Pete Sharma explores some of the different Virtual Learning Environments suitable for Business English teachers. A colleague recently asked me: "Which VLE should I use with my Business English students?" This started me thinking that there are, in fact, many ways to support the work that teachers do in the classroom. In this post, I’ll take a look at some of these exciting options. At one end of the spectrum is using a full-scale Virtual Learning Environment. This is a password-protected area on the internet which is used to store and deliver digital materials such as texts, interactive activities, audio, video and links to websites. A VLE is often called an LMS (Learning Management System) or CMS (Content Management System), and contains communication tools. For example, a teacher can post a message to a forum for students to answer in their own time (asynchronous communication), or use instant messaging (synchronous communication). Two well-known VLEs used by universities are Moodle and Blackboard. Such platforms have a large number of features, such as ‘quiz-makers’. Creative teachers can make their own digital materials with authoring software such as Hot Potatoes, and upload these to the platform. On my last course, I used the website Edmodo, which is free and easy to join. It is easy to use and allows you to communicate with your students between classes, and post links to websites and other teaching materials you wish them to look at. This was perfectly adequate for this particular course and group of students. It is important to remember that a VLE is empty until you add material. Let’s look at a different option. Many course books have an access code at the back, allowing access to publisher-produced materials on a web-based platform. Students can download audio files, or do online interactive exercises. Tracking tools allow teachers (and training managers!) to see which exercises students have worked on, and how much time they have spent on each one. There are other options. Some of my colleagues use Dropbox to share materials. Teachers running writing courses sometimes start a class wiki. A wiki is a website containing editable pages, so students can collaborate on a piece of writing. There is a lot of choice, and it is important to support your course with something which works for you.  Maybe you want to offer your students 24/7 access to their digital materials, or perhaps you want to create material yourself. Whatever you decide, it is impossible for me to imagine a course which is simply ‘done in the classroom’, without being able to provide autonomous learning opportunities outside class, too. And busy Business English students, who often travel, will appreciate this course enrichment more than most.Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: Blackboard, Business English, CMS, Content Management System, Edmodo, EdTech, elearning, Learning Management System, LMS, Moodle, Virtual Learning Environment, VLE

This week I have been playing around with Zondle  and I have to say I am very impressed. Once I have had time to create some games, I will definitely be using it in my teaching. First up, any app which describes itself as "free, and always will be" is off to a good start on securing my vote. Zondle allows teachers to easily create games to support learning. You can also access many games created by other teachers or purchase games and resources from the extras marketplace. It is extremely quick and easy to use. Students can be added in several ways; adding them manually, issuing a course code or emailing an Excel file to Zondle. Creating games is also quick and easy but I think you can get to using it straight away by using some of the games created by others. Zondle plays extremely well with other services and can be easily embedded into a website or a page on a VLE. There are also apps available for both apple and android which is fantastic for fostering student engagement, not to mention how useable it becomes in a school with a 1:1 or BYOD policy. I can't wait to have a play around with it but first I have to learn how to use and develop our VLE. Why is the stuff you pay for always more difficult to use? This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Today’s question for the Q: Skills for Success authors: Is it better to create your own materials or use existing materials? Colin Ward responds. We are no longer taking questions. Thank you to everyone who contacted us! Look out for more responses by the Q authors in the coming weeks, or check out the answers that we’ve posted already in our Questions for Q authors playlist. Related articles #qskills - How do I manage disruptive behaviour in class? #qskills - How can I help students that have a hard time learning the language? #qskills - How would you answer Krashen’s assertion that teaching EAP is a "waste of time"? #qskills - What can I do to improve my relationship with difficult students who do not like to study English? #qskills - Could you recommend useful tips for teaching writing skills? #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, Colin Ward, Course materials, Creating your own materials, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, English Language, Language learning, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors, Teacher-created materials

This is a guest post by Stas Ustimenko from Code Lobster. Free Tech for Schools has not received any payment for this post. Free PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript editor (IDE) - Codelobster PHP Edition For valuable work on creation of sites you need a good comfortable editor necessarily. There are many requiring paid products for this purpose, but Codelobster PHP Edition is free. Let us consider some important possibilities and advantages of this program: All code highlights depending on a type so mixed code is supported. The area of HTML will be highlighted as HTML, PHP as PHP, and Javascript as Javascript in the same file. There is  also the possibility of choice from colour schemes, including popular IDEs. Powerful autocompletion for HTML, PHP, CSS and Javascript, including HTML5 and CSS3. For PHP the structure of project is fully recognized, and the complete list of methods falls out in the proper places. HTML/CSS inspector on the type of Firebug, which allows easily to correlate the selected elements of page with a code and proper style. Context help on all supported languages. By pressing the F1 key the page with detailed description for current tag, attribute or function will be opened. PHP debugger. PHP debugger allows you to execute PHP scripts incrementally, watching the values of all variables in every line. SQL manager allows you to produce all necessary actions with a database - to add, delete, edit a structure and records in tables, to export data, execute SQL queries. Highlighting and autocompletion works for SQL files also. Support of FTP allows you to work straight with a remote server and to do all necessary changes with files; The portable option allows you to use editor without the preliminary installation. Other useful utilities include pair highlighting, possibility of blocks selection, collapsing, tooltips, navigation on descriptions of functions and included files by holding the control key, viewing of structure of files and  the project, preview in a browser, book-marks, and all other standard possibilities for work with a code. Also there are special plugins for work with CMS: Drupal, Joomla PHP frameworks: CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Yii JavaScript libraly: JQuery WordPress blogging engine Smarty template engine DeveloperCodelobster Software Web Sitehttp://www.codelobster.com/ LanguageEnglish, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese Supported OSWindows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 Download link: Free PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript editor (IDE) - Codelobster PHP Edition This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Image courtesy of Heisenberg Media via Flickr Mohamed El-Ashiry takes a look at four online tools that have helped him deliver high-quality feedback to his students. Upon introducing tablets into my classroom, the biggest gains I have received have been in assessment and feedback. In my experience, ICT tools facilitate the process of giving timely, relevant and effective feedback to my students. Brown & Bull (1997) argued that feedback is: … most effective when it is timely, perceived as relevant, meaningful and encouraging, and offers suggestions for improvement that are within a student’s grasp." Black & William (1999) wrote that: … improving learning through assessment depends on five, deceptively simple, key factors: the provision of effective feedback to pupils; the active involvement of pupils in their own learning; adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment; a recognition of the profound influence assessment has on the motivation ​and self-esteem of pupils, both of which are crucial influences on learning; the need for pupils to be able to assess themselves and understand how to ​improve." I use a variety of ICT tools in my classroom, all of which the students can access from their tablets or mobile devices. I will introduce the four main tools I use and explain ways in which they have facilitated assessment and, more importantly, giving feedback in my classroom. 1. Socrative Socrative is an immediate student-response system, where students access the teacher’s ‘room’ using the ‘room number’ and the teacher can push out multiple choice questions, true/false questions, or short-answer questions. The teacher can also assign full quizzes and exit tickets. I have found that when using Socrative, projecting my screen to the students makes it even more beneficial, as they can see the statistics and class responses that are shown on my screen. For example, when asking a short answer question, students can see all responses being submitted, which I then use as a basis for an evaluation exercise: students look at all submitted responses and vote on the best ones, whilst giving reasons why. This is a very useful literacy-building exercise and I use it to show model answers and what makes a well-structured written response. This process enables me to give immediate feedback to the students, and actively involves them in the process. My favorite feature of Socrative is definitely the ‘Exit Tickets’ though, as that gives me an immediate pulse-check of the class’s learning, which I can then immediately use to adjust my teaching for the next lesson. 2. Edmodo’s ‘Quiz’ feature Edmodo is a class learning management system (LMS) that is designed for schools but still looks a lot like Facebook (which engages students more due to its familiarity). I have often created quizzes and polls on Edmodo. When using the ‘Quiz’ feature with my students, Edmodo allows you to show them the answer key once they have submitted their responses. Students also immediately get their score on the quiz. This automatically gives the students timely and relevant feedback, as the assessment has only just been concluded and is still fresh in their minds. I also project the statistics Edmodo compiles for me in front of the class, and we discuss those statistics to highlight strengths and areas for improvement. 3. Google forms (& Flubaroo) I wrote before about how I use Google Forms in my classroom. I often use the "Flubaroo" script whenever I create a quiz or test using Google Forms. Flubaroo automatically grades the quiz once the students submit their responses, and can also email them their score, a copy of their responses, and the answer key. I then project the spreadsheet of the student responses in front of the class and we discuss the most well-constructed answers. This is another example of how an ICT tool such as Google Forms has enabled me to deliver timely and immediate feedback on my students’ assessments. 4. Evernote shared notebooks I published a blog post before about how I use Evernote in my classroom. As I have a ‘Premium’ account with Evernote, I can create notebooks for my students that we can all edit and contribute to, even if the students only have a ‘Free’ account. I have benefited immensely from this feature, as I created a set of notebooks for my history class where the students would do all their work. I would then be able to add voice notes with my verbal feedback or even annotated rubrics/checklists for the assessments. I have noticed that most of the talk about eLearning and tablets in classrooms revolves around engaging students more with learning and encouraging them to create multiple things. While these are very valid benefits of introducing ICT tools into the classroom, I personally believe the biggest benefit can come from how these ICT tools can facilitate the process of assessing student learning as well as delivering timely and meaningful feedback to the students on their learning. References: Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1999). Assessment for Learning: Beyond the Black Box, Assessment Reform Group, University of Cambridge, School of Education Brown, G., Bull, J., & Pendlebury, M. (1997). Assessing student learning in higher education. London: Routledge.Filed under: Exams & Testing, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: Assessment, Edmodo, eFeedback, elearning, Evernote, Feedback, Flubaroo, Google Forms, ICT, Immediate feedback, Learning Management System, Literacy, LMS, mlearning, Socrative

Yes, I just said that in the title. I am very obviously well into my 30s now that I would even consider saying that a calculator is fun but I just can't help it. A few days ago, one of my students, after going through the usual ritual of being told off for not bringing his calculator to a Physics lesson, asked if he could use  the calculator on his iphone. Assuming that he would use the iphone for non-learning related means, I lingered nearby. I soon noticed that he appeared to be drawing on the screen and I pounced in, ready to give him a good telling off mid-way through his status update or non-school related use of free tech  that us grown ups have yet to discover. Myscript lets you do calculations by writing the numbers with your hand. It then converts the numbers into print like shown above with remarkable accuracy and speed. So fast in fact that I wasn't able to capture the handwriting aspect with a screen shot on my Sony Xperia P . It also lets you solve simple algebraic expressions. In the photo above, I actually traced with my finger, ? +2 =5. In the photo, the question mark has disappeared soon to be replaced with a 3, solving the equation. I really need to ask my students what apps they are using more often. This was a great discovery and is available on both apple and android. I hope you enjoy this incredibly fun calculator. I'm off to water my tomato plants and contemplate my 30s whilst listening to some techno and house from my mis-spent 20s. Note: There is one Amazon affiliate link and 2 non-affiliate links on this page. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week, Verissimo Toste responds to Ageliki Asteri’s Facebook comment about motivating Intermediate students. Ageliki wrote: How can I motivate a teen advanced level student to do better as this level is demanding to achieve a certificate and the students is ok with his intermediate plateau?" This is probably a situation familiar to many teachers and my first consideration is to question why the student is satisfied with their intermediate level. If a student is in a class at upper-intermediate to advanced level, it is because that student has goals he or she wants to achieve. Tapping into these goals, and into that motivation, will enable teachers to help these students. Set goals I would suggest that first we need to make such students aware of what they still need to achieve. This could be in the form of informal quizzes or simple self-awareness. From this awareness, students should be encouraged to set goals for both language and skills development. Depending on the age of the students, I would make the goals short term so that students can feel they are progressing. This should give them confidence to set new goals and work to achieve them. Focus on using the language Students may feel they know the language, even about the language, but can they use it to communicate real information about themselves and their world? While expanding their knowledge of language, including revision of what they have already learned, encourage them to use it. It is one thing to be able to understand the present perfect, even to manipulate the different forms, but it is quite another to be able to use it to talk about life experiences and achievements. Whenever I ask my students to talk about what they feel they have achieved in their lives, even those who are able to communicate this, do so without using the present perfect tense. They are usually surprised when I tell them and make an added effort to use it next time. Writing tasks in which they share their work, or freer speaking activities – like discussions, simulations, or debates – challenge students to use the language they have learned. Encourage students to be both more fluent and more accurate when using the language. Challenge them to be better I set up a class library in a class of about 25 Intermediate students with the aim of providing them with more contact with English through extensive reading. I did not test their reading, but often discussed how they were enjoying their books. They seemed very satisfied. I could have left it at that but I knew the readers series I was using was accompanied by a series of quizzes to test reading level. I told my students about this and asked if they wanted to take the quiz to see what their reading level was. They all agreed. I gave them the quiz, but before returning their scores, I asked each to write in their notebooks what mark they would be satisfied with as a percentage. 19 students out of the 25 received marks below what they expected. They were all high marks and, in general, they were very good readers. However, the quizzes showed them they were not really understanding (and enjoying) as much as they could. Equally important, they were not taking advantage of their reading to learn more. This simple activity was enough for those students to come out of their intermediate complacency and work to improve. Encourage independent learning Many times students simply rely on the opinion of the teacher for how well they are doing. Too many times this attitude also includes passing the responsibility to the teacher for the whole class. However, it is important to encourage students to become independent learners. Develop in your students the capacity to monitor their own language. Did they say what they wanted to say? Or did they avoid certain topics because they didn’t have the language? Encourage them to notice the kinds of mistakes they may be making. Are they mistakes they could correct themselves, but have left it for the teacher to do so? As I have mentioned before, challenge them to be accurate, as well as fluent. Help them notice the difference between the English they use and the English of more advanced learners. At times, give them work that is well above their level. If students are studying for an exam, give them a mock exam at the beginning of the year. Let them see what they will be working towards in their English classes. Invitation to share your ideas Do you have anything to add on the subject of motivating Intermediate students? We’d love to hear from you! You can respond directly to this blog by leaving a comment below. Please keep your challenges coming. The best way to let us know is by leaving a comment below or on the EFLproblems blog post. We will respond to your challenges in a blog every two weeks.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: #EFLproblems, EFL, Fluency, Goal setting, Intermediate students, Language learning, Learner autonomy, Learning goals, Motivation, Professional Development, Teaching problems, Verissimo Toste

Simple booklet is an outstanding website for creating high quality  web leaflets and sliders. I have been using the free version although there is a paid version and also a teacher account for $10 which includes 30 free student accounts. I have found the free version to be perfect for my needs so far. Simple booklet integrates extremely well with a Google Account or Google apps account and when you go to sign up it gives you the option of logging in with either. You can also use a Facebook or Yahoo account or create a separate account. Once you have logged in, you are creating booklets with a couple of clicks. There are a range of format options and the editor is simple to use. This is an exceptional tool for learning and students can quickly become producers of detailed well presented content. Teachers could also use of this to produce high quality revision materials and the school marketing team could use make excellent use of it for putting rich media on websites and across social networks. The integration with Google apps makes the integration of this piece of technology even easier. Rather than carry on talking about it, it is probably more useful for you to see it in action so I am going to create this post in Simple Booklet (after I have proofread it first) and then I will embed it below. Below the embedded booklet, I will write the time taken to create the booklet from logging in to completion. simplebooklet.com 6 minutes and 12 seconds. It is quite a basic booklet but I think it demonstrates the usefulness of this tool. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Diana Lea is editor of the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English (OLDAE), published in January this year. In this article, she looks at what academic vocabulary is and how it differs from general English vocabulary. Diana will be speaking about the OLDAE at IATEFL 2014 on Wednesday 2nd April. Is academic vocabulary fundamentally different from general English vocabulary? In creating the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English (OLDAE), we were compelled to think very carefully about this question in order to decide what should and should not be covered in such a dictionary. Fortunately, other researchers had already put in a lot of work in this area. Our starting point was the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000), which will be familiar to most teachers of EAP: 570 word families that will account for roughly 10% of most written academic texts. But these words are all included - and marked - in learners’ dictionaries already. What more is needed? A word list is a useful tool for setting targets and monitoring progress, as students can tick off words that they ‘know’ - but it does not actually teach. What does it mean to ‘know’ a word? In the first instance, obviously, you need to know what it means. For some words this will be relatively easy, because they carry roughly the same meaning in most contexts, for example achieve. Other words have a number of different meanings; many of these may be related to each other, but used in slightly different ways (e.g. capital). Yet other words have a quite specific meaning in a particular area of study: consider the use of the words variable and significant in the context of statistics. It is fair to say that academic writing generally takes a more precise and nuanced approach to meaning than much of the speech and writing that we encounter day to day. To understand academic vocabulary in context, students will benefit from an account of these words that is based on genuine academic usage, not general usage. That means a corpus of academic English. The 85-million-word Oxford Corpus of Academic English contains undergraduate textbooks and academic journals drawn from a range of disciplines across the four main subject areas of physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Analysis of this corpus enabled lexicographers to give a precise and nuanced account of the meaning and use of words in academic writing. For there is more to knowing a word than just knowing what it means: if students are to use a word correctly and effectively in their writing, they need to know how it behaves in context and how it combines with other words. As one teacher we interviewed said of her own students, ‘They know many words in isolation, but usage they find difficult.’ A complete account of a word in a learner’s dictionary of academic English needs to cover its meaning - or meanings - its grammar, any prepositions or grammatical structures it commonly combines with, any peculiarities of usage in particular disciplines, useful synonyms, and - for the most important words - lists of collocations in different grammatical relations. And all these points need to be supported by example sentences that are clear, illustrate the points well, and are based on authentic academic texts. The entry for cycle only includes the meanings that are important in academic writing. This enables the academic meanings to be treated in more detail. A more precise meaning that is particular to biology is identified in a ‘HELP’ note. Cross-references indicate entries for compound words with their own precise definitions. The example sentences show genuine academic usage, based on the texts in the Oxford Corpus of Academic English. Complementation patterns with prepositions or other words are clearly signposted before the examples that illustrate them. Collocations and common phrases are shown and exemplified in a special section of the entry. Academic vocabulary is the vocabulary needed to write clear, appropriate academic texts. It includes, on the one hand, a lot of ordinary general vocabulary - but transposed to an academic context. At the other extreme, there is specialist subject vocabulary. This differs between different academic disciplines and can be highly technical; typically, students will need to learn these words as part of their subject studies, whether or not they are also learners of English. In between these two extremes is the ‘general academic’ or ‘subtechnical’ vocabulary represented by the AWL. The OLDAE covers the AWL, plus all the general vocabulary needed for defining it, plus the synonyms, opposites and collocates of all these words. A word list is a useful starting point but a dictionary sets the words in context and enables students to use them effectively in their own writing. Reference Coxhead, A. (2000). ‘A New Academic Word List’, TESOL Quarterly, 34(2): 213-238. See also http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/ Related articles #IATEFL - Adult Learners: helping them clear the next hurdle #IATEFL - Teaching and learning EAP: "What is EAP and how can I teach it?" Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Dictionaries & Reference, IATEFL Tagged: Academic English, Academic Word List, Authentic texts, AWL, Corpus, Diana Lea, Dictionaries, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, IATEFL, OLDAE, Oxford Corpus of Academic English, Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English

This is a guest post by Dubier, an international school teacher in Sweden. Originally posted at http://iteachwithit.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-use-of-it/ I have been lucky to work at a school that has given me the opportunity to use IT products to develop my teaching. My school has contributed an iMac and an Apple TV . I have a private iPad and Macbook pro that I use as well. As I wrote in my documentation of My flip a few months ago, the iMac was only used when students did not have access to the internet at home. They used it to listen to audio files and also to watch the vodcasts. The beauty of having an Apple TV in the classroom is that you can easily connect it to a projector which in turn is connected wirelessly to the iMac. This was awfully handy if there were more in the class who had not had the internet at home or something else had happened so that they could not see the vodcasts. They could then sit together in front of the projector screen and take notes, while the others were working with the exercises that they needed to finish. Obviously this was not optimal and doesn’t exactly follow the Flip concept, but as a teacher it is important to be flexible and be prepared for all kinds of obstacles that can get in the way. More info about apple tv you can find at http://www.apple.com/se/appletv/airplay/ I have also used the ipad to connect to Apple TV many times. I used it the most as whiteboard. It happens some times that the students have the same questions and I have to explain the same thing for several students during the same lesson. Instead of wasting time explaining to every student separately, I connect the ipad to the projector through the Apple TV and answered the questions immediately. A small mini-review you might say. The Whiteboard app that I use is Doceri (http://doceri.com). Try it out and tell me later what you think. There are many different apps available but Doceri is the app I think is most comfortable to write with. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Rachel Appleby, co-author of two levels of the new International Express (published in January 2014), looks at how to help adult learners to maintain momentum when learning a language. Rachel will be presenting on this topic at IATEFL 2014 on Wednesday 2nd April. Over the years, I’ve made significant efforts to learn Hungarian, and have done reasonably well; however, I can now "do" what I need to do with the language, and I’m very aware that I’m forgetting it, even though I still live in Budapest. I also go through phases of learning Spanish, and try to do a little everyday, such as reading an article I’ve come across that interests me, or putting Spanish radio on while I’m cooking. OK, so I might be keeping the little Spanish I have alive, but I’d be kidding myself if I thought that I was making any real progress in doing these things. Many students I’ve come across tell me similar stories, but they also have other difficulties: time is always the number one hurdle; in addition, some think learning a language is all about doing grammar exercises, which of course they find boring; many claim to be able to learn long lists of words, but then resent their efforts when they find they can’t really use them in conversation. Adults learning a language today characteristically stop and then re-start learning, each time with renewed enthusiasm, yet we all have busy lives! Does this sound like you too? Somehow we expect to make progress, often with minimal effort. Some people claim they are able to keep a language going by reading, or watching films, - perhaps even by having the occasional conversation with a native speaker in that language. But, in fact, all too often we’ve reached a plateau, or perhaps our language use is even getting worse. So what can we do to help our students? I do actually realise that I need to engage my brain and be very focused on what I want to learn if I’m going to make any progress at all, so extensive listening while chopping onions isn’t really going to do the job! But how can we translate this into the classroom? How can we really get students involved, and ensure they make progress? Well, I think we need to be very aware of the difficulties our students are facing, as well as what they’re aiming for; in fact the more we know about them, the better we’ll be at helping them. Adult learners bring a wealth of experiences to class, and in most cases are eager to share those, and have a chance to express their opinions. But they need to be motivated and engaged. So we need to ensure that we give them the scope and range of topics to be fully involved. But we also need to focus on language, and create opportunities to help them understand and relate to new language, and make sure that they practise the language in a meaningful way. In my session at IATEFL Harrogate we’re going find out what it is that makes learning difficult and perhaps prevents learners from getting over the next hurdle. We’ll then be looking at topics and task-types from the new edition of International Express that will engage the learners, provide them with relevant language, and ultimately enable them to communicate effectively and make progress in areas that matter to them. As a start, why not jot down in the comments box below what it is that makes it difficult for YOU, or YOUR learners, to get over the next language hurdle. I’d be really interested to find out, and - you never know - we just might have a solution for you! Let me know! Related articles #IATEFL - What exactly is ‘academic vocabulary’? #IATEFL - Teaching and learning EAP: "What is EAP and how can I teach it?" Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, IATEFL Tagged: Adult Learners, Engagement, IATEFL, International Express, Language learning, Motivation, Rachel Appleby

The Answer Pad is a website/iPad solution I've blogged about before that is great for student assessment.  This is done by having teacher's use the website/interface to create students and classes and then let the students take a test/quiz on their iPad.  The teachers would then get instant real-time results. However, that's just one great feature of The Answer Pad as I was lucky to receive a demo on their latest update called, Go Interactive.  Go Interactive allows students to use their iPad to respond/answer teacher's questions.  Basically, it turns an iPad into an interactive clicker device, where teachers get instant results.  What makes this such a useful feature is the way teachers can assess student's learning by some of the handy ways in which they can respond to a question, such as: yes/no, T/F, text, thumbs up/down, etc etc. This is great for students who are shy and don't want to raise their hands to ask a question.  Now, all they have to do is type in a question on their iPad and a teacher will see who asked it.  Also, this is a great tool to engage students and Guided Learning.  This could be a great tool to use when watching a class video or reading a class story and wanting to get instant feedback.  I can even see this being used as a back channel chat. Some other great features w/ Go Interactive is the ability to use it to answer any type of question for any subject such as: Spelling, Geography (there is a map template that can be drawn on), Math (interact graph paper to draw/plot data), drawing, etc etc. I highly recommend checking out The Answer Pad by clicking here!!! Below is a screen shot of The Answer Pad & Go Interactive in action, the left side of the screen is the teacher window and the right side window would be student's iPad.... This was originally posted on Technology Tidbits by David Kaluper, Ed Tech blogger, consultant, professional development and tech integration specialist with 14+ yrs in K-12 schools. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Keith Layfield, lead editor on the Business Result series, introduces his upcoming webinar on 17th April entitled "Making the most of the Business Result Online Interactive Workbook". Have you used the Business Result Online Interactive Workbook, and are you getting the most out of it? Are you interested in using online resources to provide self-study material, supplementary classroom material, or a more interactive blended learning package? My upcoming webinar is suitable for any teacher of Business Result. I will be providing practical help and ideas for using the Online Interactive Workbook, whether for self-study, classroom material, or for blended learning. The webinar will provide an overview of the following: Online practice and other resources Business Result Online Interactive Workbook is a motivating self-study item that supports and develops themes from the Student’s Book. Each unit offers a series of interactive exercises practising the main sections of each unit - Working with words, Language at work, and Business communication - which are marked automatically and added to each student’s gradebook. The interactive exercises also develop a number of skills: email writing and extended reading, plus there are video activities and discussion forum topics to encourage free writing practice. And there are extensive student resources - unit glossaries, sample emails, class audio - plus a unit test for each unit in the Student’s Book. In the webinar, we’ll explore how you can make the most of these features, inside and outside class. Gradebook and communication tools I’ll also be exploring the automatic gradebook, which gives students and teachers instant access to grades. It saves time on marking and enables teachers to quickly track progress of all students. Each unit of the Online Interactive Workbook has its own discussion topic related to the theme of the unit. This encourages communicative and collaborative learning, as students (and teachers) are able to read and reply to discussion topics. During the webinar, we’ll look at how to get the most out of this, and we’ll also focus on the ‘chat’ functionality, which enables students and teachers to communicate outside class. The Online Interactive Workbook also allows teachers to add, create, and manage their own content. Teachers can add their own tests, create their own discussions, assign due dates for activities to be completed, add new activities, and many other things using a number of teacher tools. So as you can see, the Business Result Online Interactive Workbook provides teachers and students with an exciting range of resources and tools to choose from! I look forward to exploring all of this with you in more detail during the webinar.Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: Business communication skills, Business English, Business Result, Digital Learning, elearning, Keith Layfield, Online Interactive Workbook, Online resources, Self-study material, Web tools, Webinar

Dan Taylor in the Google in Education Summit group on Google posted about this excellent update to Google Drive. See below Save time with right-click sharing from your Google Drive folder For those looking to share files more quickly, listen up. You can now share with others directly from the Google Drive folder on your Mac or PC. To share a file while inside your Google Drive folder, simply right click the file, select "Google Drive" and then click "Share." This new feature is rolling out over the next few days. If you aren’t already using Drive for your desktop, check it out: http://goo.gl/vGnhG This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Edward de Chazal, author of many EAP titles, including the forthcoming English for Academic Purposes, part of the Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers series, presents an imagined conversation about what EAP is and how we teach it. Edward will be presenting on this topic at IATEFL 2014 on Friday 4th April. I keep hearing a lot about EAP these days, but - how can I put this? - I’m not really sure what it is. It means different things to different people, doesn’t it? "I know how you feel. I’ve been teaching EAP for a few years now and I’m still trying to make sense of it. There’s so much going on. And it seems different when you start working somewhere new." You can say that about any English language teaching context. So much to learn. "Sure - but think how much you know already. Start with that. Think of your own knowledge of English. All that teaching experience. And your own education - how many qualifications have you done since you left school? How many training sessions and presentations have you attended?" I see what you’re getting at. Yes, I know I know a lot, and I’m always learning something new. But - going back to EAP - what do I need to know? What is my role as an EAP teacher? "Roles - there are lots of them. OK. Let’s start by looking at where we are in EAP today. One way of looking at it is that the field of EAP is a research-informed practice." What does that mean? "First and foremost it’s a practice - we’re all practising teachers - and the work we do is vital for the academic success of thousands of students worldwide." OK, great, and what about the ‘research-informed’ dimension? "And what we do is informed by all the work that has been going on for, well, about 50 years. There are lot of influences on EAP." Like what? "Well, there are major influences like genre analysis and corpus linguistics, but also other theories of teaching and learning, like approaches to teaching writing, study skills, and critical EAP." What’s that? "OK. At the heart of EAP is critical thinking. In EAP we’re all critical thinkers - teachers and students." But what does this mean in practice? "There are different approaches to critical thinking. With ‘critical EAP’, nothing is off-limits - we can critique pretty much anything and everything." Like what? "OK, let’s start with a text. As language teachers we’re always bringing in texts into the classroom - maybe up-to-date texts like newspaper articles that we’ve just come across, or photocopied texts from various sources, or simply the texts in the coursebooks we’re using." OK, so students have to read lots of texts. What next? "Well, in many English language teaching contexts the focus of the lesson would then be the text. So, you’d do some work on the text - tasks like working out meanings in the text, language work." Of course - isn’t that the point? "It’s necessary, but it’s not the whole story. We can encourage critical thinking by doing tasks like identifying the author’s stance, any weaknesses in the text, bias, assumptions, those sorts of things." Sounds good. "A critical EAP approach goes beyond the boundaries of the text." How do you mean? "In a critical EAP approach, we can encourage our students to ask questions like ‘Why have you selected this particular text?’ ‘Isn’t this text written from a Western perspective - it’s published in Oxford?’ and ‘How are the issues in the text relevant to me?’ Questions like these can be really interesting. We can encourage our students to reflect on these ideas and challenge what’s in the text and its wider context." Hmm, certainly food for thought. Yes, as you said, there’s so much going on in EAP. I can see now that I’m going to get a lot out of learning all about it. "I do. Arguably, one of the greatest influences on EAP is the wider context of English language teaching - we know a lot about that. There’s a lot to learn, but never forget how much you know already." Related articles #IATEFL - What exactly is ‘academic vocabulary’? #IATEFL - Adult Learners: helping them clear the next hurdle Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, IATEFL Tagged: Authentic texts, Critical thinking, EAP, Edward De Chazal, English for Academic Purposes, IATEFL, Methodology, Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers, Research-informed practice, Teacher Development, Teaching EAP

Read on to find out about this exciting new innovative Summercamp from BoomWriter..."This summer, students across New England will have an opportunity to come together online to write, edit and publish their own books inspired by Diary of a Wimpy Kid author and Massachusetts resident Jeff Kinney. Boston public broadcaster WGBH and the digital education company BoomWriter Media have teamed up to launch the BoomWriter Storytellers Camp to help middle school students maintain and improve writing skills during summer vacation. Through the collaboration, WGBH and BoomWriter Media are offering four separate one-week, online, curriculum-based and educator-supported camps that foster creativity and expressive writing.""We are excited to work in association with WGBH," said Chris Twyman, co-founder andCEO of BoomWriter Media. "They are the best of public broadcasting and are in the hearts ofchildren everywhere. Together, we can inspire a love of writing, storytelling and learning,while also facilitating critical thought and creativity for a new generation of learners. The BoomWriter platform provides 21 century students with a means of self-expression through writing that is both accessible and familiar and provides teachers with the tools for success."The new BoomWriter Storytellers Camp builds on BoomWriter’s existing web-based platformand provides students with daily lessons and workshops before challenging campers with adaily writing assignment. On the first day of the camp, participating campers are presentedwith a prompt, or ‘story start,’ written by Kinney.The prompt serves as the first chapter of a collaboratively written novel. After reading theprompt, campers individually write the next chapter. After writing, teachers and trainedcounselors review the campers’ writing and provide interactive feedback. When the dailywriting period ends, campers are given the opportunity to read select and approvedsubmissions from other campers and vote on their favorite additions to the story. Thesubmission with the most votes is accepted as the next chapter of the novel and serves asthe next day’s writing prompt.For more information and registration click here!!! This is a guest post by David Kaluper. Ed Tech blogger, consultant, professional development and tech integration specialist with 14+ yrs in K-12 schools. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Today’s question for the Q: Skills for Success authors: How can we help students remember and be able to use words from the Academic Word List? Cheryl Zimmerman responds. We are no longer taking questions. Thank you to everyone who contacted us! Look out for more responses by the Q authors in the coming weeks, or check out the answers that we’ve posted already in our Questions for Q authors playlist. Related articles #qskills - Is it better to create your own materials or use existing materials? #qskills - How do I manage disruptive behaviour in class? #qskills - How can I help students that have a hard time learning the language? #qskills - How would you answer Krashen’s assertion that teaching EAP is a "waste of time"? #qskills - What can I do to improve my relationship with difficult students who do not like to study English? #qskills - Could you recommend useful tips for teaching writing skills? #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: Academic Word List, Adult Learners, AWL, Behaviour, Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, English Language, Language learning, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors

I have recently been exploring MentorMob and have blogged about it.  It's been getting a lot of press lately on Twitter and is one of the better sites to come around for education in a long time.  At it's heart I'd say MM is a site for curating the web but there is much more to it then just that. Whats to like: Playlists - This is what MentorMob is all about, the creation of playlists.  These playlists are created by entering a URL of a site.  A thumbnail gets added as well as summary, skill level, and type of site it is (article or video). Skill Level - This is great for educators as they can set their playlists to beginner, intermediate, or advanced.  This is an ideal way to build up a skill or teach a unit in a systematic way. Community - A great way to see other playlists that are being created, what needs help on, and how to collaborate w/ others. Sharing - A finished list can be shared w/ others via a link and even embedded and best of all is what a finished playlist looks like. Moderation - A user can set their playlist to public/private to control who can view it.  Also, they can set it so others can only view it or edit it as well, and more... A finished playlist is where MentorMob really shines and separates it from other web curators.  A person can go through a playlist step by step and check off what they know.  After they have learned a certain skill, completed a successful unit etc, they can move on to the next. Below is my sample playlist for 21st Century Learning... Create your own Playlist on MentorMob! Finally, there is something known as MentorMob Pro account which is ideal for educators.  Where educators can build their playlist and bulk upload students/users in seconds.  Also, a pro account has access to real-time graphs which show exactly which playlist they are learning and on which step they are on. I highly highly recommend checking out MentorMob by clicking here!!!! This is a guest post by David Kaluper. Ed Tech blogger, consultant, professional development and tech integration specialist with 14+ yrs in K-12 schools. This article was originally posted here. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Kenna Bourke, Oxford Discover co-author, shares some creative ideas for using technology to help parents support their children’s learning. Four times a year, I get an email that contains a mysterious thing called a report card. This is a school report on the progress of a six-year-old (name changed for privacy!) who’s not my child, but who’s very important to me. It goes on for several pages, and looks like this: Great! But I don’t know what Mimosa is reading or how I can help turn her into a full-time genius! What stories is she reading? Does she like them? What’s she learning in science? I’d really like to know! Do you want one simple way to help parents support your classroom teaching in the home? Use technology. Like teachers, parents are busy people. They might only look at a school website a few times a year, but many of them have social media accounts, which they look at daily. How about creating a closed page for your class on Facebook, or whichever social network is popular in your country? Here are a few ideas for using this as a tool to help parents feel more involved and excited about what’s happening in your class: 1. Try sharing a short biography of an author that the child and family can research For example, Who is Michael Rosen? What’s he written? When was he born? What’s his daughter’s name? What do you think about the poem ‘A Dangerous Raisin?’ From Oxford Discover Student’s Book 3 2. Advertise your projects Explain what you’re going to do so your students can prepare. Or post the results of the projects once they’re done so the parents can see them. For example, How many subtraction problems can you think of at home? In what contexts do we use subtraction every day? What’s a funny subtraction problem you can ask your friends? From Oxford Discover Student’s Book 2 3. Share the week’s lesson theme so it can be discussed at home For example, Oxford Discover begins each new unit with a Big Question: How do we have fun? What makes birds special? How do numbers help us? Great dinnertime conversation ideas! 4. Preview a reading text so children can discuss their prior knowledge of the subject with their family You could do this by sharing a simple three-line synopsis of what you’ll be reading in class. Provide some questions for parents to discuss with their children. For example, What do you know about symmetry? What symmetrical objects can you find at home? What’s the most beautiful example of symmetry you can think of? 5. Follow up on reading texts or topics that have captured the students’ imaginations by posting links to sites that contain further information For example, in Oxford Discover, you’ll find a fiction reading about a whistling language. That language also really exists! There are schools on the island of La Gomera that have made this ancient language — silbo gomero — a compulsory school subject. From Oxford Discover Student’s Book 6 6. Post a picture that relates to your lesson to stimulate discussion This is really fun! Provide some sample questions, too. For example, What’s going on with these cars? Why can’t you see through their windows? Where do you think the picture was taken? Who invented wheels? What would life be like if we didn’t have cars? Photo © Kenna Bourke 7. Include links to free parent support sites Oxford Parents gives parents simple, effective advice on supporting their children’s classroom language learning at home. Would you like practical tips on developing a strong school-home link 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: Big Questions, Kenna Bourke, Oxford Discover, Oxford Parents, Parent support, Parental involvement, Project work, Projects, Reading skills, School-home connection, Technology

This is a guest post by Dubier, an international school teacher in Sweden. It was originally posted here.  Many times when you work at a school as a teacher, you will usually also be a mentor for a couple of students in a class.. It is usually quite stressful to keep up with the administrative tasks you have as a mentor.Therefore is useful to use a tool to facilitate your work. The app I would recommend is Teacher assistant pro. It is available for iphone, ipad and Mac. It will also come out for Android. Teacher assistant pro allows you to keep track of your students in a very efficient way. I use it to keep track of my mentor students’ behavior. I like it very much when you can pre-install certain behaviors and with a few quick keystrokes, you have entered a particular student’s behavior. You can also add parents phone numbers and e-mail addresses and then, through the app, you can either call the parent or send a quick email. You can also sort the behaviors by color labels and points Isn’t that great? However, what I miss about this app is the sync ability to sync between iPhone and iPad or Mac. But otherwise, this app is the one I use the most in my role as a mentor. Note to readers. This is about a paid app so is not free technology but I have allowed it because there is a free lite version. This is not an endorsement of this product by Free Tech for Schools. If we ever get paid to endorse products we will tell you. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Kate Read, co-author of the new Kindergarten series, Show and Tell, offers some practical tips for strengthening the school-home link. We all know that most learning goes on outside the classroom. So it follows that learning English shouldn’t be limited to the classroom. Indeed, learning any language can be enhanced by bringing it into the home - after all, the home is where language begins for the young child. There are a number of easy ways to do this but, first of all, you’ve got to have the parents on board. They can help with learning English, even if they aren’t confident about their own level of English. There are many ways of doing this: Send home regular letters (or even informal emails or texts) about the topic you are covering. Include ideas for home activities. Oxford Parents give parents simple, effective advice on supporting their children’s classroom language learning at home. Invite parents for informal chats at regular intervals. Give parents simple guidance documents that outline when and where it is helpful to use English at home. Encourage them to foster a positive and fun attitude when using English. Give them advice on when it is not helpful - such as when the children are tired or distracted. Here’s a video tip and free conversation card to help you do this. 1. The child as teacher It is very empowering for a child to take on the role of the teacher. The child can ‘teach’ simple words or phrases to the family. You can systematically give them words or expressions to take home. You can also give the children tasks to do at home - teaching or telling specific things to specific people. A favourite activity is for the child to teach the whole family to sing a song in English. You can help with this by making the song or backing tracks available. Children will enjoy this process and it will do wonders for consolidation. As you already know, there’s nothing like having to teach something to make you learn it! 2. The child as performer Allow the child to take some work home to share with the family. (Courses like Show and Tell offer special ‘take-home’ projects.) At its simplest, this can be songs to sing or chants to repeat at appropriate times. It can also be retelling a story to the people at home - or even performing it with simple puppets. In the digital age, and if you have permission to do this, sharing a video of things that they have performed at school is a great way of building confidence and consolidating knowledge. When children use the language to give a performance, they take ownership of the language. 3. Making an English space It’s really useful for children to have reminders of language learned. This helps them to keep it active. Home is a great place for putting up posters, pictures and even single word images or text. Depending on the child’s level of literacy, these can be labelled either by the child or by you. You can also suggest having an English space in the home where the child can keep English books, English games and even English toys. Creating a physical environment where English is a feature provides children with a ‘real’ place for English in their home lives - this facilitates further integration of the language. 4. Making games in English You can create some simple games to play at home. Provide outlines of games that can be used over and over and provide updates of words/lexical sets that can be used with the games. The games can be very basic with repeated questions and answers, such as hiding things and saying "Where’s the…?" (You would need to supply the names of the objects to look for.) It could be a game to play with picture or word cards, such as concentration/pairs, or "Which card did I take away?" As the child advances, activities could include could be slightly more complex board games for counting and vocabulary. 5. Books with audio Bedtime reading is always a very special time for the parent and child. For parents who are not confident reading in English, you can recommend books with audio so that they can look and listen with the child. Some people like using stories that the children already know in their own language, making the most of the child’s familiarity with the content. Finally, if you are using simple stories in class that have audio, such as the stories on the MultiROM in Show and Tell, send them home with the children so that they can ‘read’ it with their families. Encouraging children and their families to do any of the above activities is very simple. The most important thing is to instil the idea of a partnership between school and home. This partnership requires clear and simple communication and lots of enthusiasm. Remember, in the immortal words of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz: There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home … Do you have any ideas of great ways to use English at home? Share them with us in the comments section below. Would you like more practical tips on strengthening the school-home link, and teaching 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, Critical thinking, EFL, ELT, How to teach critical thinking, Kate Read, Kindergarten, Oxford Parents, Parental involvement, Parental support, School-home connection, Show and Tell, Young Learners

Zondle is a great piece of free technology which I wrote about a while ago. They are starting an interesting crowd-funding campaign to develop resources for the common core. If you are interested, read below. zondlescape 036 The zondle crowd-funding campaign launches tomorrow! Dear zondle friend, As you almost certainly have seen by now (we can’t contain our excitement!), tomorrow we are launching our first ever crowd-funding campaign to enable us to develop zondle content especially for our community of users in the US: zondle Common Core. Why is this worth supporting? You will have helped zondle to continue helping our 260,000 community members worldwide who have played 25 million questions in zondle games to support teaching, learning and assessment! Every pledge will be rewarded! Depending on your contribution, we'll send you a certificate, give a school of your choosing free access to the final Common Core content, send you some zondle stickers, temporary tattoos or zondle t-shirts, or even develop a version of the zondle Mobile app branded for a school of your choosing! Every dollar raised will be paid to teachers, paying them to create Common Core questions for students to play in zondle games (zondle will pay for all development costs)! A FREE zondle Common Core pack will be donated to a school on behalf of anyone who has pledged $25! The complete set of zondle Common Core packs will be donated for FREE to 20 of the most disadvantaged school districts across the US (if you would like to nominate a school district, please email Ben Barton)! I'm interested. What should I do now? Our campaign begins TOMORROW (May 9th) on Indiegogo! Please click here to read all about our campaign. Please forward this email to anyone who you think might be interested in helping. Thanks as ever for your fantastic support! Ben, Doug and Wayne ZONDLE PS If you would like to be one of the teachers paid to create (at $1 per question) or to proof-read (at $0.25 per question) zondle Common Core Math or ELA content, please email Ben Barton. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

19 Pencils is a site that I (David) briefly reviewed a few months back and listed as one of my Top 100 Sites of 2011. Through some collaboration I've decided to revisit this site and check out all the "bells and whistles" 19 Pencils has to offer. After giving it a thorough run through my first impression is, WOW. This site has it all, and Kelly Tenkley of iLearn Technology said it best when she said, "This is a fantastically easy site to use!" The first thing a teacher will notice when logging in are the abundance of tools that can be found in the online dashboard. This is the "control center" for the educator where they can create: quizzes, a class website, track student progress and more. All this is done in a very user friendly visually appealing way. Quizzes - are offered as a multiple choice type question w/ one or more answers. This is very easy to do and is built around a "flash card" style system. Also, a teacher can track student progress on a quiz in the "my class" tab.Class Website - Another great feature is the ability to create a class website which displays assignments, pre-approved websites (in an innovative thumbnail view w/ a summary), or quizzes. Also, a teacher can embed a badge/link into their own website for easy navigation to their educational 19 Pencil's portal.Playground - This is a unique and sleek place where students can collaborate w/ their teacher in a chat window while still being logged into their "class view".What makes 19 Pencils so great is that everything is being "housed" inside of 19 Pencils. What this means is that any website that a teacher decided to put up on their class pages is inside a frame w/ 19 pencils border and tools surrounding it. Also, this site is being filtered which is ideal for CIPPA and COPPA compliance. Finally, a user can search through 19 Pencils for other educational content to share and collaborate on.I highly highly recommend checking out 19 Pencils by clicking here!!! This was original posted on Technology Tidbits by David Kaluper Ed Tech blogger, consultant, professional development and tech integration specialist with 14+ yrs in K-12 schools. Free Technology for Schools has not received any payment from 19 Pencils, however they are a paid advertiser of David's blog.This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Ahead of the ELT Journal debate at IATEFL 2014 in Harrogate, Graham Hall, editor of ELT Journal, presents an introduction to the motion of the debate. The ongoing expansion of English language teaching for Primary age learners and teenagers has been a notable feature of ELT in recent years. In many countries, English is now compulsory in primary as well as secondary education, whilst English for Pre-school learners is also increasingly common. Some estimates suggest that up to 80 per cent of English language teaching globally is directed, in diverse contexts, at students in Primary or Secondary schools. As the exact cut-off point between Primary and Secondary education varies around the world, let’s assume for this blog that we’re referring to teaching children of pre- and/or post-11 years old). As both parents and educational authorities seek to increase younger learners’ English language skills, we can’t assume that an earlier start to learning English is automatically better. The advisability of an early start to learning English can be affected by a number of factors, ranging from the availability of suitably skilled teachers and appropriate resources to concerns about the possible implications for the teaching and learning of other languages, and from the development of suitable classroom practices and methodologies to the relationship between a child’s first language literacy skills and their English language development. So, it’s perhaps time to step back and take a little time to reflect on the extent to which the expansion of Primary ELT is, in fact, straightforwardly ‘beneficial’. If we, the ELT profession, teach millions of Primary age children English around the world, does this automatically lead to advantages, both for individuals and societies more generally, or is it possible that Primary ELT brings with it significant problems and difficulties? Does, in fact, Primary ELT do more harm than good? There are perhaps 3 key reasons for the growth of Primary ELT. Firstly, there is the widespread assumption that ‘the earlier a language is learned, the better’; in other words, younger children are (or are more likely to be) more successful language learners. Secondly, the expansion of Primary ELT is a response to the increasing demand for English, which results from globalization; governments and policy-makers around the world would like an English-speaking workforce, which they see as leading to economic success. And finally, parents would like their children to benefit from learning English. Yet, although age clearly influences language learning in some way, the exact nature of this relationship is rather less clear than is popularly imagined - the actual evidence in favour of younger learners’ superiority in L2 learning is rather inconsistent, especially in non-immersion situations, where encounters with English might be limited to a few hours a week in the classroom. And we might also worry about a top-down ‘rush for English’ in which policy is not thoroughly thought through and issues such as teacher training and education, and classroom methodologies and materials for teaching Primary ELT, become problematic. Is a gap developing between policy and practice, and between our goal of how Primary ELT ‘should be’, and the realities of often under-resourced classroom life? These issues will be discussed and debated in more detail in the ELT Journal debate, held at the IATEFL Conference in Harrogate (UK) on Thursday 3rd April (11.30-12.45 BST). There, Fiona Copland (Aston University, UK) will propose the motion: ‘This house believes that Primary ELT does more harm than good’; Janet Enever (Umea University, Sweden) will oppose the motion. For more information about the conference and to access the debate online visit Harrogate online. You can also follow us on Twitter as we live-tweet highlights from the debate and other IATEFL speaker sessions. Graham Hall is editor of ELT Journal and works at Northumbria University in the UK, where he teaches on Northumbria’s MA in Applied Linguistics for TESOL and MA TESOL programmes.Filed under: IATEFL, Pre-school Children, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: Children, ELT Journal, ELTJ Debate, IATEFL, Language learning, Primary and Secondary methodology, Primary ELT, Teenagers, Young Learners