15 jan 2019

by | in Classroom Experiences, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development, Trends in ELT

I’d like to start this post with Maya Angelou’s beautiful statement: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” As a subscriber to MET (Modern English Teacher), I received the October 2018 issue at home this month. Their articles cover a wide range of topics as you can see from its cover: [caption id="attachment_8235" align="alignnone" width="539"] MET magazine October 2018[/caption] One article, in particular, drew my attention: Promoting gratitude among learners by Jeffrey Dawala...

07 nov 2018

by | in Classroom Experiences, Educational Technology, Lesson Ideas, Resources, Technology, Trends in ELT

As a child, I was a tech enthusiast. Born in 1980, I am an active member of a lucky generation which could see the evolution of computers from gigantic monsters which could occupy an entire building so as to produce what we know today as a very limited amount of data, to micro technology,which enables us to store virtually anything in a “cloud” of information. When I started teaching, back in the last century (phew, I AM getting old), rooms were constituted of a blackboard, chalk, chairs and books,...

06 nov 2018

by | in Educational Technology, Resources, Sin categoría, Teacher Development, Technology, Trends in ELT

Have you ever used Jing for anything in your language teaching experience? Have you ever heard of it? I am asking you these questions because I have been suggesting the use of this nice tool in my educational technology workshops for over 7 years now. But it's still interesting to notice that a lot of teachers all over the country have actually never heard of it, let alone use it. But don't worry, this is not an ad. Jing is actually a free tool by Techsmith, which makes it even nicer, isn't...

01 nov 2018

by | in Technology, Trends in ELT

Although augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are quickly becoming mainstream in education, and by 2018, the AR device market is expected to reach about $660 million, according to the New Jersey Institute of Technology.   AR and VR found their way into the EFL classroom in 2016, when the incredibly popular smartphone game Pokémon Go was launched and many teachers and language centres tried to incorporate it. However, only two years later, the outcomes of this initiative still remain unclear.   Ever since, while AR goggles have become quite common...

15 out 2018

by | in Classroom Experiences, ELT Management, Learner Autonomy, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development, Technology, Trends in ELT

When we ask learners what they like most about school, their usual response is ‘Nothing’, ‘My friends’, ‘Going home’, and few of them come up with a teacher or a subject that they actually enjoy. One of the possible reasons why learners are disengaged from their schooling is because they see no real purpose in what they learn there in relation to their future lives or employability prospects. They usually go to school because they have to and they have to pass the ‘Vestibular’ or ‘ENEM’. Another intriguing aspect...

06 set 2018

by | in Classroom Experiences, Language Acquisition, Learner Autonomy, Reflections about Education, Trends in ELT

Translanguaging is a term that was first coined in 1994 as trawsieithu (translanguaging in Welsh) by Welsh researcher Cen Williams in order to refer to the processes in which English and Welsh were used for different reasons and purposes in the same class. For example, students would read or listen to content in English and talk about it in Welsh. Ofelia Garcia made the term more popular in her book Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective (2009) and later in Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education...

05 set 2018

by | in Classroom Experiences, Educational Technology, Speaking and Spoken Language, Technology, Trends in ELT

 Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore’s article Welcome to the Experience of Economy has on its opening page the following statement: “As goods and services become commoditized, the customer experiences that companies create will matter most.” (Pine and Gilmore, 199:97) and much in  the same way, it is a positive experience  that learners also seek in our classrooms. This ‘economy experience’ concept (Pine and Gilmore, 1998) is not limited to a specific area but it ranges from going to an amusement park at the weekend and having fun, to classes...

02 set 2018

by | in Career, Reflections about Education, Trends in ELT

Scene 1: Big conference in Brazil. The speaker, a Brazilian, goes onto the stage to begin her plenary session. While she speaks, you notice she makes some mistakes, pronunciation mistakes, grammar mistakes, but the content of her presentation is relevant and she manages to get her message across. At the end of her talk, you hear teachers, the vast majority of them Brazilians, commenting on the mistakes and criticising the presenter. Scene 2: Same big conference. The presenter on the stage is not a native speaker of English, and...

06 jul 2018

by | in Classroom Experiences, Lesson Ideas, Reflections about Education, Trends in ELT

The most important single characteristic of the flipped classroom is the fact that classroom time is not used for content presentation, but rather for group discussions about students' findings and further investigation. So, going back to the two questions I’ve asked on my first post, on the 6th of June, I believe we already have an interesting answer to the first question. (What to do? Flip the classroom.) But we still need ideas on how to start the journey. A good way to start flipping your classes is to...

27 jun 2018

by | in ELT Management, Reflections about Education, Trends in ELT

CLIL has been the starting point for the majority of bilingual education programs and methodologies across the globe. Born in 1994 with the establishment of the European Community, CLIL was an attempt to standardize bilingual education approaches within the comunity, or at least to determine a range of  practices that, based on a common concept, could be considered efficient to lead to various levels of bilingualism. That's what David Marsh (the leader of the group that coined the term in the 90s) call "the many faces of CLIL". The...