Following on from the success of the recent Radio 4 series “A History of the World in 100 objects“, linguist and novelist David Crystal attempts to do the same for the English language.  An interesting read for any and all language teachers and language historians out there! From Riddle to Twittersphere: David Crystal tells the story of English ...

I just came across, during a further exploration of the Pearson ELT Community site, their idioms discussions space. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of discussion, but they have posted a set of mini-videos which purport to explain English idioms and expressions.  The videos are very short (about a minute) and are followed with a ...

Back in July I posted a selections of 20 ideas and activities that might be worth trying out as you get to know your new classes this school year – and since then there’ve been a couple of additional ideas to throw into the mix: First Lesson Ideas / Warmers First Lesson: Find Nobody Who… First Lesson: I don’t know what you did last ...

This is an alternative approach to the inevitable “what did you do on your holidays” conversation.   Many first lesson activities and ideas are based on the premise that nobody knows anybody else but often the students in your classes have come up through the levels together and the only new person in the group is you… It should also combat those ...

The Vortex Game.  This is a game I’ve created that can be used with any age or level – for pretty much any purpose.  It came out of a conversation with a colleague (thanks Sarah!) who was looking for an idea to help learners with minimal pronunciation pairs, but it can be used with pretty much anything! I can’t claim complete originality here ...

This is a great activity that you can use as a warmer or as a fun practice task in a number of situations. I should acknowledge that I originally saw my Dip tutor Peter Moran do this during a lesson in Wroclaw in 2006 – in various forms it’s been one of my staple activities ever since! I can’t remember why Peter did this – though as I recall he ...

Following on from the recent blog challenge on raising awareness of disability access issues, I came across the Leonard Cheshire Disability campaign whilst watching Shaun the Sheep dvds with my daughter. The campaign is called “Creature Discomforts” and has very similar aims to the blog challenge – namely to get people to think about the way ...

I spotted a colleague (Thanks Neil!) using this with a class the other day and it looked brilliant and so investigated – it is really impressive work! Turns out Neil spotted this on Larry Ferlazzo’s site. The Curfew game is aimed at young adults / older teenagers and is set in a dystopian Britain, some 16 years in our future.  It aims to raise ...

Another really simple idea for all those use of english papers….  just remove the gaps. For exam classes this works with the following areas: FCE & CAE: Use of English Part One – multiple choice cloze Use of English Part Two – open cloze Use of English Part Three – word formation CPE: Reading Part One: multiple choice cloze Use of ...

I blame that Simon Thomas over at efl-resource.  It’s all his fault.  And I’m still not sure whether it’s “zip zap zop” or “zig zag zog” or something else entirely! I’ve inherited a class, which Simon once taught back in the misty dawn of time, of 12-year-old pre-intermediate students.  When I walked in the classroom the other day, they were all ...