Have you ever wondered how children learn?   As a teacher of young learners, parents often ask me what they can do to help their children learn. A simple question, you may think but one that often r...

Few language learners (if any) will achieve their full potential without studying at home. Homework provides the learner not only with the opportunity to reflect on what has just been taught without t...

Group-work is a form of classroom interaction that developed out of the need to get learners to work together and in doing so to produce more language and allow teachers to monitor this production. In...

Few of us would question that learning should be enjoyable. How a learner feels about learning will not only affect their approach to it but ultimately their chances of success later in life. What do...

As learners ourselves, we can all remember “good” and “bad” teachers. Now try to picture those “good” teachers – what made them so successful? The chances are that it wasn’t the materials they used or...

“Practice makes perfect” or so we believe but we often forget that learners can’t practise if they don’t understand what is required of them. Demonstration of the activity in hand is key to successful...

“To correct or not correct – that is the question!” What? Whether or not correction is required depends not only on our attitude towards correction but also on the nature of the error to be correcte...

Five things to remember: Plan your board before the lesson. Planning is not just about making sure you have enough space to write up what has been said but also a way of ensuring that the important p...

In simple terms the aim of a lesson details the teacher’s intention for that particular lesson.  It is often the first and foremost statement of a lesson plan against which the success of the lesson w...

The field of language education is changing at an ever-increasing rate. Traditional notions of education are giving way to newer, more innovative ways of thinking about how we learn, teach and acqu...

  Is NLP an educational tool or a form of therapy? I would be somewhat skeptical about using the term "therapy" because it sounds like a robust descriptor, and I am not sure if it reflects the a...

  Student mental health, well-being, and happiness have been the focus of research in the last decade or so. A lot is said about positive education. What does positive education promote?   It ...

  One of your areas of interest is the use of advertisements in ELT. Does the use of ads develop all four language skills? Yes, it does. It all depends on the teacher of course. There are ads wh...

  What are the biggest challenges Greek students face in learning English - confusing spelling, pronunciation, syntax? Greek students usually lack the proper pronunciation and the basic concept ...

In his long ELT career Alan Maley has seen a lot: blackboards turning white (and now computerized), the emphasis on reading, repeating and memorizing being replaced by the communicative approach, wh...

Trainer: Donald Alan Schön (September 19, 1930 – September 13, 1997) was a philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who developed the concept of reflect...

CD players and music have become a vital part of most modern classrooms. The first hint for any teacher regarding the use of music is that it is a tool, not a panacea. Just like any other tool, it ca...

  One of the most critical factors in determining students’ abilities is their age. Even when teaching the same material, there are major differences between teaching children and adults. Do we exp...

  With the new academic year being in full swing and just before the dawn of a new calendar year is there a chance that you feel you need to rethink or enrich some of the techniques and tasks that yo...

Kazantzakis: ‘You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.’ If you happen to wonder what CLIL is, here is the answer… CLIL stands for Content and Language Integ...

  The 11th of October is known as the national day of the child girl. I think I read it somewhere online and I got to thinking how people, especially children, shape all of their beliefs and grow up ...

  The calls and duties of teachers are many; diverse, multifold, and demanding. The practice of teaching English grows so overwhelmingly that one might miss to experience the lesson from the learner...

Major changes are happening in ELT triggering new educational models and transformations. New teaching programmes, and new approaches and techniques are being developed creating opportunities and chal...

Chess is a combination of sport, art, science, game and overall a way of life. It has always played a vital role in a young person’s character building, as it helps its shaping in many different ways...

Recently, I have spent a lot of hours in my office trying to write new lesson plans, new activities, and new STEAM challenges having my students in mind –how to help them become better people and life...

Professional development refers to continuing education and career training after a person has entered the workforce in order to help them develop new skills, stay up-to-date on current trends, and ad...

Exam Craze For many decades, Greece had had the largest number of candidates sitting for C2 exams. Other countries with much larger populations were nowhere near the Greek candidature for this level....

It takes at least 12 years in general for a native speaker to reach C1 level in his own language, so you can hardly expect that a teenage or adult foreigner can take any less than a decade to approach...

No matter which language, listening has been demonstrated to be a crucial component of successful human communication (Rost, 2011; Rost & Candlin, 2014; Chang, 2018), hence a skill not to be negle...

Language learning is a marathon, not a sprint The term ‘fluency’ in the world of EFL refers to the measurement of the ability one has to speak smoothly and freely without the need to pause and think ...

“Hey Ms. Katherine! Now that I’ve passed my proficiency exam, I’m officially a teacher like you! I’m capable of doing your job, right? Besides, how difficult can it be?” Woah there! Just hold your ho...

ELT NEWS has taken the initiative to publish a series of interviews on women’s leadership.  Whenever there are talks on gender and diversity, critics and sceptics often revolve around the big questi...

 A paradigm of excellence It requires approximately 700 – 800 learning hours to reach C1 and 1,000-1,200 learning hours to reach C2 level. Since the discussion is on humanities, language, in particu...

Covid-19 was no doubt a stressful time for teachers. I myself suffered my first ever migraine; a result, I believe, of so-called Zoom-fatigue. However, it was also the trigger for much ‘forced experim...

Planning lessons Lesson planning is an essential part of a teacher’s professional life. In some cases, it consists of merely having a quick look at the syllabus and/or coursebook material a few min...

 “Empathy is a choice, and a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling”. During a management course in July, I came acr...

A C2 Level Certificate: A midsummer’s night dream?   A C2 Level Certificate was, and still is, the dream of most English language learners. For the vast majority of learners reaching a C2 Level i...

    Cambridge University Press and Assessment is partnering with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on a new English language assessment. The goal of the new assessment...

When someone listens to the word ‘exams’ instantly the mind shifts into long hours of studying, mock tests, demanding preparation, and pressure, both for teachers and students. It is true though that ...

This may seem like an unusual introduction to an ELT article, but bear with me- I have a point and I promise I will be making it soon.  You see, my two sons are huge fans of LEGO. They spend hours on ...

Are you looking for a creative way to get your students more enthusiastic about writing? Are you one of the many teachers who want to make their writing lessons more engaging and awaken your students’...

  I find it really hilarious when people post tips on how to succeed in B2. Advice like 10 things to do in order to succeed in the exam is not only intimidating but also totally unnecessary.  For m...

How many times have you taught students in Exam Prep classes and felt that your teaching has not actually improved their communication ability or their general command of the language but still they...

  B2 is a scary level. It is the boss level in a video game that you and your students have been painstakingly practicing for years. You have trained your champions; you have groomed them to victorio...

Tom Reynolds is an experienced classroom practitioner, school senior leader, consultant-adviser, teacher-trainer, and national Specialist Leader of Education with expertise in raising standards of E...

How can technology work in class? Every now and then, I can see articles popping up on the media with huge, eye-catching headlines like “School ditches tablets”. Flashy stories come as no surprise. B...

  “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” (Mary Schmich) The Appetizers Mary Schmich, a Chicago Tribune columnist, was strolling along a beach when she noticed a small group of youn...

INTRODUCTION Many young learners nowadays are visual and auditory learners who are also generally quite computer literate, have no problems with digital technologies and enjoy watching videos on the ...

 The examiner was pacing up and down the aisle in the examination room which was gradually getting crowded. Nearly all the candidates had arrived for the written part of a C2 level examination, and it...

What affects student motivation? Students come to the classroom with a complex range of social and cultural contexts, schooling experiences, and educational beliefs, and it is always a challenge t...