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Finding enough speaking activities and free speaking practice, which are useful, is definitely my downfall when it comes to teaching. When I came across this speaking activity on teaching numbers with its game element, I was thrilled. Read about my take on the…
The European Day of Languages I love, love, love, loooooove the 26th September. This is because it is the official European Day of Languages (EDL), which, since 2001, has been ‘jointly organised by the Council of Europe and the European…
Revision – it’s part of the learning process. But, how can teachers make this, often mundane task, enjoyable for learners in the classroom? This particular post is about a brilliant revision activity that I read about recently (via @lessontoolbox): revision…
Why Plan Lessons for Visual Learners? When I did my teacher training a couple of years ago, I was taught about Neil Fleming’s VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic) model. This sensory modalities learning model suggests that people acquire information…
Who doesn’t love a great no-prep spontaneous speaking activity in the MFL classroom? Last week, I spent a lesson working in the role of Foreign Language Assistant (FLA) with four year 10 German students. Their class teacher wanted them to…
The Emoji Mindmap Trend Last year, I saw Dannielle Warren using the Emoji Mindmap that she had put together from a Google image, which included a massive number of emojis to annotate on to recap and improve vocabulary, the idea…
How To Learn Vocabulary with Free Language Learning Apps – A Review/Comparison ‘Quizzes should be learning experiences for our students and we can make them into powerful ones’ (Fink, 2003) With the advent of the internet, it has never been…
The art of asking can be quite a daunting task for many in their own language, let alone a foreign language. This post aims to discuss why we need to know how to ask questions, provide a comprehensive explanation of…
The Practice of Retrieval ‘When we think about learning, we typically focus on getting information into students’ heads. What if, instead, we focus on getting information out of students’ heads?’ (Agarwal, 2017) Whilst I feel the quotation is useful in introducing retrieval practice, which the…
French Writing GCSE and KS3 Marksheet I started teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in an adult education college in 2009 and although I did set writing homework, it was voluntary. So, I wasn’t obliged to do lots…