My bag of tricks

Today I’ve decided to open my bag of tricks, which is a small bag I used to take to my lessons when I taught at a language institute. Read below to find out what’s inside.

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New Girl: a video-based vocabulary lesson

Whenever possible I try to illustrate new language students come across with a video snippet. I believe it helps make the language more memorable and it’s also a great way to work on pronunciation features like connected speech.

So, last week, after using a text to talk about the protests in Brazil, I was looking for a video with the phrasal verb ‘fed up with’. The snippet I found had so many interesting bits of language (including not my cup of tea) that it ended up becoming a lesson on its own.

In defence of idioms

A couple of weeks ago I read Damian Williams’ blogpost explaining the problems he sees with the way idioms are taught in English lessons. It got me thinking about why I do like teaching idioms but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Fast-forward to this week when I was preparing a video activity and came across this scene in an episode of New Girl. It made me realize exactly why I think idioms are worth teaching.

Teacher Development

Last Thursday I had the chance to take part in a webinar by Higor Cavalcante, which you can watch below. He talked about the importance of language development for teachers and it got me thinking about both language development and professional development as a whole. So today I’m writing about the steps I think teachers can take to become better professionals.

New Words

Last week Cultura Inglesa Rio de Janeiro’s Facebook page posted the picture below. It reminded me of a lesson I taught last year, when new words were included in the Oxford Online Dictionary.

If you have been paying close attention to the posts on this blog you should be familiar with clickbait. If you don’t know what the other words mean, however, you definitely don’t want to miss this lesson.

Conversation lessons and error correction

Last week I took part in my first BrELT Chat, the topic of which was conversation lessons. At the very end of the chat participants were asked to contribute a final thought and I said ‘aula de conversação também tem correção’ which translates to ‘there should be correction in conversation lessons’.

In a lot of ways, I think the same techniques can be used for error correction in both a conversation lesson and a ‘regular’ lesson. You can see some examples in my previous post on the same topic. What may change, however, is what I choose to correct, rather than how I correct it.

Drug Testing Is Coming to E-Sports

I rarely play video games or online games these days, but as a teacher of people who do, I try to keep abreast of what is going on in that universe.

There was an article on the New York Times a couple of weeks ago that could be used to talk about the topic of online games and ethics in sports. The title ‘Drug testing is coming to E-sports’ hints at the fact that players are using PEDs to try to get an edge, just like athletes in professional leagues do.

How to get a distinction in your Delta module 2 Background Essays

I suppose the title could be considered clickbait, but the idea is to try to help you to do well during Delta module 2. I got a distinction in my first three Background Essays, and imagine LSA4 (which is externally assessed) was up to the same standard. You can do it too, and I think the following tips and reading suggestions will help.