Ian Brookes is a freelance writer and editor based in Scotland. He has edited a number of dictionaries and has written books about spelling, writing, and punctuation. In this post, he looks at homophones: words that sound the same as other words, but have a different meaning. Born or borne? Discreet or discrete? Site or sight? Sink or sync? Homophones are one of the bugbears of learning a language, especially a language such as English, which can represent similar sounds in a number of different ways. A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word, but has a different meaning. Often two homophones are spelt the same (as in the case of a ring on the telephone and a diamond ring), but homophones can sometimes have different spellings (as in the case of their and there), which makes life even more difficult. Homophones can create a particular problem when one of the spellings is not very commonly used. For example, the word but is so much more common than its homophone butt that when you hear a word with this sound you are likely to think that you are hearing the conjunction. However, it is worth remembering the less common homophone can crop up from time to time in phrases such as the butt of a joke. The verbs pour and pore present a similar issue: pour is much more common, but the phrasal verb pore over involves quite a different meaning. When you pore over a piece of writing you don’t cause it to flow but you study it intently. When the rarer of two homophones is used in an idiom or phrase, such expressions can be impossible to decipher if you are not aware that a homophone is being used. Take the example of the word bated. This is not the past participle of the verb bait. Pretty much the only time you will come across it is in the phrase with bated breath: if you wait for something with bated breath you wait for it eagerly. The phrase has nothing to do with your breath being prepared to catch a fish, but it makes use of an old variation of the verb abate, and so the idiom describes a person who is so excited that they hold their breath until a particular thing happens. The idiom give somebody a wide berth is another where the less common of two homophones is used. When you hear it for the first time it may be tempting to interpret this as having something to do with birth. However, the term in fact comes (like many English idioms) from seafaring. A berth is the space allowed for a ship to move about when it is tied up or swinging on its anchor, and so when a troublesome person or thing is given a wide berth they are avoided and given plenty of room to go about their business. My final example is the phrase learn by rote. When you hear this it may sound as though the last word is wrote. But this phrase has nothing to do with writing; it means to learn things by repeating them over and over rather than by understanding their underlying meaning. What makes this harder to know is that you will never come across the word rote in any other context. So homophones can not only create problems with spelling, but they can also be quite misleading when it comes to grasping the meaning of a phrase. If you find them tricky then you can take some comfort from the fact that native English speakers often get these confused as well!Filed under: Dictionaries & Reference, Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: English Language, English spelling, Grammar, Homophones, Ian Brookes, Idioms, OALD, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Phrasal verbs, Word sounds

If good content is the foundation of your online presence, keywords are kind of like the bricks or, more aptly, the cornerstones. Your site content obviously can’t consist entirely of keywords because it wouldn’t make much sense to those reading it, but the relevant placement of keywords on your page can help search engines understand and analyze your site content and include said content in results pages. Keywords aren’t something you define once and then forget about. Your keyword strategy is something you define, hone, and redefine over time, so how do you build a strategy around keywords? Start with the following: ● What do you need to know about your site to build a keyword strategy? ● What keywords and search phrases will people use to fi nd what you offer? ● What combination of long tail (more specific) and broad head (more general) keywords and phrases will provide the results you want? ● What keywords differentiate you from your competitors? ● Will you use pay-per-click tools like Google AdWords to drivetraffic? ● If so, what kind of budget can you afford?

Karen Capel, an Academic Coordinator and teacher trainer, returns with another guest post for Coordinators and Directors of Study, sharing her thoughts on leadership in schools. Do you think a good coordinator should motivate and inspire? Then we would agree that an effective coordinator should also be a successful leader. These two roles are deeply interwoven, complementing and enhancing one another to result in a complete professional who is able to carry out managerial duties outstandingly. Whether you are a natural leader or you have learned to be one, it is your responsibility as a coordinator to innovate and develop, to focus on people (both staff and students), to inspire trust, and to focus on both short-term and the long-term goals. You must also challenge the status quo in view of achieving your institution’s objectives and providing a better service to students. Therefore, a leader not only does things right but also does the right things. According to the leadership guru Warren Bennis, all of these are characteristics of a leader. So what type of leader should you be? Hopefully a transformational one, achieving objectives by inspiring your staff and fostering the sense of belonging that will result in the formation of a real team. It is proactivity and the drive for continuous improvement that characterise both transformational leaders and successful coordinators. The leadership style one follows is, needless to say, highly dependent on personality, though an effort must be made to ensure our staff is given the opportunity to express their ideas and put forward their suggestions, for this is the only way a team can work to its maximum potential and enhance each individual’s unique skills and capabilities. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that even when listening to every member’s opinions and allowing discussion of the different issues on the table, it is the coordinator who should make the final decision in all matters and who will always maintain responsibility for the courses of action decided upon. Only then would you embody a democratic leader who enables teachers to feel trusted and heard while supported and guided toward common goals and objectives. It is our teachers who are in direct contact with students and may therefore be in possession of invaluable information upon which all-important decisions may be taken. It is key to trust our own judgement when taking on employees and pay attention to the professionals in our staff and what they have to contribute, as it is they who should follow the procedures enforced and may come up with alternative and improved ways of dealing with certain issues. On becoming a coordinator, it is highly plausible that you will encounter members of staff who are supportive and always willing to lend a helping hand, work as a team and back your decisions with a goal of improving the services provided to students, as well as internal procedures and practices; but it is just as plausible that you will encounter teachers who are resistant to change and who will antagonise every decision. It is you as a leader who must find the way to put them on your side by tactfully showing them that you are part of the same team and that each and every decision made has been thoroughly examined, all alternatives considered and every opinion carefully listened to. Once again, democracy is the key. Give these members of the team even more chances to participate and express their opinions and make them feel valued and trusted as professionals. Truly listen to what they have to say, for their ideas and suggestions may be altogether valuable and useful for decision-making, and then make your own decision based on the big picture and all relevant elements, which they might not be aware of. Just make sure you carefully choose your battles and let them win sometimes, as this is the only way they will actually feel you are paying attention to what they have to say. It is also worth noting that a leader is not someone who is always telling people what they have to do, but someone who subtly makes it clear to everyone what his/her role is and what is expected from him/her. Leaders provide guidelines on how to proceed and accomplish the goals set while fostering teamwork and making employees feel trusted, and are therefore a paramount element for the organisation to achieve efficiency and growth.Filed under: Professional Development Tagged: Advice, Coordinators, Directors of Study, Educators, Karen Capel, Leader, Leadership, Roles, School administration, Teaching staff, Tips

Every website has a ‘Terms of use’ section that is only applies to that specific website. This ‘Terms of use’ section is mandatory as to prevent legal issues and to explain the websites limited liabilities and disclaimers. This ‘Terms of Use’ are important as they help keep you and your business protected online. Having these Terms of Use or Terms and Conditions pages on your web site is not just significant and vital from a legal point of view, but also having and adding your own terms for your site can help you to improve your SEO. The ‘Terms of Use’ agreement’s importance has two sides: It makes legalities and other such issues easier for the Web site and it matters to the visitor. Web site owners use a ‘Terms of Use’ for legal reasons, to cover themselves in case a site visitor makes a claim against them, or prohibit acts like posting, sending to or through the site any illegal, damaging, distressing, insulting, threatening, crude, sexually explicit, hateful or other such objectionable material of any kind, and much more. The material made available at that website is protected by copyright. One cannot make use of that content or matter in any possible way. It gives them a measure of insurance against lawsuits. For visitor, the ‘Terms of Use’ is simply an agreement you make with a Web site to stand by whatsoever its site rules might be while you’re visiting the site. A lot of people don’t habitually take the time to read a Web site’s entire ‘Terms of Use’. It might be a good idea to be alert of its major terms before you click "I agree." While generating your Terms of Use page, study your website’s main purpose as to what does it provide; information, entertainment, or online services? What issues could visitors encounter while using the site and take note of what they include. The ‘Terms of use’ generator is free and easy to make / install for your site. There are many such laws and clauses which keep the activities in and around your site legal after generating the ‘Terms of use’ section. You can create your own terms and conditions which will only be applicable for your own website. There are various ‘Terms of use’ templates as well; with which, once downloaded you can modify it and create your own website. These ‘Terms of use’ templates are usually free and help you to make money by making website implementation, hosting, template modifications, and maintenance. One such template for your WordPress site is the Wp Legal Pages. It is a simple 1 click legal page management plugin where, one can quickly add in legal pages to their wordpress sites. It is easy to use and edit. It ensures that any person that visits your page agrees to your given set or terms and conditions before further viewing.

What is a Forum Posting?The Forum is a great way to interact with other members on your Network. An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user and or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to approve by a moderator before it becomes visible. Depending on the forum set-up, users can anonymous or have to register with the forum and then log to post messages. Usually you do not have to log in to read existing messages. Categories of Forums:1. SEO Forum Posting2. Forum Sites for SEO.3. Free forum posting tips4. Forum auto post5. Writing posting SEO Forum PostingBy posting some good short articles in the forums or by guiding your website to the users helps in driving the traffic. In SEO Forums posting in next to Social Networking Websites. Social networking brings more traffic considering to others and the next follows the Forum Postings.You can post on new topic or reply to asked question. Try to post good reply to the asked questions and Post Good content in the new topic. Many forums are strictly moderated by the owners to avoid spam. First register with the forums and post some of the good new topic and good replies in the forums without adding any of the back links to your website.Sites for SEOFree forum posting tipsFree forum poster and posting tips: One way is forum posting and using a forum poster. You can build relevant links back to your site pretty fast if you keep involved in a few popular forums have related to your niche. This is also a good way to build up sort of following and be looked upon as an expert in your field. Forum auto postAuto-poster is a "black hat SEO" technique which search engines are starting to crack down. It is a careless way to generate back links and sacrifices quality for measure; forum moderators immediately recognize these automated posts and remove them like a wart.Writing postingThe term "High Quality" is very subjective when applied to forum posts. Many forum administrators would however agree that there are some requirements that a forum post must meet before it can considered a high quality post.The top 5 quality forum post:1. A forum post grammatically corrects, 2.spell checked, 3. Relevant to the niche subject, 4.well-written and 5.very interesting post.

Kate Read, co-author of the new Kindergarten series, Show and Tell, offers some practical tips for making the most of your mixed-ability Kindergarten classroom. Kindergarten classrooms can be busy and confusing places at the best of times, but when you (like most of us) have to cope with a wide range of abilities, it throws an extra challenge into the mix. We love the fact that each child is an individual, with his or her own quirky little personalities, but it sure makes teaching effectively a challenge! Don’t despair! Here are a few simple steps to unmix you! 1. Be prepared As with so many things in life, the secret is in the preparation. Think about what you want to achieve and what it is reasonable to achieve on both a class and individual level. Set a range of achievable goals: begin from the same starting point then vary the level of difficulty. Remember that mixed abilities do range upwards - you want to keep the most able children challenged and interested too. When creating or adapting activities, chose ones which can be approached in a number of ways, especially in regards to oral or written abilities. Think of ways to exploit a variety of skill sets. For example, if you were going to introduce a new song, you might look at doing the following with it: acting out the words with no production, but focusing on creating interesting movements to illustrate understanding a singing/production element a drawing element a simple reading/writing element (e.g. a gap fill or a create a new verse) for those most able to cope with written text. Make sure that your instructions are very clear, structured and achievable when you present the tasks. Be very clear about what you hope they will achieve by the end of the class or activity - include the range of outcomes in this. When you give instructions, demonstrate the whole process from beginning to end. Also, don’t underestimate the value of review. Creative reviews give the lower-ability children a chance to take stock and gain confidence while providing a springboard for other children to attempt higher-level activities. 2. Use the children’s strengths It’s very important for each child to know that he or she is a valued member of your classroom community. Each contribution is important. For example, someone with good motor skills but poor linguistic skills could make a different but equally important contribution to a project or activity and you need to make this clear. Most tasks will be enhanced by mixing abilities within a group and encouraging peer co-operation. Many children enjoy taking the teacher role and this can be usefully exploited! Using the children’s different strengths also benefits their social development. Be sensitive to how far you can push the children, but at the same time do mix things up by changing groups, dynamics and procedures when you think they can handle this. Teaching a mixed-ability class is a great opportunity to develop cooperative learning and peer teaching appeal to different strengths and learning styles support the less able and challenge the more able train children to work both independently and in groups. 3. Be flexible As you will know, teaching mixed abilities draws on all your multi-tasking skills - but it is worth it when it works well. At times there might be a bit more confusion than with a single approach, but keep calm, aware, and in control, and you will often hear that sweet hum of concentrated activity. Just in case things don’t go perfectly to plan, try to keep a good ‘Plan B’ activity in the sidelines, even if it is just a quick break in the form of an action song or a chant before settling them back into the task. If you see their interest flagging, don’t be afraid to change your approach. 4. Appreciate the achievements of all learners All children need praise, particularly when navigating the unknown waters of a new language. Find things to praise in all the children’s efforts. If you can’t find something, then deliberately help them do something that is praiseworthy. Remember to think of the individual’s learning path and compare what they’ve done to their own past achievements as opposed to the achievements of others. Demonstrate and reward success - post their efforts on the wall, or in folders, and hand out congratulations stickers, etc. In a very simple way, go back to the objectives you discussed at the beginning of the class. Show the children how they achieved them and how well they did. Challenge question for fast finishers: how many times did I manage to insert ‘mix’ into this blog? Would you like more practical tips on working with mixed-ability classes and developing 21st Century skills in your Kindergarten children? Visit our site on Teaching 21st Century skills with confidence for free video tips, activity ideas and teaching tools.Filed under: Pre-school Children, Skills Tagged: 21st Century skills, Children, Classroom management, Critical thinking, Critical thinking skills, EFL, ELT, How to teach critical thinking, Kindergarten, Mixed abilities, Pre-school children, Show and Tell

Kenna Bourke, co-author of Levels 5 and 6 of the new Primary series, Oxford Discover, offers some practical tips for making the most of your mixed ability Primary classroom. About a hundred years ago, when I was six, my Belgian primary school teacher wanted me to crochet a poncho: ‘M’enfin! Un poncho, Kénna! C’est facile!’ Crochet! Crochet??? As I remember it, this involved manipulating a weird-looking needle, and some balls of wool: sky blue, navy blue, and white. That poncho haunts me to this day. My long-suffering mother crocheted it in the end. And I had to confess that I hadn’t crocheted it. And six-year-old life wasn’t good for a while. Also at the age of six, I was promoted to top of the class in Flemish, above all the Belgian kids (dank u wel), and close to bottom in Math because 213 divided by 7 = (well, I have no idea and why does it matter?). By the time I was twelve, studying at a school in England that shall remain nameless, I was put in the bottom set for English (this requires you to have read Dickens’s Christmas Carol and be able to recite it backwards), and the top set for French (this requires you to be able to say ‘M. et Mme. Dupont ont deux enfants’). I spoke French far better than my teacher, which turned out to be a major disadvantage. I also spent vast tracts of time wondering why lacrosse - a sport - wasn’t banned under the Dangerous Sports Act, and being quite good at … swimming. Aren’t we all to some extent ‘mixed ability’? Does it matter? It may or may not matter. The debate rages on. Some contend that all students should be streamed according to ability. But the fact is that people aren’t equally able, and it’s not always possible. As has been said endlessly, if you have a class of two students, you automatically have a mixed ability class. Utopia is a briefly entertaining fiction - we live in a mixed ability world, which we can choose to think of as something to be celebrated. Imagine how boring it would it be if we all excelled at everything. There’d be little point in competition sports, or comedy shows, or concerts, or art, or literature … It wouldn’t really be worth cooking a great meal for friends because (yawn) everyone can do that. And don’t even think about solving a mathematical puzzle while you’re commuting to work, because we’re all equally good at it, and the person sitting to your left has probably already completed it. Of course no two students are the same, but there you are, faced with your mixed ability class, and you can’t change that. So what do you do? Move the benchmarking goalposts? More often than not, we take a curriculum or set of standards and benchmark all students’ abilities against them, which is fine. But how about also benchmarking student achievement against that individual’s potential? Successful learning usually happens when you hit the tipping point between frustration and challenge. At university, I got bored and frustrated because French was too easy. At school, I was miserable and frustrated because Maths classes were difficult. Had I been pushed much harder in one direction and given more appropriate tasks in the other, I might have been more successful in both subjects. Differentiate for success? There’s a danger, also, of setting tasks that scream ‘advanced’, ‘normal’, or ‘remedial’. Not a good thing. It can result in making one student feel superior, another feel average, and the third feel stupid. Used tactfully, differentiated activities can build on each other. A below-level activity provides support and scaffolding for less confident students before they move to a task that is at- or on-level. The at-level task then provides support for students to deal with the greater challenge of an above-level task. Alternatively, you might differentiate learning by setting different tasks to different groups simultaneously so that all students are collaborating on discrete aspects of the whole, as in some L1 classrooms. No one really likes to stand out, except perhaps for the captain of that dreadful lacrosse team. As my co-author on Oxford Discover, Kathleen Kampa, suggests in this video, there are some ingenious ways of giving all students the same task, yet letting them determine how to do that task at exactly their own level. Motivate by focusing on what’s good and fun? Call me a quitter, but I didn’t pursue crochet beyond the age of six, or Math beyond 15, though today, self-taught, I can do Math perfectly adequately. As adults, most of us very sensibly choose to do what we’re good at and what we actively enjoy. Too often, children aren’t given that freedom of choice. We can create meaning in class and foster an atmosphere in which successful learning will take place by allowing students different ways to respond, and by giving them activities that appeal across a range of intelligences. Some of us are natural listeners; others love reading. Some of us wouldn’t dance or sing if our lives depended on it; others dance and sing till they drop. Some of us react to visual stimulus; others are oblivious to it. But we all do something well. Multimodality, in the form of video, audio, posters, spoken and written language, music and movement, is invaluable in helping students build 21st Century skills in an unthreatening, equalizing environment. How? To put this idea in its most basic form, try, for example, to give: classifying and problem-solving tasks to students who show logical or mathematical intelligence physical, tactile, TPR-style tasks to kinesthetic learners groupwork, classwork, and games to students who demonstrate interpersonal skills and intelligence reading and writing tasks to learners whose verbal or linguistic intelligence is evident and tasks centred around posters, pictures, and diagrams to children who show signs of visual or spatial intelligence. As I write this on a January afternoon from my flat in New York City, it’s 11 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus-something horrifying Centigrade, and nothing would please me more than being able to crochet my own poncho to keep warm. But I refuse to get despondent. After all, aged 1, I was so mixed ability that I could drive a car! Who knows what else I might achieve if pushed? Kenna Bourke as a toddler ‘driving’ a car If you’d like more ideas on teaching mixed ability classes, why not register for a free webinar led by my colleagues at OUP? Making the most of mixed-ability young learner classes will be held on 18th February and repeated on 20th February 2014. Would you like practical tips on teaching mixed-ability classes and developing 21st Century skills in your children? Visit our site on Teaching 21st Century skills with confidence for free video tips, activity ideas and teaching tools.Filed under: Skills, Young Learners Tagged: 21st Century skills, Children, Classroom management, Differentiated learning, EFL, ELT, Kenna Bourke, Mixed abilities, Oxford Discover, Primary

Many have signed up for a Twitter account or a Facebook page, only to desert them after a few well-intentioned weeks of scattered and sporadic posting. Well my friends, there is an easier way. Quite a few programs and platforms have been created over the past couple of years to help consolidate and automate your social media strategy. Here are just a few: • Tweet Deck • Market Me Tweet • Social Blaster • Social Oomph • Hootsuite Many have found Hootsuite to be the most effective and streamlined program for social media automation. It was created as an interface for managing your brand on all of your social networking accounts. Hootsuite is a platform that allows you to manage multiple profiles, pre-schedule tweets, measure the statistics of your tweet links and post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, MySpace and Foursquare Here are the best things about Hootsuite: • It’s Convenient - Hootsuite is Web-based so it doesn’t have to be installed on your computer in order to use it. This also means that you can login on any computer and access it anywhere in the world. • It’s Free - Enough said. They are now offering a paid version that allows you to tweet in bulk (type the tweet once and then schedule it to go out multiple times), but this is definitely not necessary. • It’s User-Friendly - Hootsuite has great usability and layout. The feeds are conveniently laid out in columns and you can arrange them in any configuration you like. If you have multiple social media accounts, they are conveniently tabbed so that you can toggle between them. • Statistics - When you use their ow.ly link shortener you can track the stats of your social media efforts and get to know your audience. In other words, if you link back to your website and/or blog, you can track how many people are actually clicking on your link. • Groups - You can group "like" people together, i.e. family, friends, celebrities, industry mavens, etc. for easier access to information you want to see. • Schedule Your Posts - YOU get to decide when your posts go up on your profile. This also means you can schedule an entire week or month’s worth of posts and status updates in one sitting! (This is, without a doubt my favorite thing about Hootsuite and I use it regularly) • Post Once, Reach Many - YOU get to pick which social media platforms your post is sent to. Currently, you have the option to send your post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm., MySpace and Foursquare. In a nutshell, Hootsuite allows you to completely streamline your social media strategy. You can manage multiple accounts on one dashboard, schedule tweets/posts in advance and track your most popular links using their ow.ly link shortener.

Programming for the Web has become an ongoing trend where many people are making a living out of it. This mainly is a spotlight for user-generated content on web sites. Python makes it easier to create web sites with many frameworks and helper tools that have been produced to give a helping hand to Python Beginners in creating faster and more robust web sites. One of the most important thing while using a language for web is to efficiently use developer time, and Python is better at doing so in the long run for web development. Since Python is an open source programming language, it is free of cost. Top 3 reasons to use Python for Web development  1. Python is strong, reliable and flexible Python helps to power many systems. It is concrete and controlling and has a really good speed. Python has a relative small quantity of lines of code, which makes it less prone to issues, easier to debug, and more maintainable. Python can rise above to solve multifaceted problems, as demonstrated by the fact that it powers most of YouTube and DropBox, Reddit, Quora, Disqus and FriendFeed. Even Google uses Python development as one of its official programming languages. Along list of companies make use of Python development for numerous uses. These include their websites and web applications, systems administration, voice over IP, and desktop apps. Even the Scientific community makes use of Python for their web development. 2. Python is easy to learn and use The Python course for beginners in particular has become known as the most suited course as a first programming language. The Python course is perceptive and fun. Python’s simple and straight-forward syntax also gives confidence to good programming habits, especially through its focus on white space indentation. This then adds to the development of properly made codes. Python’s naming convention is well established from module to module. Thus, developers are less likely to make syntax errors. This means fewer viruses and bugs as well as faster development. 3. Less marketing tie Many online studies have shown that 90% of enterprises and well established companies are using Python to build business-critical applications. This is because dynamic languages are a first-rated way out for fast time-to-market for enterprise applications. Python makes it possible to get applications to market faster in part due to the fact that it has a huge standard library and is often referred to as coming with "batteries included". To further add on to that, Python helps to be more productive and requires less coding for web development.

Robin Walker, freelance teacher, teacher educator, and materials writer, looks at ways of supporting students who are beyond Intermediate but not yet ready for Upper Intermediate level. Robin will discuss this topic in his upcoming webinar on 20th February, entitled ‘Mind the gap’ - Helping your students to cross the intermediate threshold with confidence. When I started teaching English in the early 1980s, adult coursebooks from all of the leading publishers ran to three or four levels - Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced. This 4-level learning was a reflection of the limited strength of the then emerging ELT publishing industry, rather than the reality for the learner in the English language classroom, and inevitably there was a gap between what was available and what learners needed. To bridge the gap that most students encountered between the four ‘official’ levels, one of the strategies we used as teachers was to change publishers. If a group was struggling at Elementary level and wasn’t ready to go on to Intermediate, for example, we would look around for an Elementary-level coursebook from another publisher. This worked up to a point, but often brought with it the disadvantage of changing from a style that learners had become used to, and which generated a sense of security, to a style that was new and that provoked different reactions from different students. The new style was not necessarily better or worse, but it definitely felt different. For the more adventurous students this unfamiliarity often acted as a stimulus, and they took to the new book with few if any problems, and, initially at least, with genuine enthusiasm. But the learners in a group that were less sure of themselves (and who were usually the students that were finding it difficult to move up to the next level), would often tell you that they liked the old book better, and would even ask if it wasn’t possible to repeat the year with the same book. Another problem with trying to bridge the gap with a coursebook from a different publisher was that the new book, quite correctly, assumed that the users were coming to the level for the first time. There is no reason to write a coursebook aimed at learners who have been using materials from a competing publisher. The only possible strategy is to assume that students adopting a coursebook at a given level, will be arriving at that level after successfully completing the previous one with a book from the same series. The outcome of this situation in class was that material would, logically, be presented to learners as if they had never seen it before. This wasn’t the case, of course, and students often lost motivation when they embarked upon a unit that presented an area of language that they had already studied only the year before. I can clearly remember a strong sense of We’ve already done this! invading the classroom during these ‘repeat’ years. As the teacher, I knew only too well that the group needed to go back to the language areas in question in order to, on the one hand, consolidate any previous learning, and, on the other, successfully cover what the class had demonstrably failed to learn the year before. In general, it takes a lot of skill to overcome the demotivating effect of going back in order to go forward, and often the new coursebook ends up being supplemented by original materials provided by the teacher. This is a solution that a) raises the question as to why the students have been required to buy a book they seldom use, and b) eats up serious amounts of a conscientious teacher’s free time. Over the intervening 30 years since I began teaching, major coursebooks have expanded from running at three or four levels, to offering teachers and learners five or even six levels. The Common European Framework of Reference, whose influence has extended way beyond the shores of even the widest concept of Europe, started off with six levels, from A1 to C2, although the use of the ‘+’ sign to generate even more precise gradings is increasingly common. Theoretically, we can now talk about a 12-level system that progresses from A1 through A1+ to A2, and then on to A2+, and so on. Although it is interesting to be able to refer to individual students with this almost mathematical precision, it is not feasible in practical terms to run a language school with as many as twelve different levels. In that respect, the six levels from Beginner to Advanced, the current default system in many private and public ELT institutions, constitute a strong basic structure. The progression from one level to another, whilst not without its problems, is realistic and generally motivating for learners. There is, however, one level where again and again learners seem to struggle, and this is the step up from Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate. This is a critical step for many learners, and handled badly, it can lead to them becoming demotivated, and even abandoning their studies. Learners abandoning English is a highly undesirable outcome. But as we saw at the beginning of this blog, neither changing publishers to repeat at the same level nor repeating at the intermediate level with the same coursebook, are very adequate solutions. Just as inadequate is the strategy of pushing Intermediate learners into an Upper-Intermediate class and hoping they’ll survive if we give them enough support. The fact is that if we are really going to ‘Mind The Gap’ that Intermediate students face, what is needed is an Intermediate Plus coursebook. This will be a coursebook that: a) is from the same publisher as the book the group used at intermediate level, but that: b) tackles material from this level in fresh and engaging ways. This is precisely why OUP and authors Christina Latham-Koenig and Clive Oxenden have created English File Intermediate Plus. In my webinar on 20th February I’ll be looking at this especially in terms of grammar, vocabulary, listening and speaking, four key areas for learners hoping to progress to Upper-Intermediate.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Professional Development Tagged: Adult courses, Adult Learners, CEFR, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Coursebooks, ELT, English File, English File third edition, Intermediate Plus, Intermediate students, Language learning, Robin Walker, Webinar

Advertising is one of the most favored modes of marketing and promotions these days and most often this advertising is complemented by visuals and designs. These visuals are also known as graphics and you would barely find any product or advertisement without any Graphic Design element on it. It is said that business without advertising is a letter without address, in the same way, it can also be added that advertising is incomplete without graphic designing. Considering the requirement of graphics in advertising a number of Graphic Design Schools are offering diplomas and graduate programs to the students. This Programs on Graphic Designing paves a way for successful career for the youngsters in the field of design. If you are creative and techsavvy, graphic designing would be a riveting profession for you. However, it is not a cakewalk to be a graphic designer and if you are already thinking that a training of month or two in graphic designing will do wonders for you, you might be mistaken. The road to become a graphic designer involves lots of hard work and always requires freshness in your mind so that every time you can come up with an innovative idea to add sparkle to your work. Just imagine a situation, where you see all the similar advertisements, logos and packaging for every product available in the market, you will definitely reach in a world of monotony. In the same fashion the very first expectation from a graphic designer is to be creative in order to present new concept. Only creativity does not help in achieving the target, the most crucial element is to acquire quality training; a student should choose a reputed School of Graphic Designing for getting the understanding of the industry. In a good college the focus is always on making a student learn new aspects of the industry he is going to enter in. While choosing a Graphic Design School take care of the fact that industry exposure during studies is quintessential, as that gives students an understanding of the market and design industry as a whole. You would get to know the list of careers that would open for you after completing the course.

Today’s question for the Q: Skills for Success authors: Would it help if I taught phonetics symbols in the mother tongue? Tamara Jones responds. Do you have a question about teaching English for Academic Purposes that you’d like to ask our Q author team? Comment below or email your question to qskills@oup.com. Related articles #qskills - How can I teach a class where there is a huge gap in language proficiency among the students? #qskills - When should L1 be used in class? #qskills - Why are the four skills normally divided into listening & speaking and reading & writing? #qskills - How can I get my students to use smart devices in the classroom? #qskills - Do you have any advice for teaching technical English? #qskills - How do I motivate my students to speak English instead of their native language in class? Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Skills Tagged: Adult Learners, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, English Language, First language, Language proficiency, Mother tongue, Phonetics, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors, Tamara Jones

Collecting and manipulating data and personal information had become a part time job for many fraudsters. They would stop at nothing to get ones personal information and their scams are quite clever. Dummy or false companies may be created by fraudsters to act like existing seller with a similar name. They then sell securities in the dummy company by confusing the buyer/viewer into thinking that they are the real deal. Security frauds can be avoided by making sure that all your information is intact and safe even when online. Make yourself aware of scams and security frauds that take place while doing online transactions. Here are 5 ways by which you can prevent security frauds on your own: 1. Protect your information   Unless you are really going to buy something online, avoid giving your personal information like your phone numbers, credit or debit card numbers, and social security numbers and so on. 2. Do not respond to unknown mails Avoid responding to unknown mails as they can be fraud. They also become vary of your valid e-mail address and can use it for further illegal use. 3. Verify the seller and method of payment While shopping online, check whether the online store really exists and is licensed. Also, if the online seller or company has a physical address that you can contact to. While making an online payment, check if the payment site is secured and verified. Make sure that the costs are the same; while ordering and at the time of payment. Post payment, you should receive a mail from the seller. Also, it is important to inquire if there is a warranty - guaranty on your purchased item. 4. Do not fall for high pressure sales Fraudsters demand you to make a purchase in time and under pressure. These links are usually illegal. They rarely give you time to re-think of your purchase. Do not fall prey to such security frauds. 5. Credit card payments It is always safer and better to pay by a credit card rather than debit cards or online transfers. You can always cancel the charges in case there is something wrong with the product or if the seller suddenly vanishes. Plus, you need to give lesser information for a credit card payment. There are also various online software’s and applications that can safeguard your personal information while doing online transactions. As per the maker and the company, they may be free of cost or charged. These alls secure all your online connections and links. They act as an anti - virus and prevent online threats. Latest versions provide a fast online cloud scanning and help in further performance and efficiency of your computer. Some free apps to prevent security frauds: 1. Free Lifelock wallet app 2. Webroot security and Antivirus 3. Kaspersky Internet Security 4. Comodo Internet Security 5. Roboscan Internet Security 6. AVG Internet Security 2014

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week’s blog is in response to Shreya Kakkar’s tweet about getting students to speak. There’s a change of plan in this week’s blog from Professional Development Services. This week, we are responding to Shreya’s challenge for getting students to speak by referring our readers to the blog, Teachers tell us about their classroom speaking challenges. This blog is based on a survey of over 500 teachers and students giving their top speaking challenges. Responses to the challenges will be shared on this blog from January to April, so be sure to look out for further articles about speaking challenges. Also, be sure to read Gareth Davies’ blog, How do I stop students from using their mother tongue? for more on getting your students speaking in English. Invitation to share your ideas Have you got an EFL problem that you’d like for us to address? The best way to let us know is by leaving a comment below or on the Solving your difficulties as an EFL teacher - #EFLproblems blog post. We will respond to your challenges in a blog every two weeks. Most blogs will be followed by a live Facebook chat to discuss the challenge answered in the blog. Be sure to Like our Facebook page to be reminded about the upcoming live chats. Related Articles #EFLproblems - Teaching the over 50s #EFLproblems - Teaching Monolingual Classes #EFLproblems - Learners noticing and correcting their own mistakes #EFLproblems - Learning English Beyond the Exams Filed under: Professional Development, Skills Tagged: #EFLproblems, Adult Learners, EFL, Language learning, Professional Development, Speaking in English, Speaking skills, Stacey Hughes, Teaching problems

One of the most important factors of establishing a company or business is the defining logo but, as a graphic designer will tell you, creating a logo that is both unique and functional is not as easy as many would have you think. These are the most common mistakes made by web designers when creating logos: Chaotic typography As anyone in the graphic design industry will tell you, typography really can make or break a logo. It needs to be kept simple without compromising on the intended message - don’t use too many fonts or weights; don’t use odd or ultra thin fonts; don’t space the letters too far apart or too close together. Poor font For many graphic designers, choosing a font for a logo can take as long as creating to logo itself - as mentioned above, it can make or break your design. Each font has its own ‘personality’, so you need to ensure that you choose one that gels with the intended message of your business.Choose a font which is simple and clear. Too complex or too abstract   It has long been known in the graphic design industry that simple is always more memorable (as people are able to recognize it easier). The best way to ensure that your logo isn’t too complex or abstract, you should check whether it works on a postage stamp and on a billboard. Monogram Many graphic designers think that, by creating a monogram out of businesses’ initials , they are going to create a better logo. This is false, as it is actually much harder to make your business credible or convey a particular message with only a few letters. A monogram is something that happens much later on, after a company is well known. You can create a pictory as a logo; which defines your business. Visual clichés When a graphic designer uses light bulbs to represent ‘ideas’, speech bubbles to simulate ‘discussion’, and flourishes to portray ‘creativity’ or ‘dynamism’, you really are not being unique. Everyone uses these symbols and images, so try thinking outside of the box. There are, of course, plenty of other mistakes made by graphic designers when it comes to creating a logo, but these are, by far, the most common. Having a logo that is unique and memorable is all-important for many companies and businesses, so a website designer needs to take all the proper measures to avoid mistakes that could compromise this.

Pete Sharma shares some thoughts on mobile learning in Business English ahead of his webinar on 28th February entitled Apps, e-books and digital resources for Business English. I’m teaching two groups of students this month. They are mostly young adults, from China. As I gaze round the classroom looking at my students, I’m struck by how many of them have a smartphone. Some have tablets. They seem to have these devices in their hands all the time - sometimes checking new words, sometimes using the Internet to look something up. Sometimes, they are ‘on-task’, but more often than not, they are multi-tasking, updating their Facebook page or text-chatting with a friend - and certainly not in English! Mobile phones have been described as a ‘disruptive technology’. If a phone rings in the classroom, the lesson is disrupted. One teacher in Brazil told me recently that mobile phones were banned by law from being used his school, in his state. Last year, I visited a college in India where the following sign is displayed in each classroom: "No mobiles!" Yet it is clear that such devices have benefits, and certainly for Business English students who often travel a lot, usually with a smartphone, tablet or laptop… or even all three! What then are the benefits of mobile learning for Business English students? What are the drawbacks? In my webinar, I’ll first focus on apps. There are apps for just about everything, and we’ll look at some that are especially helpful for Business English students. These include apps which are good for vocabulary development, as well as apps for developing language skills such as speaking, listening and reading. Then, we’ll look at how using e-books can add new dimensions to language learning. I’ll be demonstrating this with a popular title from the Express Series, English for Presentations. Finally, I’ll be focussing on some of the many technologies and digital resources which can be used by Business English teachers, including VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments). I’ll argue that, providing we start from the ‘pedagogy’, there’s plenty that technology can offer to enhance our teaching. I hope you can join me. Sign up for Pete’s webinar on 28th February now.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Business & English for Specific Purposes, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: Apps, Business English, E-books, elearning, English for Presentations, Express series, mlearning, Mobile learning, Pete Sharma, Smartphones, Tablet devices, Virtual Learning Environment, Webinar

The key to successful time management is planning and then protecting the planned time. Time management starts with the commitment to change. Time management is easy as long as you commit to action. Here are a few time management techniques, tools and tips: Find out where you’re wasting time. Many of us are prey to time-wasters that steal time we could be using much more productively. What are your time-bandits? Do you spend too much time ‘Net surfing, reading email, or making personal calls? Maintain a to-do list Create a to-do list and make it a habit to continually update it. Include urgent and non-urgent items so you’ll never forget or overlook anything again. Carry your list with you at all times, either in your iPhone or your daily agenda. Also, be sure to break down your projects and assignments into specific action points. Schedule it Try scheduling each to-do on your calendar as per your work. Commit a lump of time on a specific day to each item on your list and you will be amazed at how quickly you get it all done. 30 Seconds or less Not all to-do lists are created equal nor do they all take the same amount of time. Some items can be completed very quickly. When a to-do crosses your desk, ask if it can be completed in 30 seconds or less. If so, just go ahead, do it, and get it over with just one less thing to have to worry about later! Set and respect deadlines Be realistic about setting deadlines and strive to meet them. It’s true that any task takes the exact amount of time allotted to it. Although we tend to get a lot done when we’re under pressure, it is a lot less stressful and considerably more professional to establish and stick to an action plan. Write It Down If your mind can’t seem to settle down, and you keep thinking of the million OTHER things that you have to do, keep a pad of paper on your desk and write down each of these to-dos’s as they occur to you. Emptying them out of your head will allow you to stay focused on the task at hand, without fear of forgetting something important. Get organized Organize your desk, your hard-copy and computer files and your e-mail folders so you can find things easily. Far too much time is wasted searching for lost information. Some people have a hard time staying focused because the piles and stacks distract them from the task at hand. Avoid disruptions If you have a door, close it occasionally. Having an "open-door policy" for your staff is self-defeating if you don’t have the time to really listen to their questions and concerns. Technology help Technology makes it easy to work wherever you are; your tablet or smartphone will help you stay connected. You can also add alarms and make notes so that your time table is more efficient.

Nick Thorner explores the challenges of preparing Foundation-level students for IELTS, ahead of his webinars on 21 February and 7 March entitled ‘Prepare your Foundation-level students for IELTS success‘. In my experience, what really worries students about the IELTS exam isn’t their grammar or their vocabulary - it’s having nothing to say. They worry about tricky Speaking Part 3 questions such as: ‘What can governments do to promote international cooperation?’ or Writing Part 2 topics with a word they haven’t studied before, such as ‘obesity’ or ‘rehabilitation’. Often students have never thought of such questions and topics, and even if they have, they’ve never tried to discuss them in English. And of course their IELTS score suffers as a result: I find that when students are less confident or don’t have great ideas their pronunciation becomes flat and they start hesitating or repeating ideas. The fact is that knowledge itself, or at least the confidence that comes with having it, underpins a successful IELTS performance. But do we teach students knowledge, or even how to access knowledge and express it? I think too often the texts and materials we work with have arcane topics that don’t challenge our students to think, respond or engage personally. IELTS lessons should be a window on the world that will fill students’ minds with ideas and provoke them to respond at every turn, making them confident and enthusiastic candidates. In my upcoming webinar, I’ll be showing you how you can help your students to build the confidence they need to express world knowledge and discuss it. I hope you can join me. Nick Thorner is co-author of Foundation IELTS Masterclass. He lives and works in Oxford, where he has been teaching IELTS courses for several years. He is also an experienced IELTS examiner.Filed under: Exams & Testing Tagged: Exams, Foundation IELTS, Foundation-level, IELTS, Low-level, Nick Thorner, Speaking skills, Webinar, Writing skills

It’s important to monitor how many links you’re generating because you can cross-reference that information against improvements in ranking to estimate how much effort your SEO push is going to take. You can monitor how many backlinks you currently have using a variety of tools. Below is a range of options - from simple and fast to complex and expensive: • Search Google for "www.yourdomainname.com" (FREE). Google will display all the pages it can find that contain "www.yourdomainname.com". Normally this indicates a link to your site, most which will be ‘follow’ links. This is the quickest and easiest way to check, but it’s not the best for analysis. • Use Google Webmaster Tools (FREE). Go to Links > Pages with external links. This will itemize which pages are actually the target of backlinks, and will tell you how many links each page has, plus a total for all pages. • Use LinkDiagnosis (FREE). This tool takes a while to run, but it’s worth the wait. For serious backlink checking, this is definitely my pick. It reports a lot of information about each link (including the PageRank of the linking site, the anchor text used, whether the link is nofollow), your most popular pages, and the most popular anchor text. It doesn’t report the actual total number of links, because if it encounters a site-wide link, it only counts it as one link (which is pretty much what the search engines do anyway). • Or, if you’re really serious, you could subscribe for a SEOmoz membership (USD $79 per month) and get full access to Linkscape. Amongst its reports is a detailed list of URLs linking to your page or domain, ordered by their relative importance. It also provides complete lists of anchor text used by those links, including distribution of terms and relative popularity.

Sarah Philpot, Headway Academic Skills co-author, discusses the issue of addressing academic needs as early as possible in language learning. You can join Sarah for her upcoming webinar "Integrating academic study skills from A1" on 18th February. During my 30-year teaching career I have, like many of you, no doubt, taught, a range of different class types: General English, English for Exams, IELTS, Business English, English for Medics, English for Academic Purposes, etc. Obviously, during those years, a lot of things have changed. Typically in the past, adult students would do General English until they reached a certain level of competence, around B1, at which point many of them would chose a ‘special’ course to help them in their work or studies. This would entail learning different and new lexis, functions and skills. However, with English being more and more a core requisite for Higher Education and for work in multinational and trans-national companies, young adult students in particular realise that they need not only a level of linguistic competence, but also the appropriate academic or professional competencies too, and as early as possible. To a large extent, people wishing to enter the corporate world are already catered for - just look at the number of Business English course books, beginner to advanced, that are available. So, it struck me as rather strange that those with academic needs were not similarly provided for, and that those students would have to return to the old pattern. This is where the Headway Academic Skills series came in. It seemed logical, not to say fair, that students planning to go into higher education should also be in a position to learn the appropriate lexis, functions, etc. at the same time as they are learning the difference between the present simple and present continuous! In my webinar, I hope to show why this integrated approach is being adopted, and how we can do it. I will be drawing on material from Headway Academic Skills Introductory Level (A0/A1), and will be looking specifically at the importance of: context task type lexis register in making a course more relevant to students who wish to continue their studies in an English-medium college or university. Sign up for Sarah’s webinar on 18th February now.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Skills Tagged: Academic skills, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, Headway Academic Skills, Higher education, Linguistic competence, Sarah Philpot, Teaching beginners, Webinar

Content marketing has taken many companies by storm and has given their marketing strategy quite a twist. Creating a content marketing strategy may sounds simple - create necessary content, post it online and watch your website viewer’s numbers and leads grow. Sadly, E commerce retailers find executing an inbound marketing strategy can be nerve-wracking.  E commerce retailers use a wide variety of content assets that include ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, info graphics, videos, checklists, case studies, templates and more. The secret lies in a list of free tools that these retailers can depend on to market their content and create a professional-looking product page. 1) Pocket Pocket helps people save their articles, videos and more from the web for later use. Pocket helps Content marketing as is easy to use as, you can pile content on your smartphone, start reading it on your tablet, and finish it up on your desktop or laptop computer. Once done, all you have to do is just tap the "Read" button. 2) Trendhunter Trendhunter is a website that helps Ecommerce retailers as it provides crowd sourced customer insights on the hottest trends across a range of industries, from fashion, culture and design, to tech, business and eco. For content marketing, you can find articles, blogs, and links to websites with new products, breaking news and more. 3) Alltop Alltop is a site which has answers to all the questions that you can think of. Alltop imports the stories of the topmost content websites and blogs for any given topic and displays the headlines of the five most recent stories. In short, Alltop is an information filter. 4) Übersuggest To be seen online, great content should be optimized for the long tail keywords that your onlookers is using, but ever since Google decided to encrypt keyword data, getting insight into those keywords has grown more difficult. Übersuggest takes your base term, add a letter or a digit in front of it, and extracts suggestions for it. With this free keyword tool you can instantly get thousands of keyword ideas from real user queries. 5) Slide share If you want to create a presentation or a webinar, Slideshare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations, and my go-to source for great ideas. Once your content marketing presentation is ready, load it onto Slideshare and you can share it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or embed it in your blog or company website to get more viewers.