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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

A relatively simple way of dealing with multiple choice cloze tasks in the classroom: Take one multiple choice cloze task, possibly one like this FCE style task found via a google image search, or just one from your coursebook. Before the class, you’ll need to type out the multiple choice possible answers onto A4, print a single copy and then ...

The visual thesaurus was pointed out to me some time ago as a great alternative to the standard online dictionary search, and also as a great way to help learners broaden their vocabulary, particularly with higher level students who have a tendency to rely on a more limited than necessary lexical resource. But….  I’ve tended not to use it because ...

An alternative to the work through it together option… Basically, you need two different open cloze tasks from a test book (or you can use the examples given in the exam handbooks available from Cambridge ESOL’s teacher support site). You then need to make two different sets of handouts.  Handouts should contain both tasks, but different answer ...

Giving feedback on classroom tasks is a tricky thing to come up with ideas for.  Broadly, I think methods can be broken down into Collaborative / Competitive / Partial / Full.  The four methods can interact, so you can have competitive partial feedback, followed by collaborative full feedback – or vice versa. Collaborative methods might involve ...