate to John Cusack’s character’s dad when he tries, unsuccessfully, to bridge the gap…

Go ahead, flex your vocabulary teaching muscles.

We’re going to exercise those in a whole new way.

Enhance all your vocabulary lessons by building the four major language skills—speaking, listening, reading and writing—at the same time.

Teaching a …