In this issue of Modern English Teacher

Teacher Development

Thomas Farrell explores a five-phrase framework for reflection, Kat Robb shares her ideas for improving teacher development in the digital age, and Alison Shepherd considers whether online learning is a hindrance or a help for non-native speakers.  

Other topics in this issue include: how to keep Teacher Training going at a distance, communicating lesson aims, creative writing tasks for online teaching, and student retention — plus much more.

In this issue of Modern English Teacher

Moving Forward: Materials and Resources

 

 

John Hughes describes the process of helping teachers to write materials for classroom use and self-study, Nick Michelioudakis discusses two ways to develop creativity in your classes, and Wing Wu looks at how teachers can embed social and emotional support in their teaching.

Other topics in this issue include: the use of pictures, online writing tasks, specialised language for work, teaching life competencies, and using data-driven learning to target vocabulary — plus much more.

---

Latest blog

Five Sizzling Summer Reads for English Learners

A common question asked to teachers is ‘What can we do outside class to improve English?’ In this blog post for Modern English Teacher, David Dogson explains why his answer is ‘read’ and recommends five original novels that are great for secondary students and older at intermediate level and above.

New to MET? Try a free article

Raising your profile

Fiona Dunlop

Do you know what your strengths and weaknesses are? What are you doing to improve? How much and how often do you network? Do you prefer to stay in your comfort zone?

A positive approach to (online) English language teaching

Jeffrey Dawala Wilang

Among the ideas covered are adopting a humanistic approach, negotiating learning goals and assessment, being sensitive to learner needs, allowing learner mistakes, providing real-world task, reducing corrective (negative) feedback, and creating a relaxing learning environment.

New for subscribers

Supporting pre-service teachers and graduate instructors

Ekaterina Arshavskya

Are you mentoring or training newish teachers? What are they struggling with? How can you help them?

Writing materials for live online lessons

John Hughes

John Hughes describes some of the differences between online and live teaching materials. He looks at formats, content, learner skills as part of the process in producing useful online resources.

World Englishes: theory and praxis in English language learning

Lok Yong Chia

This article explains a system of categorisation for different kinds of English as spoken throughout the world by a whole range of speakers.

Supporting pre-service teachers and graduate instructors

Ekaterina Arshavskya

Are you mentoring or training newish teachers? What are they struggling with? How can you help them?

Writing materials for live online lessons

John Hughes

John Hughes describes some of the differences between online and live teaching materials. He looks at formats, content, learner skills as part of the process in producing useful online resources.

World Englishes: theory and praxis in English language learning

Lok Yong Chia

This article explains a system of categorisation for different kinds of English as spoken throughout the world by a whole range of speakers.

New for subscribers

Supporting pre-service teachers and graduate instructors

Ekaterina Arshavskya

Are you mentoring or training newish teachers? What are they struggling with? How can you help them?

Writing materials for live online lessons

John Hughes

John Hughes describes some of the differences between online and live teaching materials. He looks at formats, content, learner skills as part of the process in producing useful online resources.

World Englishes: theory and praxis in English language learning

Lok Yong Chia

This article explains a system of categorisation for different kinds of English as spoken throughout the world by a whole range of speakers.

Sponsored advertorials

Implicit and explicit critical thinking activities

National Geographic Learning

Paul Dummett presents a few examples of what implicit and explicit critical thinking activities look like.

A Working Model for Critical Thinking in the ELT Classroom

National Geographic Learning

In our October article on the topic of Critical Thinking in ELT, my co-author Paul Dummett suggested that critical thinking in English language teaching should involve more than simply identifying fact from misinformation or searching texts for supporting evidence. We argue instead that critical thinking is more encompassing and should be viewed as a ‘critical disposition’ (Davis and Barnett, 2015) or as an enquiring mindset towards learning.

Bringing Shakespeare into the classroom

Helbing English

‘To be or not to be…’ This famous Shakespeare quote may be familiar to your students even if they haven’t read or seen Hamlet. In fact, given much of our everyday language contains expressions and idioms from Shakespeare, your students might recognise more words from his plays than they think. Consequently, it is worth tapping into his plays to enrich your language classroom.

Implicit and explicit critical thinking activities

National Geographic Learning

Paul Dummett presents a few examples of what implicit and explicit critical thinking activities look like.

A Working Model for Critical Thinking in the ELT Classroom

National Geographic Learning

In our October article on the topic of Critical Thinking in ELT, my co-author Paul Dummett suggested that critical thinking in English language teaching should involve more than simply identifying fact from misinformation or searching texts for supporting evidence. We argue instead that critical thinking is more encompassing and should be viewed as a ‘critical disposition’ (Davis and Barnett, 2015) or as an enquiring mindset towards learning.

Bringing Shakespeare into the classroom

Helbing English

‘To be or not to be…’ This famous Shakespeare quote may be familiar to your students even if they haven’t read or seen Hamlet. In fact, given much of our everyday language contains expressions and idioms from Shakespeare, your students might recognise more words from his plays than they think. Consequently, it is worth tapping into his plays to enrich your language classroom.

Sponsored advertorial

Implicit and explicit critical thinking activities

National Geographic Learning

Paul Dummett presents a few examples of what implicit and explicit critical thinking activities look like.

A Working Model for Critical Thinking in the ELT Classroom

National Geographic Learning

In our October article on the topic of Critical Thinking in ELT, my co-author Paul Dummett suggested that critical thinking in English language teaching should involve more than simply identifying fact from misinformation or searching texts for supporting evidence. We argue instead that critical thinking is more encompassing and should be viewed as a ‘critical disposition’ (Davis and Barnett, 2015) or as an enquiring mindset towards learning.

Bringing Shakespeare into the classroom

Helbing English

‘To be or not to be…’ This famous Shakespeare quote may be familiar to your students even if they haven’t read or seen Hamlet. In fact, given much of our everyday language contains expressions and idioms from Shakespeare, your students might recognise more words from his plays than they think. Consequently, it is worth tapping into his plays to enrich your language classroom.

---

Latest book reviews

Alan Maley’s 50 Creative Activities

Mark Rooney reviews Alan Maley’s 50 Creative Activities.

ETpedia Management 500 ideas for managing an English Language school

Matthew Hallett reviews ETpedia Management 500 ideas for managing an English Language school by Fiona Dunlop, Keith Harding and Robert McLarty.

New from our publisher

In this episode of The Internet as a Virtual Textbook series, Damien Herlihy turns his attention to virtual speaking practice to motivate students to use English orally beyond the confines of the (online) classroom.