Be like Bill for grammar (and vocabulary) practice

The third person singular of the Present Simple tense is known to be particularly problematic for learners and when the "Be Like Bill...

News quiz 2015 - Follow up

Activities for reviewing lexis from News Quiz 2015 Photo by  Dustpuppy72  via Flickr  [ CC BY-NC-ND  2.0] Here's the promised follow up ...

10 things you can do with "10 things you didn't know last week"

10 things you didn't know last week is a digest of news snippets published every Friday on the BBC website. You can find it in a sectio...

The return of translation: opportunities and pitfalls

For most of the 20th century, there was a deep-rooted tradition in the ELT, which dates back to the Direct Method, that L1 in the classroom ...

A matter of semantics: same concepts, different divisions

Eighteen containers in assorted shapes and sizes on display in the corner of the room. Fourteen EFL teachers organized in small groups accor...

On (and off) the wall vocabulary activities

I often make students (and teachers I work with) get out of their seats. I think movement in the classroom is important whether you believe ...

Not a word was spoken (but many were learned)

Video is often used in the EFL classroom for listening comprehension activities, facilitating discussions and, of course, language work. But...

Experimental vocabulary practice

Image by Peter Megyeri on Flickr (CC BY 2.0) My interest in experimental practice was piqued at the TESOL France’s last annual colloquium wh...