QLS Celebrated Its 20th Anniversary at Zappeion Hall
QLS, the multi-award-winning network of Quality Language Schools, celebrated its 20th anniversary with a unique gala on Thursday 23 June, at the iconic Zappeion Hall.
QLS has made a difference in f...
Graded Reading for Grades: How Graded Readers can help with Exam Preparation
Preparing students for tests is a burden all teachers must bear. Test preparation can be taxing and take away valuable learning time from students as well as the enjoyment of learning a new language. ...
Graded Reading for Grades: How Graded Readers can help with Exam Preparation
Preparing students for tests is a burden all teachers must bear. Test preparation can be taxing and take away valuable learning time from students as well as the enjoyment of learning a new language. ...
September 2022
School teachers’ quality of work is unique not only in the quantity of work required of them but also primarily in the complexity and nature of their relationship with students. In schools, educators ...
Never lose contact with your inner child!
Teaching junior classes! Some of us love it, others dread it. In the latter case, kindly abstain from ever getting involved with it, lest you discover that it is not the nightmare you feared it would ...
Teaching Materials and Young Learners
The enormous amount of existing materials for the teaching of English to young learners might lead us to think that everything has been invented and nothing is left to be discovered in EFL. But when y...
The energy chants & rhymes bring to teaching
Rhymes and chants bring energy and joy to the learning experience of kids, add variety to our teaching materials and practices and help the class bond. Rhymes usually tell very short stories in verse ...
It is Yoglish o’clock
Do you remember yourself when in kindergarten? Do you remember your itchy feet when you were asked to sit still?
Human beings start their journey to knowledge through movement and imitation. Moving ...
Teaching Young Learners: You Belong!
When teaching young learners there is one thing I want them to feel; safe. Vocabulary, grammar, and skills are important. But nothing really matters, if our students do not feel comfortable in their l...
Make learning fun
Fun, fun, fun! This is one factor that really matters to kids. And that goes for kids on the playground as well as those in the classroom. Many educators believe that kids learn best through play. And...
Turn to the Child and Shed Expectations
Classifications generate expectations. The expectation is a risky state of consciousness, as it sets precarious standards. It’s easy to lose sight of what is important when assessing against quantitat...
The Young and the Restless
Teaching a Junior Class for the First Time
It’s their first day of school, as your new pupils rush to their seats in anticipation of what they are going to do. Some are more timid than the rest, w...
Teaching Outside the Classroom
Teaching and learning experiences that take place outside the confines of the classroom walls have a range of benefits for both students and instructors. When students are asked to put into practice “...
Together we can!
Young learners (Primary Students) are curious, they want to create, explore, to question about the world! We have to help them explore! In this article, we will discuss some tips in order to create me...
Methods and Techniques for Young Learners
A number of principles can inform the following approaches to teaching young learners.Build teaching around activities and physical movement. Link language learning to physical activities by having...
The CEO of the Diana Award, Tessy Ojo CBE, Talks to Georgia Papas, Chair of QLS
Since 2016, the QLS Schools Network has collaborated with The Diana Award royal charity to organise and host its Anti-Bullying Ambassadors programme in Greece. The Diana Award is the only charity se...
Looking out for new teaching resources for your Junior classes?
What often urges language teachers to look out for new teaching resources is their concern whether the new materials ‘out there’ are more appropriate for their junior learners, centred on their own ...
Self-healing
“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in”… Leonard Cohen
The Appetizers
The end of the school year evok...
Make the most of your teaching!
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Co-teaching: It takes two (or more) to tango!
Co-teaching is when teachers are paired together in a classroom and they share equal responsibilities for planning, instructing, and assessing students. The most common way of co-teaching is when g...
Don’t Panic! It’s Just an Exam!
Five Essential Approaches to Test Taking
Is it that time of the year again? My, oh, my, how time flies! After months and in many cases years of preparation, it all comes down to that final exam which...
Grading Exam Papers: Dismantling Your Teaching
Summer of 2021 was a disillusioning experience: working as an exam marker brought me before grave teaching decisions of the past. And several others chosen not to be made.
An accepted application for...
Why Test and not Assess?
In the ELT community, there are so many opinions when it comes to Tests & Exams. There is a major revolution in Social Media where there are many educators who complain about Exams, Testing, Exam ...
E Class? Who Cares! Let’s Just Skip over to Lower!
Since its conception, the CEFR (Common European Framework) has offered a reference for languages as regards learning, teaching and assessment. This has established a solid, yet immense network of serv...
Exams, exams, exams stress…perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
It’s this time of the year! Again! Another examination period is coming and with that stress, pressure, anxiety, lack of sleeping or bad eating habits appear. Is this normal? Well, if you take it fr...
Exam-Prep: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
The exam period is looming on the horizon, while practice tests, vocabulary lists, and more exam-related instruction begin to intensify. You are flirting with the idea of incorporating some extra s...
Exam Time and the teaching is…
It is not the first time ELT NEWS focuses on language exams and it won’t be the last. Our educational system relies on tests scores to discriminate strong and weak learners. In addition, the five o...
Communication can change your… colours
I bet you have all listened to this Cyndi Lauper song. Quite cheesy I would say as seeing the true colours of someone could lead not to love but to a million different emotions to start with. ...
Teacher well-being - ‘Teacher what?’
..you think to yourself when you see this title and you smile ironically but you start reading the article because you still want to -slash- need to think positively!
Let’s try to describe what a ...
ELT Magazine Selections
Exams & Exam Preparation
Don’t Panic! It’s Just an Exam!
Five Essential Approaches to Test Taking
Is it that time of the year again? My, oh, my, how time flies! After months and in many cases years of preparation, it all comes down to that final exam which...
Grading Exam Papers: Dismantling Your Teaching
Summer of 2021 was a disillusioning experience: working as an exam marker brought me before grave teaching decisions of the past. And several others chosen not to be made.
An accepted application for...
Why Test and not Assess?
In the ELT community, there are so many opinions when it comes to Tests & Exams. There is a major revolution in Social Media where there are many educators who complain about Exams, Testing, Exam ...
E Class? Who Cares! Let’s Just Skip over to Lower!
Since its conception, the CEFR (Common European Framework) has offered a reference for languages as regards learning, teaching and assessment. This has established a solid, yet immense network of serv...
Exams, exams, exams stress…perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
It’s this time of the year! Again! Another examination period is coming and with that stress, pressure, anxiety, lack of sleeping or bad eating habits appear. Is this normal? Well, if you take it fr...
Exam-Prep: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
The exam period is looming on the horizon, while practice tests, vocabulary lists, and more exam-related instruction begin to intensify. You are flirting with the idea of incorporating some extra s...
Exam Time and the teaching is…
It is not the first time ELT NEWS focuses on language exams and it won’t be the last. Our educational system relies on tests scores to discriminate strong and weak learners. In addition, the five o...
IELTS online – the most trusted English test, soon from the comfort of your home
Get ready for IELTS Online, a flexible new way to take your IELTS Academic test.
English language test IELTS has announced that a secure online version of the exam will be rolled out globally in earl...
The history of the Cambridge Exams
Cambridge English Language Assessment is part of the University of Cambridge and has been providing English language assessments and qualifications for over 100 years. The first Cambridge English ex...
The 100% culture
In the English Language Teaching business our most-quoted number is 100. It’s all about 100%. Of what? Of language exams success of course! Everybody has to pass. 90% is not good enough. 70% is a to...
Education
Teacher research: Giving students roles to help develop their identities
Throughout my long career I have been committed to two fundamental goals: the professional development of my teachers and using the learning environment as a space to develop identities. In this artic...
Getting to know Computer Adaptive Testing and the LanguageCert Test of English (LTE) Listening & Reading
Introduction
Over the last 30 years or so, computers have had quite an impact on language testing. As regards Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT) in particular, it is currently on the leading edge of ...
Learning by Heart - a Plea for Poetry
Learning by Heart - a Plea for Poetry
A strange expression that. A very guilty one as well. The “by heart” approach has carried all the negative effects of Behaviourism in Education so the demonizati...
Choose the right graded readers for your course
Research shows that the more students read in English, the more proficient they become. Reading can significantly improve students’ level in all four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking....
Going materials-light
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac
If I need a series of complicated crafts, 5 different books, 15 photocopies and 3 different classroom setups to teach t...
Professional Development
Co-teaching: It takes two (or more) to tango!
Co-teaching is when teachers are paired together in a classroom and they share equal responsibilities for planning, instructing, and assessing students. The most common way of co-teaching is when g...
Communication can change your… colours
I bet you have all listened to this Cyndi Lauper song. Quite cheesy I would say as seeing the true colours of someone could lead not to love but to a million different emotions to start with. ...
Teacher well-being - ‘Teacher what?’
..you think to yourself when you see this title and you smile ironically but you start reading the article because you still want to -slash- need to think positively!
Let’s try to describe what a ...
Successful Continuous Professional Development
Professional development is very important in educators’ personal and professional life. We have all seen teachers, who passionately attend preservice courses but are left unsupported afterwards. Th...
Doctors specialize, shouldn’t you as an English teacher?
In my experience of 32 years in the ELT trade I have seen and worked in most sectors and I have one thing to say: it’s about time that the majority of EFL teachers who teach general English move on ...
Life-long learning -those were the days…
It’s been a school year like no other. Τhere was a moment, last spring, when every parent suddenly realized how deeply their lives and livelihoods depended on an institution too often in the backgr...
News
Using asynchronous learning to supplement the course
Admit it! The first thing that crossed your mind when you read supplementary material was handing out piles of photocopies to make up for last year’s lack of face-to-face teaching. No matter how co...
Adapting reading activities for the online classroom
The new classroom environment, the online classroom, involves adapting the printed coursebook we have been using so far, to fit the needs and demands of online teaching and learning. When adapting ...
Online Courses Due to COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cloud with a Silver Lining
The coronavirus pandemic has spurred the adoption of distance learning at all education levels all around the world. According to the World Economic Forum “the COVID-19 has resulted in schools shut ...
What helped me teach online
This year, as the pandemic hit and schools shut down, I had to re-invent myself as an online EFL teacher. Here’s a list of things I did to make my (and my students’) life easier.
1. Slow down
Onli...
Feature Sections
Don't get stuck in a rut, flip that coursebook now
It is generally accepted that most of our students are never at the same readiness level. As is the fact that we can never rely on a coursebook to be used as a one-size-fits-all student course guide...
Break Time’s Over! Are You Ready for the New School Year?
They say that every profession yields its own merits and concerns. Although some adhere to a strict albeit fixated working schedule, there are others that do not follow suite. It would be inconceiva...
ELT 2021 Influencers: Mike Kenteris
Dr Mike Kenteris is a learner, an educator, and a language school owner. Passionate about integrating learning technologies and gamification through active learning strategies to empower student eng...
ELT 2021 Influencers: Evangelia Vassilakou
Evangelia Vassilakou has a BA degree in Philosophy from Deree College, The American College of Greece and an MA degree in Applied Linguistics from Hellenic American University with a high distinctio...
Choosing the Right Coursebook: The Eternal Dilemma of Every ELT Educator
Have you ever found yourself in a state of displeasure as regards the choice of the ELT material you are using? Are your students struggling to learn, or even worse, uninspired? It’s common knowledg...
Adult Learning: How do adults learn best?
Part of being an effective instructor involves understanding how adults learn best. Compared to children and teens, adults have special needs and requirements as learners. Despite the apparent truth...
Teaching Young Children: An overview by Aris Mazarakis
The debate of how we should teach Languages to young children has been raging for decades and despite the existing methods, every teacher seems to walk into the language classroom armed with their o...
Christmas activities for the classroom
Make a Christmas Wishing Tree
1. Using green paper or card, have students trace around the outline of their hand.
2. Cut out the handprints.
3. Holding their handprint so that the fingers point d...
First Lesson Planning
No matter how many years you have been teaching, September is always a month for reflection. You promise yourself that this year will be different, that you will set new goals, stick to them and be ...
The energy chants & rhymes bring to teaching
Rhymes and chants bring energy and joy to the learning experience of kids, add variety to our teaching materials and practices and help the class bond. Rhymes usually tell very short stories in verse ...
Interviews
Fortune Cookies by Dimitris Maroulis
Fortune Cookies
Self-healing
“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in”… Leonard Cohen
The Appetizers
The end of the school year evok...
Decoding CODA
“There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see” Leonardo Da Vinci
Text by: Dimitris Maroulis
The Appetizers
Child of Deaf Adults is what ...
Imagine IF…
“Our role is to create the right conditions for life and learning to flourish. When we do that, we realise we have been in the miracle business all along”
(Sir Ken Robinson)
The Appetizers
There ar...
The Power of Metaphors
“Your time is limited: don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinion drow...
The Pygmalion effect: Positive encouragement and praise
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind” (Williams James, 1842-1910)
The Appetizers
In educational psychology, Acade...
From “lost and lackadaisical” to “assertive learners” within a month!
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The appetizers
I quote from Tim Murphey: “I had a couple of students in my classes at t...
Special Education Needs
The 3 Principles to Supporting Special Educational Needs Students
Research in the field of special educational needs and inclusion has equipped the educational community with evidence-based practices and ideas to support classroom diversity. How come that stude...
Teaching Dyslexic Learners Online
Technology is a gift for students with dyslexia, provided that it is used properly. This is because most dyslexic learners are visual learners and computer materials are designed to be accessed t...
Latest
Featured
Never lose contact with your inner child!
Teaching junior classes! Some of us love it, others dread it. In the latter case, kindly abstain from ever getting involved with it, lest you discover that it is not the nightmare you feared it would ...
Read MoreTeaching Materials and Young Learners
The enormous amount of existing materials for the teaching of English to young learners might lead us to think that everything has been invented and nothing is left to be discovered in EFL. But when y...
Read MoreThe energy chants & rhymes bring to teaching
Rhymes and chants bring energy and joy to the learning experience of kids, add variety to our teaching materials and practices and help the class bond. Rhymes usually tell very short stories in verse ...
Read More