Once in a while I read something and I find myself thinking, ''Now, why didn't I think of that?''. Well, Richard Gresswell had such an idea. He started a blog, called it ELTBITES, and challenged us: ''Describe an activity that requires no more than the teacher, students, and possibly making use of the board, pens, and paper. Describe the activity ...

This is a good an excuse as any to listen to a good song, and, at the same time, be reminded of the suffering the great nation had to endure earlier this year. Why not use this video as a springboard for a class discussion on natural disasters, for example? You might like to read this post on activities using songs.

I recently responded to a blog challenge by a video recording of myself - you can see it by clicking here. Most EFL teachers are probably aware of the activity where students are asked to say some things about themselves, and the others are to guess if they're true or false. I suggested taking this a step further and have the students bring video ...

This challenge has been suggested by Anne & Brad. Although there are many personal photos in my collection that I can choose, I decided on these two, which weren't taken by me. And that's all I'm going to say about them! What can you say? Add your comments below.

I've always loved this song (written by Jagger/Richards, and released on the Stones' Let It Bleed album towards the end of 1969), and, as you probably already know, I'm very fond of Playing for Change, too. They are good enough reasons for me to link it here in this blog.But how can we use it in our lessons, you might ask. Well, think about it and ...

A few weeks ago, I suggested some ideas for a lesson based on a close-up image - if you've missed it, I suggest you read that first. Click here to read it.I snapped this shot today, and I thought I'd share some more ideas with you all. Between this and the previous article, I think you'll get an idea how you can start your students speaking on any ...

In We Are The Champions, I wrote about several ideas you could do with songs in the classroom, so if you'd missed it, you ought to take a look now. Warm-up Play the video, freeze it when Paul McCartney can be seen. Ask if anyone knows him, what they know: the group he belonged to, the instrument he plays, the period the song was written, ...

Teacher trainer John Kay expounds on his tips on teaching speaking on this set of videos for the British Council. They aren't new, but even if you think you know it all, have a listen - it may refresh some of the stagnant cells! It did mine! ;-) I first read about these videos in Barb Sakamoto's Starter-PLN Daily.

A lot of teachers who use songs for ELT restrict themselves to a gap-fill activity plus a singalong, but there are, however, many other activities you could do besides those, some of which I've set out below, and I also created a quiz incorporating some of them. Due to copyright problems, I'm not allowed to embed the video here, but click on the ...

Those of you who have read Teaching & Learning Pronunciation would have probably watched Jennifer's video lessons on vowels, although I'm not sure if all of you had realised that there were more videos apart from the one I embedded. You can navigate through the playlist by clicking on the arrows to the left or to the right of the video ...