Teacher Discussion Forums

In my school, we are plagued with mobile phones that ring during lessons. However, I was able to turn this to an advantage a few weeks ago when I was doing comparatives and superlatives. I got the students to tell me about different models (they are real experts!) and I put some of the info on the w...

I like your idea to use storyboards to get people talking! Here's a couple of ideas to extend the lesson (a lot of this depends on whether your students are ready to 'have a go' or not!) After you get a 'standard' version of the story and everyone has the basic vocab, change the setting of the perso...

Wolfstone , thanks for your input, good luck with your learning! I agree that, in business, native speakers should make more effort to communicate clearly. I have sometimes seen native speakers of English deliberatly use 'difficult' expressions just to change the balance of power between themselves...

How long should an English lesson be?

The shortest lessons I have done have been just an hour (much too short) and most of my lessons now are 4 hours (too long!)

In your opinion, what is the idea length of time for an English lesson, and why?

First of all, I want to say how much I'm enjoying this discussion ! I wonder if the differences in our opinions are due to the differences in our students? This discussion is taking place under the heading of 'Adult Education'. However, are we talking about people who are outside of the usual "stude...

First of all, Larry , 'Strider' is most definitely a 'he' ! Secondly, I think the point raised by anitka in his / her (Oh dear! Here we go again!) original post touches on a much bigger issue. When adults learn English, how should we teach them? Should we adpot an 'academic' approach, using lots of ...

Here's an idea - instead of using the 'jargon' words for the tenses (past simple, present progressive...) try to use adverbs more (yesterday, at the moment...), especially in drilling exercises. If they get into the habit of using tenses with adverbs, they're more likely to use the right tense when ...

I once spent many hours over a Christmas holiday marking about 200 assessments for a centre for adult training. Later I discovered that many of the grades had been 'adjusted' to show progress. It made me wonder why they bothered to pay me to do the assessments if they were going to juggle the result...

Thanks for the feedback, I will try the ideas suggested so far. Roger , I agree with you in principle. For students who are really endevouring to master English, a monolingual dictionary (especially a good learner's dictionary) is better than a bilingual one. However, I think the majority of my stud...

First, congratulations on the new format! Into the 21st century and beyond! :D I'm teaching 18-22 year olds in France. They need to be able to use a bilingual dictionary in their exams (it's not as easy as it sounds!) so I'm looking for exercises, ideas, lessons on this subject. Any ideas? (The exce...