Contents

News and views

• What is English as a Lingua Franca?
• Co-teaching – are two teachers better than one?

Exercise of the month

Ask the expert

This is an exercise which is best used at the beginning of a class or a course as it gives students the opportunity to talk about themselves.

1. Enter your class and tell your students that you’re an expert on a particular topic.
2. Divide your students into pairs and ask them to come up with some questions for you on your specialist topic.
3. Allow students time to ask you their questions and explain any emergent vocabulary that comes up.
4. Put students back into small groups (of three, for example) and ask them to decide on a topic they are an expert in. Get students to come up with questions for their group members.
5. When students have asked and answered their questions, ask them to feed back on what they’ve learnt to the whole class.

Word of the month

Affective filter: A theoretical construct or screen that exists between students and the language they want to learn which is affected by emotional variables. Affective filters can be either high (negative) or low (positive), and teachers need to be aware of how they can make their students more comfortable so they will be more receptive to learning. 

Interview

Scott Thornbury talks about The New A-Z of ELT, how not to plan a grammar syllabus, and Blended Learning.

Q&A

1. What are the essential elements I need to include in a lesson plan? How can it be less time-consuming?
2. How can we help shy students speak more confidently, even if they don’t have a large vocabulary?
3. What are some quick, sure-fire ways of increasing student motivation?