Can we motivate our learners or should they motivate themselves?
We all have learners that come to class but just don’t seem to be that motivated to be there. Don’t worry, it’s got most of the time nothing to do with you. In general, making learners stay focused and motivated is one of the biggest challenges (Healey, 2021). According to Scheidecker and Freeman (cited in […]
Focusing on Engagement
I’m obsessed with the brain. How it works and maybe even more so by how it doesn’t work. Whilst brain research has made headway in the past 15-20 years, there is still a lot we do not know about the brain. However, one thing we can say for sure is that our students’ brain certainly […]
Language teachers teach language. But is that all we need to know?
Well that is our job, right? A while ago, I attended a fabulous conference with Jim Scrivener and in one of his talks he referred to a comment Michael Swan had made about language teaching: our job as language teachers is to teach language. Full stop. This comment stayed on my mind and made me think about my own language […]
Reflecting in times of Covid-19: Keep calm and keep GROW-ing
This blog, written for Cambridge University Press, explores the benefits of reflective practice. Learn the benefits of reflecting, to promote a self-improving culture of learning and increase your ability to adapt during these unpredictable times.
Teaching Online- KEYS
As the current situation continues, many of us are coming to the realization that online face-to-face teaching, or rather remote teaching, might well be the new normal for, at least, the coming months. Normally, when institutes move to online or blended programs six to nine months of preparation have gone into designing appropriate learning systems […]
Teaching Online- Shift Shoes
Simple things seem to take much longer in the online classroom and even beyond! Planning for online lessons, for example, can take up to three times longer for online lessons. No surprise that we all feel the emotional toll that the sudden shift to home teaching is taking on us, not to mention the physical […]
Teaching online- CARE
Roosevelt’s famous quote ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’ carries possibly more weight than ever. The unexpected events of the last months required us and our students to change and adapt quickly, for some overnight, to a new learning and teaching environment. For many, this might have been an overwhelming experience. And we all know, […]
Teaching online – FACE it
Suddenly, overnight the face-to-face classroom that was the norm for decades was no more. As a result, our common, convenient way of teaching changed overnight. What was once considered as an alternative for F2F teaching became our new normal: remote teaching or teaching online face-to-face. Whereas many teachers were already using technology in the English […]
Teaching Online- Checking-in
Relationships and well-being are areas that, in this period of sudden change, need as much attention, or one could argue maybe even more, as what and how to teach online. We all experience good and bad days whilst we are adjusting to this new learning and teaching environment, so how can we go about this? […]
Do you know what it takes to advance your students’ learning?
How we teach in the language classroom is often based on our intuition. We often feel that some things work, and others simply don’t. However, modern-day research on how the brain learns has identified several ways of learning that better match our brain’s learning preference, so to speak. Interestingly, very little of this science of […]