Gamification has several definitions, but a simple one would be: it is to apply game elements (items, rules, goals, rewards…) to non game contexts in order to improve the outcomes, engagement and diversion of the participants.Seeming a buzzword nowadays, as it is indeed, it has been widely used in several fields for many years, and, for sure, you’ve been a target of it anytime during your life, or, even more, you’ve used it unconsciously. For example, rewards given to children in exchange of good grades; points earned at the gas station; collectible yogurt glasses; or badges earned in forums.Being a general philosophy, it can be tricky to get the use of it in Education. On the one hand, the educational world and its actors differ from others. There are plenty of emerging and growing technological systems, that not always let gamification fit in. Teachers lack handbooks to clearly know how to start up the process, and many of them don’t have a technological profile. And, finally, gamification has multiple stages to be considered (analysis, design, implementation, measurement and readjustment).Go on reading at:http://edtechreview.in/research/2055-guide-gamification-in-education

I’m proud to announce that on the 13th of November 2015 I’ll be giving a presentation at the Gamification World Congress in Barcelona. Only 6 papers have been selected worldwide, and mine is among them: "the Haidei framework", an educational framework where the educational curriculum, visible thinking and gamification are integrated.Information about the event:From 10th to 13th November 2015 the fourth annual Gamification World Congress will be held in Barcelona (Spain), four days of international content featuring the best projects and top experts in the world.Over 100 globally-renowned speakers have already spoken at Gamification World Congress, including the likes of Richard Bartle, Mario Herger, Andrzej Marczewski, Tom Chatfield, Kevin Werbach, An Coppens, Brian Burke, Bart Briers and Thijs de Vries. And this next event will boast an even greater international repercussion than ever.Gamification has become a powerful tool to engage students to learn in a different and funnier way. gEducation, the educational Workshop from Gamification World Congress aims to become a forum for educators, researchers and practitioners in the area of Education Innovation that are interested in how gamification is changing the future of education and how gamification can be used to improve the learning process, engage students, etc. Further of cases studies, gEducation believe that Gamification is a line of research that is becoming more important and essential to improve techniques of creation, monitoring, measuring, and improvement of gamified systems.https://gamification.world/congress/gwc-2015/geducation

For all the people who have asked me about the presentation's materials (#haideiframework) I used at the Gamification World Congress 2015 held in Barcelona, you can find them in my personal site:www.andonisanz.comThe Haidei framework is a flexible approach to integrate pedagogy, gamification and technology.Don't hesitate to contact me!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Larry Zwier shares some thoughts about his upcoming webinar, Making Good Tests. Larry is a series consultant for Q: Skills for Success, the author of Inside Reading 2, and an Associate Director at Michigan State University (East Lansing, Michigan, USA), where many of his duties involve making tests, administering them, and evaluating their effectiveness. Students often talk about test anxiety. Some say they freeze up and can’t show what they really know because they’re "not good at taking tests." Teachers may experience their own form of test anxiety. A teacher may feel completely confident in handling a classroom, presenting material, directing students in individual and group work, and so on, yet that same teacher may freeze up when assessment time rolls around. On February 6, I’ll present a webinar about getting past that freeze-up stage and writing good tests. Specifically, I’ll make reference to using material from OUP’s series, Q: Skills for Success. I know that series intimately. I am one of the series consultants, and I was in on the discussions from the very start about what Q should be and how it should play in the classroom. Part of that "classroom role" aspect involves testing. How should we assess whether students are understanding the passages (reading or listening), picking up the vocabulary, and developing the language skills we practice? What feedback can we give students that will boost their performance in the future? In the first part of the webinar, I’ll tell participants how to take advantage of testing materials already prepared for Q by Oxford University Press. These come in various packages - via CD and online - and I’ll explain how to get them and use them. In the second part of the webinar, I’ll approach a somewhat tougher topic: How to write good tests on your own. Of course, testing is a huge topic and we could spend dozens of hours discussing it. I’m going to keep the webinar basic and practical. Issues I’ll address include: What’s my testing goal (fluency/accuracy, syntax/lexis, main ideas/details, etc.)? What are the stakes? What format will work best in my classroom circumstances? How can I identify good points to test in a reading / listening passage I’m a teacher, not a cognitive scientist. How can I know whether a test is good? I look forward to the webinar—a great chance for me to interact with colleagues from around the world.Filed under: Exams & Testing Tagged: Assessment, Designing good tests, Lawrence Zwier, Q Skills for Success, Test anxiety, Test development, Test preparation, Testing, Testing goals, Webinar

Judith Willis worked as Publishing Manager for bilingual dictionaries in the ELT dictionaries department at Oxford University Press before retiring in 2008. Here she looks back at how the meaning of some words has changed over the history of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. The latest edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is still fresh and new but this year marks the 65th anniversary of the publication by Oxford University Press of its esteemed forerunner, A.S. Hornby’s Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. So it may be a good time to undertake some lexico-archaeology and look at the changes that have occurred over the 8 editions of the dictionary. There are several factors influencing these changes. Dictionary users, their knowledge, their learning styles and their expectations are very different now from then ; lexicographic techniques have evolved, with the corpus revolution of the 1980s and 1990s being possibly the most significant development in these 65 years; and, of course, the language has moved on. New words are coined, new meanings attached to old words, and even when the strict meaning remains the same, words are used differently. For instance, Hornby already used the word ‘problem’ to define issue in the first edition, but the examples in the current edition, such as If you have any issues, please call this number, reflect a 21st Century form of expression. This text is a blog post. The word post has many senses and uses (the current edition lists ten meanings for the noun and nine for the verb) and this sense of ‘a piece of writing that forms part of a blog’ is the latest addition. Just a few more examples of the ‘new meanings for old words’ phenomenon are tag = a symbol or name used by a graffiti artist, hybrid = a car using two different types of power, and the informal use of the adjective random. As well as new senses we see shifts in frequency, with earlier uses becoming more formal (e.g. attitude, whose original first sense of ‘position of the body’ is now labelled formal and demoted to last sense, ousted by the newer sense of ‘confident, sometimes aggressive behaviour’); meanings dropping out of the language (tag as a metal tip on a shoelace); usage becoming more restricted; words crossing the part-of-speech boundary (the noun-generated verbs text as in SMS messages and trend as in be trending on Twitter); literal or concrete meanings becoming figurative or abstract; and changes of register and region, typically, American English terms becoming part of British English and informal words becoming standard. Let’s look at a single entry - the noun wrap. This is a good example of an old word being used for new things. In the 1stedition, it is described as usually plural and defined solely as an ‘outer garment or covering, e.g. a shawl, scarf, fur, cloak or rug’. By the 3rd edition the word has acquired a ‘trade use’ with the phrases keep sth under wraps and take off the wraps. Hornby obviously sees these as commercial terms, but now the idiom under wraps is widely used in informal language. The 5th edition redefines the garment sense as ‘a loose scarf or shawl’ and includes paper/plastic wrap. The sense of the end of filming - That’s/It’s a wrap - is in the 6th edition, and the current edition still gives the garment sense first, but now it’s even more specific - ‘a piece of cloth that a woman wears around her shoulders’. Bubble wrap sits alongside gift wrap in the paper/plastic sense, and is followed by the food sense, originally from the US, of tortilla wrap. Do a Google image search and you will see which one everyone’s talking about - or wanting you to buy! Will future editions of the dictionary see the clothing sense lose importance (it is already marked old-fashioned in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary) and new senses appear, for example the seaweed wrap that has nothing to do with either clothing or food? All words in the dictionary have their own stories - and histories: the noun wrap has been in the language since the 15th Century and many of the other words mentioned here have been around even longer than that. New phenomena, tangible or conceptual, appear and lead to the creation of new words like blog or else attach themselves to existing words like tweet. Listen out for yourselves and see how many genuinely new words you hear compared to venerable old words clad in new meanings.Filed under: Dictionaries & Reference, Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: A.S. Hornby, lexico-archaeology, Meaning, New words, OALD, Oxford Advanced American Dictionary, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Popular words

Ahead of our webinar showing teachers how to use the online practice tests available on www.oxfordenglishtesting.com, Stacey Hughes examines the benefits of online practice tests and explores how they can help prepare your students for their exams. If you have ever taught an exam preparation course, you will know that students who take such a course tend to do better than those who don’t. These courses do several things. Firstly they help students become familiar with the structure and content of the exam. Secondly, they teach exam strategies - whether to skip a question and come back to it, for example, and how to approach different sections. Also importantly, they draw students’ attention to the assessment criteria so that they know how they are being marked. The topics raised in exam prep courses mirror those on the exam, so students who take these courses will have the advantage of having thought about and built knowledge and vocabulary around them. A final important benefit relates to confidence. Exam prep courses build student confidence when taking the exam. Why use online practice tests? In an exam preparation course, students will naturally want to practice taking the exam, and this is where the online practice tests available on www.oxfordenglishtesting.com are highly beneficial. In practical terms, because most of the test is automatically marked, teachers are saved marking time. This means that teachers have more time to spend giving valuable feedback on the speaking and writing parts of the test. Online tests are also easier to manage both because they don’t require the photocopying that paper tests do and because they can be taken by the students at school in a computer lab or at home. The results are stored and managed in the learning management system, so teachers don’t have to worry about carrying around a lot of student test papers. Focusing your students on the exam Teachers have the flexibility to assign the test in test mode or practice mode, giving them the added benefit of using the tests as a testing or learning tool. In test mode, students complete the test without any learning support, the same as they would in the actual exam. Test mode is useful towards the end of the course to help students get mentally prepared for exam conditions. Helping your students learn from their mistakes In practice mode, the tests can be used as learning tools. In practice mode students can: get tips to help them answer the questions before submitting their answer. This extra layer of scaffolding supports students’ thinking about the right approach to arriving at the right answer. get feedback on each question. This is beneficial because students learn the rationale behind correct and incorrect answers and strategies for dealing with each question. The extra support can also build confidence in weaker students. Because feedback is immediate, the response and context are still fresh in the student’s mind and this means the feedback is more likely to help students learn from their mistakes. use the online dictionary. This extra learning tool in practice mode can help students build their vocabulary and get to grips with content and topics. listen to their recording of the speaking section and re-record if they are not happy with the result. This feature gives students multiple opportunities to record and can build their confidence. There is also a useful language section to help support their speaking if they need it. see a sample answer to the writing task once they have written their own answer, allowing them the benefit of seeing the type of response expected without hindering their own creative thinking. do part of a test and finish it later. The teacher may also choose to assign just one part of the test. This flexibility allows teachers and students to focus on one particular task or section and can be a more manageable way to approach the test. Practice mode gives students extra learning support   Tracking your students’ results As students work through the test in test mode or practice mode, it is automatically marked and the results are sent to the markbook. The online markbook shows the score for each section and also which questions each student got right or wrong. The teacher can choose to allow the students to see their scores on most parts of the exam, and speaking and writing papers are sent to the teacher to mark. There is a space for the teacher to type in comments and a grade for the speaking and writing sections which the students can then view. How can you use online practice tests during your course? One approach would be to assign a practice test in test mode at the beginning of the course just to introduce the students to the format and to provide a springboard for discussion about the test: How many sections where there? How did you approach the … section? What sections did you find easy/difficult? Why? Were there any sections you weren’t sure about or didn’t understand? Did you feel you had enough time to complete all the sections? How did you feel about speaking on the topic? etc. At this point, the teacher might choose NOT to let the students see their scores since so early in the course low scores may be demotivating. The same test could then be used in practice mode with the teacher assigning different sections at different times after some work in class on strategies for completing them. The results of these attempts will be sent to the markbook so that the teacher can see if there is any improvement, and this information may be shared with the students. Towards the end of the course, the teacher could then assign another online test in test mode to get students mentally ready for taking the exam. This would also highlight any weaknesses that the students need to work on. It’s easy to see how the online practice test can become a learning tool which help students become familiar with the exam, learn strategies for completing the different sections and gain confidence. The tests can be an effective additional tool in the exam course to help teachers and students prepare for their exam. Ready to start using online practice tests? To find out more about using the online practice tests with your students, including how to assign the tests, track your students’ progress, and see their results, register for our webinar Making the most of online practice tests on 1st May 2014. You can also find out more about online practice tests at www.oxfordenglishtesting.com, where we are running a special 50% off promotion on practice tests.Filed under: Exams & Testing, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: Exam preparation, Learning Management System, Online practice tests, Oxford English Testing, Practice tests, Stacey Hughes, Student confidence, Webinar

Today’s question for the Q: Skills for Success authors: Should I teach only grammar when my students have only written tests in exams? 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 can I teach reading skills to beginner students without focusing on grammar? #qskills - How can I help my students understand words in a reading passage? #qskills - How can we help students to use words from the Academic Word List? #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? Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Grammar & Vocabulary, Skills Tagged: Adult Learners, Colin Ward, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, English Language, Exams, Grammar, Language learning, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors, Writing skills

Ahead of our webinar on the Oxford Young Learners Placement Test, Verissimo Toste, an Oxford teacher trainer, looks at how you can make testing a child-friendly experience for your young learners, and useful for you. "Testing young learners? Really? Seriously? Why?" That’s usually my reaction when I hear teachers talking about testing young learners. "So, how do you decide what to teach them? How do you know how to teach them? Testing young learners gives you important information." As a friend said this to me I realised my problem was with the word "testing". For me, testing is judging and labelling, not teaching. Of course, I have always gathered information about my learners and used it to help me teach better. Testing is one way to gather information, but testing young learners needs to be a friendly, positive experience for them. You need to consider their age, use bright colours and fun images, and give them a sense of achievement for having gone through the experience. Making testing a positive experience In her book, Teaching Young Language Learners, Annamaria Pinter writes: "In order to understand what children have learnt, teachers may need to use a variety of assessment methods." Along with observation, portfolios, and project work, testing can be a valuable tool, providing teachers with information quickly and easily. It is important, however, for teachers to take out any of the stress and tension usually associated with testing and work to make it a positive and motivating part of the learning experience. Understanding the range of abilities in your class The test also needs to be useful. After all, you are, in essence, gathering information about your learners to help you teach better. Firstly, information from a test can help a teacher place learners in groups of similar abilities, either as a class, or as groups within a class. Knowing the mix of levels in a class or a group, or the strengths and weaknesses of an individual student can help a teacher provide the right kind of support that motivates each student to learn. Using the results to inform your teaching This brings up the point of differentiated teaching. A test can provide teachers with important information about each of their students. Who is strong in their use of the language? Who is weak in listening? When listening, do they understand the gist of what they are listening to? Do they grasp the details? Who may have difficulty with vocabulary, or grammar? Having the answers to these questions can help a teacher target their teaching to the needs of the class. To find out how to make placement testing a fun and positive experience for your young learners, whilst also giving you accurate and reliable results to help you target your teaching, join our webinar entitled ‘An introduction to the Oxford Young Learners Placement Test‘on 12th June 2014. Filed under: Exams & Testing, Multimedia & Digital, Young Learners Tagged: Assessment, Child-friendly testing, Children, Differentiated learning, Oxford English Testing, Oxford Young Learners Placement Test, Placement tests, Positive assessment experience, Verissimo Toste, Webinar, Young Learners

Image courtesy of Blirk.net 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 the origins of several nautical metaphors still used in English today. Learning English might be easier if people would actually say what they mean. Unfortunately English-speakers often express ideas in terms of a metaphor rather than by a literal description. So when we talk about being ‘all at sea’, we do not literally mean that we are out in the ocean, but rather that we are unsure about what to do, as though we were drifting on the water without the reassurance of firm ground beneath our feet. Metaphors can be difficult enough to decipher even when you are familiar with the objects of comparison. In many cases, however, metaphors refer to things that are rarely, if ever, encountered any more. We still talk about something that is briefly successful as a flash in the pan, even though this refers to an old type of gun in which gunpowder made a flash in a compartment called a ‘pan’ when it was primed before firing. The original point of the comparison is now forgotten, but the idiom survives. The same is true of many words and expressions that originally referred to sailing. Great Britain is an island nation; in the days before air travel, mastery of the sea was essential to the nation’s defence and trade. In modern times ships play a less important role, and they tend to be powered by engines rather than sails. Yet many expressions derived from sailing remain embedded in the English language. Knowing this may shed light on some apparently obscure terms. A flagship, for example, was the most important ship in a fleet, which carried the fleet’s admiral and flew his flag. In modern English, however, the word is more likely to be used as a metaphor, so a company’s flagship store is the one that has the most importance and prestige. A mainstay was originally a rope that supported the main mast of a ship, but now is a metaphor referring to any person or thing that provides crucial support, as in tourism is a mainstay of the economy. The influence of sailing can also be seen in some idiomatic phrases. To sail close to the wind refers to the risky practice of attempting to fill a ship’s sails with wind without losing control of it. This phrase is now used as an idiom: if you tell someone that they are sailing close to the wind you are warning them that they are doing something that is dangerous or possibly illegal. To batten down the hatches literally refers to closing the entrances to the lower part of a ship when a storm is expected, but metaphorically refers to any preparation to withstand a period of difficulty. If a ship has run aground and is unable to return to the water, it is said to be high and dry, an expression we also use to refer to a person who is left in a difficult situation without any assistance. Some similar phrases have now lost all their original associations with sailing. It may come as a surprise to learn that under way, meaning ‘in progress’, was originally a nautical phrase meaning ‘in motion’. Another example is by and large: to the old sailors, this meant ‘in all conditions’, whether sailing into the wind (sailing by) or with the wind (sailing large), but it is doubtful whether many current English speakers are aware of this when they use the phrase to mean ‘in general’.Filed under: Dictionaries & Reference, Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: English Language, English spelling, Etymology, Grammar, Ian Brookes, Metaphor, Nautical metaphors, OALD, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

Jean Theuma, a freelance teacher trainer, shares her thoughts on the challenges of teaching teenagers in the EFL classroom. "Why does Giovanni always ruin my lesson." "Sarah just doesn’t seem to care or even want to be here." "Pedro insists on disrupting the lesson." "How can they do this to me?" If any of these sound familiar, then I’ll bet you’ve taught teens! If the thought of summer give you a sinking feeling knowing that most of your students will be between the ages of 14 and 17, then it’s time to stop and have a rethink before the season is truly upon us. I think that teaching teens is frustrating, depressing and downright tiring but I also know that some of my favourite classes have been with teenagers. They can also be motivating, rewarding and masses of fun! Motivating Teaching teens stretches me to look into areas that I wouldn’t normally. Trying to keep my teen classes engaged and focussed, I have delved into project work and task-based learning. I have learned new approaches to teaching that I wouldn’t have tried without the fear instilled by the thought of going into a teen class with a boring course-book and a 3-hour-stretch ahead of you (let’s be honest now)! In an effort to find common ground, I have explored material that I didn’t think I was interested in; sports, the latest singers and whatever the ‘next big thing’ is. And I’ve learned the hard way never to try to ‘get down with the kids’ and be their friend. They want a teacher, leader, manager, and inspiration - they will find their own friends amongst their peers. Rewarding Teens are teens. I think it’s important to remember that these are not fully formed adults and that they are coming to terms with so many changes in their lives, feelings, moods, and so on. In her book "Why are teenagers so weird?" B. S draws on studies which show that the teenage brain undergoes much greater changes than thought previously. What we interpret as laziness, pig-headedness or lack of concentration might all be linked to a process rewiring and remodelling in the very structure of the brain. MRI research in teenage brains have shown that behaviour thought to be controlled by hormone imbalances are actually related to the break-down and reconstruction of neurons. I think that puts classroom behaviour issues into some perspective. Some of our students are dealing with processes which result in mood swings, lack of self-control and general difficult behaviour - they don’t understand what’s going on in their brain, they don’t do it on purpose and here we are getting angry because they feel sleepy or uncooperative. With that said, it seems that any tiny amount of progress we make in class with our students is a great achievement and we should congratulate ourselves and our students for it. Fun Who better to have fun with in class than a group of teenagers? Most of them have had formal lessons all year and been drilled to know the grammar and vocabulary of English; however, very few of them actually get the chance to practice and produce the language in any free or spontaneous way. We are lucky that in EFL, activities which foster genuine communication and fluency are often also very good fun. Communicative tasks change the dynamic in the class and can lighten the mood considerably. Teenagers are old enough to see the purpose of these kinds of activities but young enough to also really appreciate the game-like structure of the task. So yes, I know - teaching teens can be a challenge, right? But it doesn’t have to be that way. It can also be fun!   References: Strauch, B. Why are teenagers so weird? Bloomsbury 2003    Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: EFL, English Language Teaching, Jean Theuma, Teaching Teenagers, Teenagers

Andrew Dilger and Sophie Rogers, former English language teachers, are part of the Professional Development team at Oxford University Press. In this tongue-in-cheek post, they consider some of the issues that any self-respecting ‘bluffer’ should be looking at over the long summer break. English language teaching is changing How many times have we heard that? This time, however, it really feels like it. With the increasing adoption of digital technologies including the use of tablets and smartphones in many schools; the emphasis on differentiating the learning experience for every student; a mass of edicts and policies from education ministries, school boards and  bandwagons, the average English language teacher - already exhausted and overstretched - could be forgiven for thinking it’s time to hang up their interactive whiteboard pen. … and we’re not equipped to deal with it (especially in summer) The thing is, it’s summer! One of the very few times in the calendar year when we can actually stop thinking about our students and start thinking about ourselves! Given the number of blockbuster movies to see, barbecues to go to, new recipes to try out on unsuspecting husbands/wives/partners/families (who we also need to get reacquainted with, by the way, after endless evenings of lesson planning and marking), how many of us really have the time to use the summer break to ‘skill up’? … so here’s how to bluff it! For this reason, here’s a bluffer’s guide for how to deal with the seismic changes affecting ELT. After all, the dream will be over in September and then it’s back to the chalk-face - or given the extent to which everything has gone digital - maybe that should be the ‘silicon-face’! CAUTION: If your teaching is already ‘blended’, your classroom ‘flipped’ and you know your BYOD from your BYOT, then this blog post isn’t for you. For the rest of you, read on … 1) Get to grips with the terminology Part of the problem is the terminology - we can’t bluff an issue until we know just what all the educators are actually talking about. So here are a few useful definitions to get you started: Blended learning (also known as hybrid learning) - Situation in which a face-to-face classroom component is complemented and enhanced with learning technologies. For example, it could involve teachers and students communicating and interacting online as well as in class. BYOD (Bring your own device; also known as BYOT: Bring your own technology) - Policy which allows students to bring their own mobile devices (tablet and/or smartphone) to school and use them in lessons. Flipped classroom (also known as reversed teaching) - Situation in which students are able to watch videos of teacher-delivered presentations or lectures in their own time. This frees up more face-to-face time for interaction, discussion, collaboration, tasks, etc. LMS (Learning management system) - System for managing learning and educational records or software for distributing online or blended courses with features for online collaboration VLE (Virtual learning environment) - Online space where teachers and students can interact, share work, and organize online materials. VLEs are usually managed at the level of the educational institute. Of course, the best way to keep on top of all these terms is to put up a poster-sized glossary in your teacher’s room. That way, everyone can add to it and everyone benefits. 2) Rely on experience The good news for bluffers everywhere is that, as much as ELT is changing, the way we handle the change remains the same. We rely on our experience and wealth of teaching techniques to get us through. ‘Change management’ consists of simply adapting what we’re already doing anyway and if you don’t yet believe it, here’s a quote from someone who knew a thing or two to back it up: "It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change." ~ Charles Darwin 3) Get a book With the sheer amount of published resources available - by both global and local publishers - there’s probably going to be a book about it somewhere. And chances are it’ll be written by someone who’s more immersed in the topic than we are. Some recent examples you might want to flick through include: Bringing online video into the classroom - Jamie Keddie (OUP) Technology Enhanced Language Learning - Goodith White & Aisha Walker (OUP) Thinking in the EFL class - Tessa Woodward (Helbling) Adaptive learning - Philip Kerr (theround - free!) 4) Go online For many teachers, the internet is the equivalent of the days when we used to walk into the teacher’s room and shout out: ‘What exactly does student-centred mean?’ Or, ‘I’ve got a lesson in ten minutes with a class I’ve never taught before. Help!’ If you’re looking for shortcuts, then the following sites contain enough classroom-ready ideas and professional insights to put you right at the cutting edge of what’s hot in the ELT methodology: http://lessonstream.org/ http://shaunwilden.com http://shellyterrell.com/ http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org http://teachertrainingvideos.com/ http://efltraining.com http://www.theenglishteacheronline.com http://www.teachingvillage.org 5) Ask a colleague It’s all about shaping learning together. The trick is to make sure at least one colleague we’re shaping it with is a bit more up-to-date than we are. This way, they can bring us with them into the 21st-century. If you’re looking to bluff it on an institutional scale, try setting up a ‘buddy system’ or ‘chat group’ to discuss some of the latest trends and how you can deal with them. Meet once a month/term and each take a topic - define it, summarize the implications and pool ideas for how you can bring it into the classroom. You could even put together a regular e-newsletter on the findings. Suggestions for some of the ‘buzzier’ trends affecting ELT for your first few chat groups are: Mobile learning (using mobile technology such as tablet computers and smartphones; also known as ‘m-learning’ or ‘mLearning’) Special educational needs provision (e.g. helping learners with ADHD, dyslexia, ASD, SEBDs, etc.) Assessment literacy (understanding how all aspects of testing and assessment impact on the learning process) 21st-Century skills (including the so-called ‘Four Cs’: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity) Multilingualism (how communicating in more than one language affects the learning process - if you’re feeling brave, you could also tackle ‘plurilingualism’!) So there you go. Five easy techniques for staying ‘ahead of the curve’ and bluffing your way through the changes affecting English language teaching. Now we can get back to enjoying our well-earned summer break and working on that tan. Roll on September!Filed under: Multimedia & Digital, Professional Development, Uncategorized Tagged: Andrew Dilger, Blended Learning, BYOD, EdTech, ELT, English Language Teaching, Flipped classroom, Humour, LMS, mlearning

Bruce Wade, Managing Editor of International Express, introduces his upcoming webinar on 11th September about the new International Express Tests and Teacher’s Guides. The new International Express launched earlier this year, and now, plenty of extra resources to support the course are available for free on Oxford Teachers’ Club.  In this webinar, I’ll be exploring how the new Teacher’s Guides can help you quickly plan your lessons, and I’ll show you around the new tests and Student Progress Report, which help you to regularly and quickly check your students’ performance. Plan your lessons in a flash International Express comes with extensive extra resources including photocopiable activities, videos for every unit, and worksheets to support each video - so you won’t be short of material, but how do you make the best use of it all?  We’ve developed Teacher’s Guides for every level, which give a clear, one-page overview of the course, meaning that you can see all the syllabus items, target language and skills, and resources in one go. I’ll be exploring how you can use these to plan your lessons quickly and easily. Regularly check students’ progress Tests are an important part of every course, and International Express tests provide comprehensive coverage of all the language in the Student’s Book.  Most test items are written as A‒B exchanges to reflect the communicative nature of the course.   There is a separate test for each section so teachers can test their students after completing a section, or a unit.  I’ll explain the different ways you can use these with your class, and we’ll look at how you can analyse the results to make direct comparisons of your students’ performance across sections, and whole units. Analyse students’ performance We developed the unique Student Progress Report to help you measure students’ performance unit-by-unit, and across different skills.  I’ll explain how you can use this tool to see how a student is performing across the four sections of a unit, and we’ll look at how you can customise it, for example, by drawing different types of graphs, or by adding comments on your students’ performance. I look forward to helping you making the most of all of these resources on 11th September.  In the meantime, you can take a look at them on Oxford Teachers’ Club - you just need to sign in with your usual log in details.Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Exams & Testing Tagged: Bruce Wade, Business English, General English, International Express, Testing, Tests

Shaun Wilden, a freelance teacher trainer and expert in online tutoring, shares his advice for teachers new to using digital coursebooks in the classroom and offers practical guidance for getting the most from the Oxford Learners’ Bookshelf. Part 1 - Preparing for your first lesson If you’re starting to teach with digital, tablet based coursebooks for the first time, you may be wondering how best to get your students off to a good start. With this is mind here is the first in a series of blog posts to help you get started. Following the few key steps outlined below before you start, will have you facing your first digital coursebook lesson with confidence and a clear sense of what you are going to do and achieve. Preparing the tablets If your school is providing the tablets, make sure that the IT person who looks after the tablets has downloaded the free Oxford Learner’s Bookshelf app (OLB). If students are bringing their own, they’ll need to download the app themselves. For iPad go to the App Store, for Android tablets go to Google Play.     Students need to register with Oxford, or log in with an existing account. Having an account means that your students’ e-books are safely saved in the cloud, and students can access them via the newly launched web player at www.oxfordlearnersbookshelf.com, as well as on their tablet. This video will show you what’s changed and how to register and access your books. If you haven’t worked with a digital book before, open the OLB app and log in and you’ll see the Bookshelf  with the books that have been added. If you don’t see your book it might not yet be downloaded from the cloud. Look at the bottom of the screen and you can alternate your view between device and cloud. If the book is in the cloud, you can tap Download to transfer it to the device. Ideally, the e-books will have been downloaded onto the tablets before the first lesson. They are quite large files, particularly the ones with audio and video, and can take a while to download. Your students can start looking at the books as soon as they start downloading, but it may take a while before any audio or video is available. If the tablets are ready before the class, do check your own and some of the students’ tablets are working well before your first class. This gives you a chance to go back to the IT person to sort out any hiccoughs. Getting to know your new coursebook Tap on the cover of the book you want and it will open. If you compare it to the paper-based version of the book then you’ll notice the content is the same. Now you can breathe a sigh of relief as you realise all those wonderful lesson plans and activities you used last year are still relevant. I can hear you muttering, how are they still relevant, we’ve gone digital. Well, the second point to remember is that you are not going to use the tablet all the time. Most of use wouldn’t use a paper coursebook for the whole lesson so why would we change that? As I am sure you have heard before, the coursebook is one of the many tools at the disposal of the teacher, digital or not. To maximize language learning we want to encourage interaction as this leads to communication so sometimes, perhaps more often that you currently think, you’ll be asking the students to switch off the tablet. Therefore those lovely laminated cards you have to prompt discussions are still going to make an appearance at some point. So what are the differences? Rather than turn the page, a swipe changes it. Pinching can enlarge a picture or a text, something you can’t do with paper. Remember that when you want the students to look in more detail at a photo or when the student who has visual impairments needs a bigger script. As a I talked about in a previous blog post, for most books listening is inbuilt and some even have video. Play around, click on some of the icons on the page and see what happens. As I say to my students, you can’t break anything. By the end of your playing make sure you also know how to input text into exercises. Now think about how you are going to show your students how to do these things, will you simply let them click and discover? If you have a projector in your class, do you know how to connect your tablet so that students can see your screen? If you have Apple TV or Google Chromecast, do you know how to reflect your screen so all can see? There is of course one other feature that you need to get to grips with, the interactive tool bar. You should see it on the screen a grey bar to the left of a page. To open it, tap the white arrow and it will appear. Personally I use this as part of the orientation process in the first lesson. So let’s move on and think of that. Student orientation Tablets ready, book downloaded, time for the first class. We’ll assume that the school’s administration has already gone over how they are to be used with the parents and students. So you’re entering the room tablets at the ready. I tend to prefer students sitting in groups when using tablets so I arrange desks into islands rather than in rows. If you do this make sure everyone has sightline to the board. The first thing I would do is leave the tablets to one side. It is after all the first lesson of the year, time for students to tell you what they did in their holidays and get out their mobile phones to regal everyone with photos of whichever exotic location they spent their vacations in. Remember that students are used to doing things on their phone as most probably are you.   There is already a digital know-how to tap into. But bear in mind that it would be wrong to assume that students have touched a tablet before and therefore know how to use it. So before we get going on the digital books we need to discover what they know. In true traditional classroom style, what better way to do this than a ‘find someone who’ exercise. You know the one I mean, students have a set of statements that they walk around the class turning into questions and searching for someone who answers yes. Here are some (for an iPad) that I show on a screen and get students to do: Find someone who: Can switch the tablet on Take a screenshot Search the iPad Mirror the iPad through apple TV Turn up the volume Turn up or down the brightness Lock the screen’s orientation Take a photo Open an app Close an app Give students time to circulate and try and find people. Do feedback with the class, now is a good time to hand out the tablets so students can teach each other. This is where sitting in islands aids peer teaching. You can ‘check’ students are getting comfortable with the tablet by walking round to each island, offering advice and helping as necessary. After this task, I get the students to put the tablets down, give them some paper (yes paper!) and ask them to come up with a list of rules / limits for classroom use of tablets. These include factors such as staying on task, not downloading apps (though hopefully your IT person has locked down the wi-fi or added a content filter).   This is like making a class contract but not simply covering rules about punctuality and homework. It is now time to launch the digital coursebook and start getting the students used to the tools. If you need the students to make their own accounts to download the books then walk them through it using your tablet on a projector. If the books are already there, then get them to log in and start getting them used to the tools. It’s perhaps best not to go over them all in one lesson so as not to overload. On my tablet I project a word cloud of some of the tools like this: (made with the Word Art app) Get the students to switch on their tablets and tell them how to find their coursebook in OLB. They then work together to identify the features named in the wordcloud. When you’re ready to check the answers, switch your tablet to display the book and ask students to name the tools. If you are projecting onto a whiteboard you can of course write the name of the feature next to the tool. So that’s it, I hope that’s helped you overcome any first lesson dread. When you think it about it, starting with a digital coursebook is not that different from any lesson using a new coursebook.   At first preparation time might increase but it will improve as you get more familiar with your material, the same as it would with when using the new coursebook. Often in a first lesson, a teacher does an orientation quiz and here it’s not different though we’re orientating to tools not the book itself. What’s more as I mentioned earlier, a lesson using a digital coursebook doesn’t have to be dominated by the book. Here we spoke, collaborated, mind mapped and perhaps most importantly we got the students communicating in English. Right, now that’s the first lesson under your belt, time to get ready for the next one, which we’ll look at in the second post.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Multimedia & Digital, Teenagers Tagged: Android tablets, Apps, E-books, EdTech, iPad, mlearning, Mobile learning, Oxford Learner's Bookshelf, Shaun Wilden, Tablet devices, Technology in education

Andrew Dilger is a freelance teacher, trainer and editor. He graduated from Oxford University and has 25 years’ experience working in ELT. He is a CELTA- and DELTA-qualified teacher. He has taught English in Italy, Croatia and the UK and has given training sessions in over 10 different countries. He has also edited a wide range of materials for major ELT publishers, as well as having been Managing Editor of the Professional Development list at Oxford University Press. Ahead of his webinar ‘Published resources vs. teaching unplugged’ on July 23rd, Andrew summarizes what he’ll be covering during the session. Published resources these days are incredibly useful … and SO multimodal! But do you sometimes hanker for something a bit more simple and ‘unplugged’? This webinar will consider ideas for creating more learner-centred moments in your lessons to sustain motivation in both you and your students - all with a minimum of preparation! As the well-earned summer break approaches, perhaps you’re looking to re-evaluate how you teach. Maybe even restore some of that idealism you had at the start of your career? Or perhaps you’re looking to simply get a handful of cracking new ideas to try out when you start up again in September. Both of these options are possible in this webinar, which will focus firmly on practical issues arising from our continuing ‘journey’ as English language teachers. We’ll evaluate why published resources are so important but also what their potential limitations are. In addition, we’ll assess how possible or advisable it is to ‘unplug’ your lessons completely in an age when our students (and school management) expect us to be technologically up-to-date. Topics which will be covered include: Your ‘desert-island’ coursebook What does ‘unplugged’ really mean? The teaching-learning space Grammar (the ‘G-word!) The mother of all lesson plans Activities guaranteed to put learners at the centre The power of the infographic Digital-only resources During the webinar, there’ll be opportunities for you to share experiences, insights, tips (and even grumbles!) with teaching colleagues and members of the ‘OUP family’ from around the world. To find out more and join Andrew at this free webinar, please follow the link below and register.  Filed under: Multimedia & Digital, Professional Development Tagged: EdTech, Professional Development, teaching unplugged

Zarina Subhan is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer. She has taught and delivered teacher training at all levels, across the world. She joins us on the blog today for the final article in a series focused on boosting classroom participation. Last week, she proposed improving listening skills as teachers to better support your students. This week, Zarina introduces cognitively-challenging tasks to engage and involve your students. "Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too." Voltaire When students are busy in an English class thinking about how to go about saying something, they can become weighed down by the need to produce perfect linguistic patterns. So they focus too much on accuracy, rather than really communicating. So how can we get them to communicate if they don’t have enough language? We set tasks at a low language level. This can, however, create another problem: these kinds of activities can fail to challenge learners cognitively. Although our students cannot yet express complex thoughts and ideas in English, they can of course do so in their native tongue (and possibly in other languages too), so the activities we give them need to bear this in mind. One way of making lessons more intellectually stimulating is to introduce more variety. A new report in the UK by the Sutton Trust touches on research in cognitive psychology by Bjork and Bjork, which found that varying the types of task, practice and context of learning improves later retention, even though it makes learning harder in the short term. In other words, we can stimulate students with new and alternative ways to practise language, rather than sticking to the same type of activities. It’s also useful to look at Bloom’s Taxonomy, which has helped teachers to monitor the level of difficulty of task types for many decades. Have you tried applying Bloom’s Taxonomy in class? Here are a variety of activities based around the different stages of learning. They all use the same text - a blog entry written by an events organiser, taken from International Express Elementary. Download the text, then try out some of these activities for yourself. Activity 1: Remembering Remembering is the basic level of cognition, and this is a good stage to deal with new language. For example, if we look at Claudia Oster’s blog (exercise 5), the comprehension questions below the text are at the basic level of thinking because the answers can easily be found in the text and involve a simple referral and repetition. As the questions asked are cognitively unchallenging, any new language found can be easily dealt with at this stage. This is where the teacher is helping students to start with an equal footing - by establishing the main theme of the text and ensuring all students have understood new key words. Activity 2: Understanding Once your students have completed the above activity, you can move them on to the understanding stage: the second level of cognition. So, to return to Claudia’s blog, exercise 6 encourages students to skim the text looking for examples. In this case, they need to identify the expressions with do, have, make and take, and use these to complete the word maps on the previous page (exercise 3). Because the students have a second chance to understand the context, identify and select the correct examples, they will have moved up a level of cognition. Activity 3: Applying The next stage is applying, which involves using given information in a new context. This is dealt with in exercise 7, which asks students to consider additional collocations to the ones in the text. They have to choose a correct verb, where some of the phrases are from the text or similar to them, but others are new. Activity 4: Analysing Analysing involves comparing and questioning differing ideas. You could go back to the quiz (exercise 4) that appears on the previous page to Claudia Oster’s blog, and ask your students to analyse how stressed Claudia is, according to the quiz. Here is answer key: Activity 5: Evaluating In the evaluation phase of cognition you could ask students to decide if Claudia is going to burn out from her stressful job. Ask students to look at the advice given in exercise 1, and get them to decide on four pieces of advice they would give her. Ask students to work in groups, and get each group to evaluate the other’s advice in terms of how realistic it is and whether Claudia would be likely to act upon it. Activity 6: Creating Creating is the stage where something new is formed, designed and produced. To round off this series of activities, why not get your students to write a questionnaire? Ask them to work in groups of three or four to carry out a class survey of whether people find their work stressful. They must produce six questions with multiple choice answers. Encourage them to carefully consider what the responses might be in order to create good multiple choice options. Make sure different group members taken turns at doing the actual interviewing. If you like, the others could video or record the process - or simply listen. You could ask learners to record the results in a graph, write a short paragraph, or present them to the class, depending on language level. I hope the above has shown that it is possible to design cognitively-challenging tasks that boost understanding, and make learning interesting for students of all levels! This is the final article in my series of six ways to boost classroom participation. I hope you have enjoyed the series, and if you have missed any of the previous articles, please visit the OUP website to catch up. Zarina Subhan is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer. She has taught and delivered teacher training at all levels, across the world (Greece, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, China, Peru and the UK, where she is from). Since 2000, she has been involved in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) materials writing, training trainers and teachers in facilitation techniques and teaching methodology. Zarina now spends her time divided between teacher training, materials writing, trainer training and presenting at conferences.   References http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/great-teaching/ http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/EBjork_RBjork_2011.pdf Willingham, D. T. (2008). What Will Improve a Student’s Memory?. American Educator, 32(4), 17- 25.   This article was first published in the November 2014 issue of Teaching Adults. To find out more about the newsletter and to sign up, click here. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Skills Tagged: classroom participation, Cognitive Skills, cognitive tasks, EAP, Teaching adults

Ahead of our webinar on using e-books in class, Stacey Hughes, an Oxford teacher trainer with 20 years teaching experience, looks at how using e-books can enhance the learning experience for your students. As e-books become more popular, you may find yourself asking what all the hype is about. After all, an e-book is just a book on a screen, right? Not anymore. While early e-books just replicated the print book, today’s e-books have enhanced features.  Video and audio plays straight from the page, and some e-books let students slow down the audio, record their own version, and compare to the original.  Students can answer questions, and then check if they’ve got the answers right straight away with automatic marking.  They can create written or voice recorded notes, draw on the page, and highlight words they might be struggling to pronounce so they can go back later to practice them. And if you set your students a page to complete for homework, once they’ve finished the student can email the page to you for marking. All these interactive features are great, but pose a challenge for teachers who are new to e-books. How do you teach with an e-book?  How do you manage the class?  How do you balance the activities in class to include pair and group work alongside the e-book? In my upcoming webinar I will talk about different types of e-book and how you can start using them. I will highlight common interactive features and tools and give practical ideas on how to exploit these for learning. I’ll also give tips for how to effectively manage the use of e-books in a class. e-Books have been shown to increase student motivation and their popularity is on the rise, so now is a great time to see what they’re all about and whether they’re right for you and your classes. Join me for my webinar entitled ‘Using e-books in class: practical tips and ideas’ on 9th or 10th September 2015. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Multimedia & Digital, Professional Development Tagged: Adult Learners, Digital, Professional Development, Webinar

Stephen Ryan has been a language teacher for over twenty-five years and is currently based in Tokyo. He is interested in various aspects of psychology in language learning but particularly in learner motivation. He has recently co-authored (with Sarah Mercer and Marion Williams) the Oxford University Press book Exploring Psychology in Language Learning and Teaching. Motivation has become a ‘hot’ topic within language education, attracting considerable attention from both researchers and teachers. There is now widespread agreement that motivation is a key factor in successful language learning and that even the very best teaching is unlikely to be effective without motivated learners. However, it is worth remembering that this has not always been the case and that such interest in the motivation of language learners is a relatively recent development. For a very long time researchers and teachers, unsurprisingly, were focused on teaching, on understanding the most effective teaching methods and techniques. The assumption behind this approach was that if only we could find the best ways to teach then learning would occur automatically. There was very little consideration of the learner’s role in the learning process or of any variability among learners. The only real acknowledgement of learner individuality came in the form of aptitude; learners were believed to have certain innate abilities and these abilities determined both the pace of learning and the ultimate level of attainment. Fortunately, over the years, teachers have come to think more about the contributions learners make to their own learning and this learner-centred outlook places motivation at the centre of the learning process. This new, prominent role for motivation seems like a very hopeful and optimistic development, suggesting that both teachers and learners have the power to shape learning. But what exactly is motivation and how can we as teachers enhance motivation in our learners? In the first part of this webinar I will discuss what it is we really mean when we use the word ‘motivation’. Of course, it is a word that we all use in our everyday lives, and as such it is a word we tend to use somewhat loosely. However, when we discuss ‘motivation’ in a professional sense, there is a clear need to be more focused in what we mean and in this webinar I hope to challenge some of the assumptions behind familiar, everyday understandings of motivation. The theory of motivation is a fascinating topic, spanning a huge range of human behaviour and psychology—in fact, there is far too much to cover in a single webinar. Therefore, in this webinar I intend to concentrate on some of the more practical aspects of motivation and those most closely related to the concerns of language teachers—and learners. In particular, I would like us to think about some of the ways in which teachers use rewards in order to motivate their students and the possible motivational effects of teacher praise and feedback. Although the webinar will be based around my own views on motivation, I will be making every effort to give you the opportunity to share your ideas. I sincerely hope that you will be ready to participate so that we can enjoy a lively and productive exchange of ideas. Filed under: Professional Development, Skills Tagged: Motivation, Professional Development, Skills, Teacher Development

  Image courtesy of Colin K on Flickr Stephen Greene is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials developer with nearly 20 years’ experience. He has taught people of all ages and abilities all around the world, including in Taiwan, Poland, Rio de Janeiro and the UK. He is now based in Curitiba in the south of Brazil where he writes a blog about bringing up a bilingual child at headoftheheard.com. This is the first article of a three-part IELTS series, exploring the basics of helping your students through their IELTS exam. As with most things in life, the key to a successful IELTS course is in the preparation. If you have a clear idea of what you and your students need to do from the outset then you are far more likely to help your students achieve their goals than if you have no plan at all. Likewise, as the expression goes, first impressions last, so if you can impress your students in the first few classes, then they are more likely to trust you for the rest of the course. It is important to have as much information at your disposal as possible before the course actually starts. This will help you to prepare properly and show your students that you really do know what you are talking about. I have added a number of questions for each of the points listed below, but the answers will often depend on your own context. Where possible, I have included some links which might help you to start finding your own answers. Know the exam If this is the first time your students have attempted the IELTS exam then they are likely to be very anxious about what it entails and what they will be required to do. Some questions students might have include: How many papers are there? How does the scoring system work? Which is the most difficult part of the exam? What’s the difference between the General exam and the Academic one? As well as knowing the ins and outs of the exam, you will also need to know how students go about taking it. Questions they might have include: Where is the nearest exam centre? When are the exams being held? When is the registration deadline? How long does it take to get the results? How much does it cost? The official IELTS site has some excellent information for both teachers and students, as does the British Council site. Know your students It isn’t always possible to find out a lot of information about your students until the course actually starts, so you will probably need to do some fact finding in the first few classes. As well as the usual information about the number of students in the class, their ages and backgrounds, some questions you might want to ask yourself include: Have they taken the exam before? What score do they need? Why are they taking the exam? Where do they hope to study after the exam? What do they hope to study? Know your timetable There is a lot to cover in an IELTS course, so make sure you have enough time to pack everything in. While your school might have its own natural rhythm, this might not fit with the dates of exams in your local centre. Questions to ask include: When are the exams? How long is the course? What do I need to focus on? Find your local exam centre and get in touch to find out their exam dates and requirements. Know your material Whatever course you are running, you will need to be very familiar with the material you are using. With IELTS, this is even more key as time is such an issue. As well as a coursebook, you might need to use extra material, such as practice tests (which you can find here) or online material. Some questions to answer include: Is the material relevant to your students? Where can I find supplementary material? In my next article (on the blog next week), I’ll be sharing some of the free online material I use in my classes. Specifically, I’ll explore lexis, Part One of the Writing paper and the Yes/No/Not given questions commonly found in the reading paper. This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of the Teaching Adults newsletter. To learn more and subscribe, click here. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults Tagged: British Council, exam, Exam preparation, exam strategy, IELTS, Teaching adults

With over 30 years of experience as a teacher and teacher trainer, Veríssimo Toste looks at how the role of a teacher is changing, ahead of his webinar on using Messages, Discussions and Chats to increase student interaction. Today’s students are not limited to learning English in the classroom only. Through the use of technology, learning English has become 24/7 - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In this environment, what is the teacher’s role in helping their students learn? More importantly, how can technology help teachers to help their students learn better? Using messages, discussions, and chats as an integral part of their classes, is one way. Through the use of these simple features, teachers can address questions of mixed ability, customised learning and teaching, personalisation, as well as simply being able to increase contact time with the language, beyond the classroom. Using "Messages" provides teachers with a simple means to contact their students, as well as for students to be in contact with their teacher. In this way, teachers can follow up in individual needs, without taking up valuable class time. Students can ask questions or raise doubts without the pressure of time and classmates that can be a part of the lesson. In using "Messages" teachers and students can more easily focus on their communication, as these appear within the learning management system (LMS) and so are not confused with general, personal e-mails. "Discussions" gives teachers and students a forum in which they can continue discussing a specific topic raised in class. Students can exchange their opinions with each other over a period of time. They can participate when it is more convenient to them. They have time to consider their responses. Discussions can range from topics raised in class, to language points based on specific grammar or vocabulary, or how to prepare for a test. The options are limitless. The key is that through the use of discussions online, students can increase their contact time with English. Whereas discussions can take place over a specific period of time, with students participating at their convenience, chats are an opportunity for the teacher to get everyone together at the same time, although not necessarily in the same place. Seeing that the class had difficulty with a specific topic or language point, the teacher can set up a chat in which the students participate online. Students have an opportunity to follow up on the topic on their own, thus preparing before the actual chat takes place. By basing the use of messages, discussions, and chats on work done in the classroom, the teacher can provide students with a platform to expand their learning. To find out more about practical classroom activities to achieve this, join me on the 6th or 8th of October 2015 for my webinar, "Messages, Discussions and Chats: Increasing Student Interaction". Filed under: Professional Development Tagged: EdTech, free webinar, Learning Management System, LMS, Online learning, Teacher Development, Technology, Webinar

Stephen Greene is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials developer with nearly 20 years’ experience. He has taught people of all ages and abilities all around the world, including in Taiwan, Poland, Rio de Janeiro and the UK. He joins us on the blog today for his second in a series ‘Strategies for teaching IELTS’. In my first article in this series, I looked at some of the things that are important to consider before the course starts in order to hit the ground running and develop some good momentum. In this article, I’ll explore how to help your students with some key areas, specifically lexis, Part One of the Writing paper and the Yes/No/Not given question commonly found in the Reading paper. Lexis There are two types of IELTS test; the Academic Test and General Training Test. 80% of candidates take the Academic Test and if this is the case for your students then lexis will hold the key to getting a good grade. If candidates are comfortable with academic-type language, even if they don’t understand every detail, it can make all the difference. Of course, there is so much language that could be deemed ‘academic type’ that it is impossible to teach every lexical item that could come up in an exam. There are, however, a number of strategies we can use to maximise the amount of time we have available: Encourage students to use a lexical notebook. I have found that students who take a little bit of time to organise their lexis in this way improve their language very quickly. Create a lexical wall in your classroom and add, or get your students to add, useful lexis from each class. Alternatives to this might include a blog, wiki or a notice board. Focus on certain areas of language that are vital, for example conjunctions, lexis to describe trends (see Writing Part 1 below) and formal versus informal language. Expose students to academic language outside the classroom. There are a number of free resources, for example from the BBC, that you can ask your students to use in their own time. If your students are taking the General Training Test then the first three ideas from the list above are still vital for expanding their lexis and ensuring a better result. Writing Part 1 There is no getting around it, but for most candidates (and teachers), this can be a very boring question. It can also be a challenge because a lot of students rarely have to write anything like this even in their own language, never mind doing it in English. It also demands that candidates can both identify important pieces of information, and write about them. Some useful strategies I have used for this question include: Make the data relevant. Find raw data about the cities or countries where your students come from. A lot of countries will have the equivalent of the UK’s Office for National Statistics which will be relevant to your students. Ask your students to carry out surveys with people they know to gather data, and then write about it. Focus on the very specific language that your students will need. The main area is the language of describing trends and one thing I have found very useful is to show how one phrase can be used in two different ways. For example, if you introduce unemployment rose sharply you should also highlight how students could alternatively say there was a sharp rise in unemployment. Expose students to good practice. I use the Daily Chart from The Economist magazine, which provides up-to-date and relevant graphs for students to describe. Yes/No/Doesn’t say From my experience, this is the question that causes the most problems for a number of reasons: it is an unusual question type; candidates can spend a lot of time trying to find information that isn’t in the text because they don’t trust themselves; the questions themselves are often purposefully misleading. There is no silver bullet for answering this type of question, but there are a few helpful hints that we can give. Yes/No/Not given questions are usually looking for the writer’s opinion. True/False/Not given questions are usually looking for facts from the text. The questions usually follow the same order in the text. This means if you have found the information for questions 7 and 9, the information for question 8 is between those two. If you can’t find the information then the answer is probably Not given. If you don’t know the answer, guess Not given because you there is a good chance the reason you don’t know is because it isn’t in the text. Look carefully at the question, especially for words like often, always, sometimes because these will sometimes make the difference between True/False and Not given. Give students a text and ask them to write their own Yes/No/Not given questions. By going through the mechanics of writing this type of question, candidates often get an insight into how to answer them in the exam. Ask students to underline the information in the text that they think provides the Yes/No answer. This will make feedback easier as well as helping you identify why your students are making mistakes. I hope these tips prove to be helpful in preparing your students for the IELTS exam. Just focusing on these tricky areas will not be enough, but I have found that this is a good starting point, after which the rest becomes easier. In my next article, I’ll be looking at some strategies we can employ just before the exam. This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of the Teaching Adults newsletter. To learn more and subscribe, click here. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults Tagged: Exam preparation, Exams, Foundation IELTS, IELTS, Teaching adults, Teaching Adults newsletter

At Oxford University Press, we believe that education changes lives for the better. Every day, we aim to enrich the lives of individuals and communities through education and learning English. We can’t do this without you - the teachers in the classroom! That’s why we have just launched our #TeachingChangesLives campaign - to hear how your English Language Teaching has changed lives for the better. Verissimo Toste, who has taught English as a Foreign Language for 30 years and is now a teacher trainer working in the Professional Development Team at Oxford University Press, kicks us off with his story about how English teaching changed one of his student’s lives in particular.  A student in one of his classes was having trouble getting his father to sign his school projects. His father went to work before he got up and arrived back home after he had gone to bed. Watch the video below to hear the idea that Verissimo had to help this student, which not only improved the student’s English but also the relationship with his father. It’s stories like these that remind us how teaching can changes lives. Have you ever thought about how your own teaching has helped to change lives for the better? The   #TeachingChangesLives competition has been created for that purpose: to hear your stories. Enter today and you could win a two-week all-expenses paid Professional Development scholarship in Oxford in summer 2016! To enter, show us how your English language teaching has changed lives for the better by submitting a short presentation (no longer than 15 slides) or video (no longer than 5 minutes). Your story can focus on an individual student, a class, or an entire institution. We look forward to hearing how your teaching changes lives! Find out more here and don’t forget to share your stories on Twitter using the hashtag #TeachingChangesLives. If you want to hear more stories and teaching tips from Verissimo, why not take a look at his videos on our YouTube Channel.Filed under: Professional Development Tagged: #TeachingChangesLives, OUP, teacher appreciation, Teacher Training, Teaching

Stephen Greene is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials developer with nearly 20 years’ experience. He has taught people of all ages and abilities all around the world, including in Taiwan, Poland, Rio de Janeiro and the UK. He joins us on the blog today for his final article in a series ‘Strategies for teaching IELTS’. In the first article in this series, I discussed some things to consider at the very beginning of an IELTS course, and then in article two I explored how to tackle some of the more problematic parts of the exam. Here, I will look at some strategies you can use at the end of your course to make sure your students are as prepared as possible for the exam day. Mocks It is important that students have at least one full mock before the exam day. Make sure you find some practice tests - such as the free ones which support IELTS Masterclass on the OUP website. When you set up the mock, it’s a good idea to imitate the exam conditions as fully as possible. This will help prepare students for the real thing, and it will give them a sense of how important timing is. Students need to realise that the Listening, Reading and Writing papers take 2 hours 40 minutes - with no breaks in between! When you run the full mock it is a good idea to use the answer papers like the ones that will be used in the exam. When a student is working quickly and misses a question out to come back to it later, it can be very easy to forget about this when completing the answer sheet. This can mean that all of the remaining questions have the wrong responses. For the Speaking paper, as well as conducting mock tests, make sure students get to watch an example of somebody else taking the test. Outside of language exams, students rarely have a spoken test so many are understandably nervous about what the whole procedure entails. You can find examples of spoken IELTS tests on YouTube. On the day Discuss what students should do on the day of the exam. Here’s what I advise my classes: Get to the exam centre early - this gives people time to calm down, find their room, have a bite to eat and make sure they are not rushing due to traffic problems. Use English before the exam - listening to a podcast, reading a book or having a conversation in English before the exam puts students in the right frame of mind. Prepare for a long exam - As mentioned above, students will have to sit in the exam for over two and a half hours, so they should make sure they have had refreshments and visited the bathroom before the exam starts. Candidates can ask to leave the room to go to the bathroom, but this will take up valuable time. At the exam centre This may sound obvious, but make sure that students know where the exam centre is and how to get there. In many cities it is possible to sign up for the exam in a different place from where it actually takes place, so point this out to students if necessary. Go through the regulations with regards to the identification that candidates need to provide, highlighting the fact that they must have the same identification that they provide when enrolling. To ensure a high standard of security, centres are required to take photographs of candidates and scan their fingerprints. Reassure students that all images are dealt with according to the local laws and that there are procedures in place for candidates who might be uncomfortable having their photograph taken in the presence of other people. If you or your students would like more information about the security procedures on the day it is best to check with your local centre. I’d suggest talking about these kinds of logistical things before the very last class, as this will give you and your students the chance to find out the answers to any difficult questions. I hope you have found this three-part IELTS series useful, and I wish you and your students the best of luck in preparing for the test. This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of the Teaching Adults newsletter. To learn more and subscribe, click here. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults Tagged: Adults, Exam practice, Exam preparation, Foundation IELTS, IELTS, mock IELTS, Teaching adults, Teaching Adults newsletter

Natalia with the other 2015 winners and Liz Soars, Headway author.From left to right: Inanc Karagoz (Turkey); Svetlana Kandybovich (Montenegro); Natalia Valentini (Argentina); Liz Soars (Headway author); Elena Ryabova (Russia); Erika Orban (Hungary); Xiaoyan Deng (China). Ever wanted to know what it’s like to win the Headway Scholarship, and spend two weeks on an all-inclusive teacher training course at Exeter College in Oxford? Natalia Valentini, one of our 2015 winners, and Gloria Rossa, one of our 2014 winners, reveal how they found the experience. This could be you next year - enter today! Natalia Valentini - Headway Scholarship 2015 winner from Argentina Every August just after the winter holidays, I’ve been experiencing this burning desire to explore what it is like to live, study or work in a foreign country. As a teacher and translator there came a point in my professional life when I started thinking that in my local context there were no further opportunities for me to make progress in my career. Anyway, it was not until this summer when I came across this post on the Oxford University Press Facebook site when my luck began to change. The Headway series written by Liz and John Soars were opening a competition for teachers who used the series. I didn’t hesitate to take part in it and I worked for two weeks on my video and PowerPoint® presentation to submit them in due time. And after waiting for 3 months I got an email. The subject line was: "Headway scholarship. Winner!." The email went on like this: "Congratulations - you are a winner of this year’s Headway Scholarship competition! On behalf of Liz Soars and the Headway Scholarship Foundation, we are delighted to tell you that you have been awarded one of the Headway Scholarships for 2015 which means that you are entitled to a place on the 2-week English Language Teachers’ Summer Seminar at Exeter College in Oxford. Now I couldn’t believe my eyes. It actually said I was entitled to a place -a proper scholarship I would say! And I was one of the lucky ones, together with 5 more teachers from Europe and Asia. So there I went, off to Oxford for 2 weeks on a Teacher Summer Seminar where I would meet colleagues from over 30 countries to share our experiences and to learn from the best tutors, those whose names we’ve been reading on the covers of the coursebooks we use. I know, I know… lucky me! Read Natalia’s full blog here Gloria in Oxford Gloria Rossa, Headway Scholarship 2014 winner from Argentina I have a confession to make: I fell head over heels in love with England the moment I set foot in it. I must say tears ran down my cheeks when the plane landed. The flight had been long - 13 hours! - yet quiet and interesting. It was a night flight, but I didn’t get to sleep much - I was so excited! I arrived at Heathrow Airport at 6:30 am on Sunday, 27th July, 2014. I went through Customs and Passport Control very quickly. Friendly staff, documents and letter of recommendation from Exeter College OK, no problem at all. The trip from London to Oxford was charming. It was a nice summer morning and there wasn’t much traffic due to the early hour. I’m a quite shy person. Many people don’t know this, but I have to overcome a series of personal obstacles whenever I want to approach someone and say "Hello!" -and when you are in an English-speaking country for the first time in your life and you´re not a native speaker, this is even harder! However, I must have turned into a completely different person on arrival at Exeter, for it was so easy for me to start talking to the others. Everybody seemed so friendly and happy to be there! Anyway, getting used to the variety of accents was particularly difficult for me: there were 60 teachers attending the seminar, and we were from 20 different countries. Pretty impressive, don’t you think? I had never lived such a cosmopolitan experience in my whole life! Read Gloria’s full blog here The Headway Scholarship 2016 is open now. You could win a 2-week all-inclusive teacher training course in Oxford in July 2016. Enter today! The Headway Scholarship is made possible through the generosity of John and Liz Soars.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults Tagged: Competition, Headway competition, Headway Scholarship, John Soars, Liz Soars, Scholarship, Teacher Training

Marie Delaney trained in the UK as an Educational Psychotherapist, English Language and Modern Foreign Languages Teacher and Teacher Trainer. Marie has extensive experience of working with pupils who are experiencing difficulties at school. Today, she joins us ahead of her webinar, ‘De-stress your classroom: stress management and well-being for teachers and students’, to discuss what she will be covering in the sessions. Teaching and learning can be fun and energising. However, many teachers and students nowadays feel pressurised, stressed and de-motivated. Teachers all over the world seem to be faced with increasingly unrealistic expectations, scarce resources, widely diverse student needs as well as the continuing challenge not to be replaced by new technologies. Surveys suggest that students also have increased levels of anxiety and stress around school and future prospects. We need, therefore, to be looking at the issue of teacher and student well-being. How can we reduce the feelings of stress and anxiety in our classrooms? We need to begin by recognising and acknowledging them. Suppressing and denying feelings of stress will often lead to physical and emotional burnout. Stressed teachers are not effective. It is important to focus on conscious coping strategies for managing our own well-being so that we can best support our students. Strategies to promote teacher well-being include: Eating properly, getting enough sleep and regular exercise. Spending time on activities which you love doing. Find time for your interests and passions. Becoming aware of people and tasks which energise you and those which drain you. Make sure you are creating time in your day/week for those which give you energy and positive feelings. Talking through issues with supportive colleagues, who do not need to provide solutions but who can listen non-judgementally. Avoid moaning sessions with negative colleagues, which do not make anyone feel any better. Practising positive self-talk and catching your own unhelpful thoughts. Be kind to yourself and don’t expect perfection. Trying to stay in the moment and enjoy it. Noticing what is working and doing more of that, rather than paying attention only to problems When we start to do these things more consciously we can begin to share the ideas with students. Many of them do not possess good coping strategies for times of stress and anxiety. They need to learn how to get into positive states for learning. For example, music can be used as a positive trigger or anchor to bring classes into a calm mood for learning. It is worth spending some time helping students to identify other positive triggers for their own moods and encouraging them to use them to get into the right frame of mind for learning. It can be useful to teach students how thoughts can affect feelings and behaviour. For example, optimistic thoughts can influence a student’s success. An optimistic student who gets 5/10 thinks ‘That’s good, I know half of this, I need now to look at what I got wrong and see who can help me get it right. A pessimistic student who gets the same mark, thinks ‘Oh no, I’m so stupid, I might as well give up now’. These thoughts will affect their feelings and their behaviour in the approach to the next test. The webinar on 22nd and 23rd October will explore this topic in more detail and suggest further ways for teachers to de-stress their classrooms. Filed under: Professional Development Tagged: Classroom management, Stress, Stress-free classroom, student anxiety, student stress, well-being