In part one, (see here), we established that when teaching, we may need to check students’ understanding of two main areas; instructions and language, and we explored why asking ‘Do you understand?’ is not a good way to check either of these things. Previously we discussed ICQs, (instruction Checking Questions), and now we are going …

Continue reading "Checking Understanding – Part 2 – Concept Checking Questions (CCQs)"

In our everyday life outside the classroom, when we want to check if we have been understood, the most straightforward thing to do is simply ask ’Do you understand?’, or ‘Do you know what I mean?’. For the most part, people will tell us that they did or they didn’t. If they say they did, …

Continue reading "Checking Understanding – Part 1, Instruction Checking Questions (ICQs)"

In this post, we’re going to think about collocations, and look at some practical classroom activities we can use to help students communicate better through their use. Vocabulary or lexis? When we think about the teaching and learning of vocabulary, we tend to think about individual words. In many classrooms, students are encouraged to memorise …

Continue reading "Collocation: What it is, and 9 activities to use in your classroom"

Imagine a situation. You’re in the classroom, and the aim of the lesson or stage is focused on speaking skills. You tell students what you want them to talk about, and then…nothing really happens. Not much speaking is generated and what should have been a nice 15 minutes of animated discussion, quickly fades into two …

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Imagine you walk to work every day. You look out of the window and there are a few dark clouds about. What might you do? I’d put my umbrella in my bag…just in case it decides to pour with rain when I’m half way there. Anticipating problems our learners may have is just like this. …

Continue reading "Lesson Planning – problems…problems…and solutions! Part 2"

Especially in the early days of teaching, figuring out what is going to be problematic for students is one of the more challenging elements of lesson planning. If we haven’t had much exposure to students, we may feel like we are making wild guesses. In the first of two posts about potential problems and solutions, …

Continue reading "Lesson planning – problems, problems…and solutions! Part 1"

What comes to mind when you think of dictation? For many people, it’s boring and teacher-centred activities where the teacher talks and talks and the students struggle to write down every word the teacher says. If that’s your belief, then read on for practical and student-centred activities and ways to incorporate dictation into many different …

Continue reading "Dictation – advantages and ideas"

Perhaps one of the more challenging aspects of planning and executing a lesson, is getting the timing right. How long will an activity take? When should I move on? Am I going too fast / too slow? How do I know? We’re going to look at these questions and more, and provide some answers and …

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celtatrain.com has begun producing downloadable materials for teaching. These were originally going to be sent via e-mail to subscribers, but we were worried about that being considered spam. So…instead we are announcing a new category on the homepage of the site – materials and resources. Here you will find a small (at first) collection of …

Continue reading "New feature…materials and resources for EFL/ESL"

In the first of a small series of posts on lesson planning, we consider possibly the most important thing to be clear about…aims. Why aim? It might first be useful to ask ourselves why we even need an aim. In other words…what is the aim of our aim? Well…firstly, if we don’t know what we’re …

Continue reading "Aims. How to avoid being aimless!"