I was working with one of my exam classes last week and we were focused on Part 4 of the speaking when one of my students said that she always worried that she wouldn't have anything to say on the... Continue Reading →
PechFlickr is something I actually wrote about five years ago as a useful classroom tool for students who have to deal with pictures / imagery in their speaking exams. I'm thinking here more about the Cambridge English: First & Advanced... Continue Reading →
It is the time of year when many students are doing their Cambridge exams – many have probably already done theirs but I know there are some doing theirs in July (such as my Advanced group) and it's still not... Continue Reading →
Job interviews are fun things to prepare learners for. A colleague and I once prepared a student for a job interview as a hotel receptionist by sitting her in the director's office and making spurious phone calls to her in... Continue Reading →
This is a lesson I did with my advanced class the other day as part of a review of passive structures. I've typed it all up into a full plan and procedure which you can download in pdf through this... Continue Reading →
One of the common complaints students have about exam speaking is that they never know what to say. In practice sessions, I've had students dry up completely and embarrassedly freeze half way through a sentence, I've had other students refuse... Continue Reading →
With the introduction of a compulsory essay task in the Cambridge English: First & Advanced exams, it's become quite important for learners to understand essay structure and organisation. Here's a ten minute talk I did for the International House Teacher's... Continue Reading →
Here's a nice infographic from the Kaplan blog about words with multiple meanings. I can think of three immediate ways to exploit this with a class: (1) Prediction - give students the keywords. Students then think of as many phrases... Continue Reading →
This is an activity I did with with an intermediate group of young learners - who absolutely loved it. It led to what was easily the longest conversations they'd had in English all year. It probably wouldn't take much... Continue Reading →
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