Picking the right course book isn’t always an easy task. What you think may be the best choice, can prove to be a costly mistake for your class. However, no textbook can perfectly fit in each and every teaching situation and satisfy the needs of every group of learners or meet the requirements of every curriculum, or even suit every teacher. As...
Coursebooks are nowadays main sources of information in teaching; they help in achieving aims and objectives that have already been set in terms of learner needs. They are a useful aid for everybody who uses them - teachers as well as learners. In general, coursebooks tend to be appreciated but there are certain dangers: teachers who over-use a coursebook...
Illustrated storybooks provide an ideal resource for helping children learn English. This is because children love listening to stories. Storybooks present language in familiar and memorable contexts, and high quality illustrations help children understand as they match what they hear to what they see. In this way, children develop their visual literacy...
By Nancy Tasiopoulou, English Teacher, Doukas Primary School
Teaching young learners is a unique experience, as it brings together the use of art, music, games, storytelling and technology. Not one day in the kindergarten is the same with another, as the children’s spontaneous and inquisitive nature can lead the lesson to new paths of acquiring...
It takes a special person to teach English as a foreign language. It takes an even more special person to teach English as a foreign language to young children.
Young learners can be a real pleasure to teach because they do not feel stressed by their studies and approach everything with youthful innocence.
At this point in their lives, they may not...
Error treatment is one of the key issues in EFL writing faced by both teachers and researchers. When reviewing their learners’ texts, EFL teachers tend to provide feedback on several areas of the target language. The type of feedback that is relevant to linguistic errors is very often referred to as corrective feedback or error correction. The aim of the...
Sometimes, even at Proficiency level, L1 interference - the influence of the Greek way of thinking in the way we express ourselves in another language - is natural and inevitable. A lot of untrained learners tend to naively translate into English word for word more or less, the results of which can be disastrous, if not ridiculous and...
The recognition of proficient acquisition of the English as a Foreign Language is officially assessed and distinguished into as set of specific pillars. Proficient acquisition reflects eloquent, confident and multileveled command of English. C2 instruction covers the ground of linguistic and metalinguistic comprehension of the English language.
By...
Listening, reading, speaking and writing: these, as every language teacher knows, are the “four skills”. I expect that most language teachers, if asked, would say that they are all equally important. For sure, there is a great deal of variation between different learners’ skills profiles – their relative strengths in the respective skills, and the effort...
Tests can be powerful instruments of educational policy; thus testing can be seen as a political activity entailing tactics, intrigue and maneuvering within institutions that may not be political, but rather commercial, financial or educational.
Test development is a complex project bound up with myriads of agendas and considerations. In language testing...
