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Special Features

Back to School

Regardless of your position in the field of education or how much you love your work, scheduling in time to revitalize yourself is key in preventing burnout and promoting a positive attitude. When the scales weigh too heavily on the side of work, it can manifest in things like a short temper with loved ones or feeling shortchanged when Sunday night rolls...
ELT News Back to School

Young Learners? I Can’t Take it Anymore!

It’s no secret that teaching young learners comes across as an exhausting responsibility which eventually takes its toll on us as years go by. Come every September, we are introduced to our classes which will be bound to us for the foreseeable future. “Good grief! Another junior class? What else have they assigned me? Don’t tell me. Am I to be burdened...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Christmas Video Facts

  This is a great simple activity to practice their reading and writing skills while talking about some unusual facts about Christmas.  Activity Time:  15 mins Level: Teens and Adults Intermediate + First put your class in pairs. Tell them to write the following information on a piece of paper or on their notebooks. Make sure...
ELT News Christmas Activities

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 distinction. She has also been nominated as a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics (HAU). Evangelia is a committed and goal-driven educator with 20 years’ experience in...
ELT News ELT 2021 Influencers

Xmas Conversation questions

208087 1777x1346 christmasclassroom  Over 25 different questions to get the class talking about Christmas.   Level: Teens and Adults all levels.   • Did you enjoy last Christmas? Why? • How do you celebrate Christmas? • What is a traditional Christmas like in your country? • Do you decorate the outside of your house for Christmas? • Do you eat a turkey dinner for...
ELT News Christmas Activities

Responding to the Needs of Every Young Learner

   “All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think.” Sir Ken Robinson Elementary school learners generally vary greatly in their learning readiness, their interests, and their learning profiles. Teachers understand the different challenges each learner may need to...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

A game of Christmas Taboo

Christmas Taboo main Christmas Taboo is a simple game you can play in class to revise Christmas vocabulary. The aim of the game is simple; each person takes a card and they must describe the word on the card without saying or using that word or any of the additional words written on that card.  Level: Young learners and teens.    
ELT News Christmas Activities

Conditioning Young Learners’ Class Behaviours

What do you do when off-task behaviours and student disruptions occur? Here are some things you can do to establish procedures and avoid disruptions. Greet students at the door and give them a piece of construction paper in a specific shape and colour. The paper matches the different symbols that are hanging above each group of desks -call them your...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Graded readers in ELT: the benefits and ways of using them

graded readers  Graded readers or ‘readers’ are books that contain language adjusted to the level of the learner. The language is graded for vocabulary, complexity of grammar structures and also by the number of words. They are made to cater for all levels from beginners to advanced.  Graded readers can help learners build their confidence in reading, and...
ELT News Christmas Activities

My Teenage Students Are Ignoring Me! What Am I Doing Wrong?

A Heart to Heart about an Educator’s Role Today “Doesn’t anyone know the answer to my question?” you gently sigh, as half your class simply ignores your presence. You desperately direct the question to a specific student - a last attempt at rectifying the uncomfortable predicament you find yourself in - receiving an answer which will only add salt to...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Young Learners

  In the current issue of ELT NEWS, we focus on teaching young learners. A teacher of young learners, especially of those aged below 10 years ultimately takes on the role of children’s entertainer. For kid’s classes, you need to have a lot of different activities planned beforehand because if you are left thinking on the spot trying to come up with...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

And… Action: Let’s teach English with Cinema

  I have always believed that teaching language can mean nothing or something depending on how we use our power as educators not only to teach language, but also to make a difference in our students’ lives. Art and Cinema have the power to transform our classrooms and make our lessons memorable and meaningful for our students. Teaching with films and...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

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 be! No, dear colleagues, I am pulling your leg. Whether you find it is worth your energy or you prefer to teach older students, it is entirely up to you to do...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Presenting and teaching English vocabulary via Semantic Feature Analysis grids and matrixes (SFA)

Presenting and teaching English vocabulary via Semantic Feature Analysis grids and matrixes SFA  Text by: Evangelia Vassilakou  Traditional vocabulary instruction focuses on pre teaching either difficult or low frequency vocabulary. This can cause students to stop reading a text because of unfamiliar words. On the contrary, Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) departs from a traditional vocabulary approach and effectively develops...
ELT News Building Vocabulary

Helping teens debunk stereotypes through project-based lessons

  Teaching in the 21st century classroom is not an easy task. Teachers juggle with a vast variety of sources, interactive tools, online resources and try to keep a balance between online and physical classrooms. In teenagers’ classes I have been using project-based lessons in my school with considerable success. Project-based lessons or project-based...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

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 you are in a real classroom working with children you realise that not all existing materials are equally successful in the class. Why is that? Why do children...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

TEEN-ESCAPE ROOM

  Teaching young learners is always demanding, but teenagers, especially, is one of the most challenging age groups to teach. This, of course, does not happen without reason. As we all know, teens are at a phase of their lives when everything changes, both physically and mentally. They question things around them, they defy rules and regulations, they...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

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 and are the bread-and-butter of early child literature. When children act rhymes out, they imagine the characters and paint pictures in their minds of the...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Lack of vocabulary=lack of extensive reading

lack of extensive readingThe approach to building basic vocabulary involves identification of the most basic vocabulary, the benefits of extensive reading, the strengths of explicit instruction in vocabulary and the importance of using word notebooks and dictionaries. English-language learners (ELLs) face a learning paradox: on one hand they need vocabulary to be able to read...
ELT News Building Vocabulary

Why I love teaching teens!

    For some teachers teaching teens can be a harrowing ordeal. Teens are sometimes perceived as angry adolescents, rebellious and difficult to motivate and manage. For me it is completely the opposite. I find it very fulfilling teaching teens who as an age group are more insightful, authentic, and self-assertive.    For me the first step when teaching...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

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 learning environment, if they don’t feel safe making mistakes, if they don’t feel comfortable using the language. So, my first and most important advice for all...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Teaching Secondary: The Second Window of Opportunity

Introduction Around the world, multilingualism is becoming increasingly prevalent. As a result, today's teenagers will likely live in more multilingual societies than previous generations. Puberty has been shown to be a second window of opportunity for language learning, as teenagers are malleable and responsive to corrective feedback. Project-based...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

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 what is true of English-speaking children, in this case, will also be true of English-learning students. Here are some ways you can make learning more fun...
ELT News Teaching Young Learners

Grammar