Update! (September 24, 2016): I read a fantastic post from Juan Uribe at Children Learning English Affectively today. He’s a teacher, international teacher educator, and ELT consultant based in Toronto, Canada. He wrote a post called “A mini manual for parents of children learning English”. In it he describes several techniques that parents can use to help their children. I encourage you to read it today. Being a parent isn’t easy. There are a lot of hard […]
March 3 was the first meeting of Hello! English Club. I didn’t expect a lot of people to come. Twenty people came! We’ve been gaining popularity ever since then. The English you speak in a classroom can feel repetitive and fake. The goal of our club is to give our members a casual, relaxed, and real world environment to speak English. That’s why we chose to have it at a coffee shop (thanks Sonata!). It’s important to […]
How to Practice Speaking Schedule time to meet with your classmates and have a discussion in English (topic ideas: what you’re learning, current events, hobbies, etc). Talk to your friends in English instead of your native language. Watch a video on FluentU with English subtitles, click on the word to hear the correct pronunciation, practice speaking that new word many times. Practice pronouncing new words in front of a mirror. Have “shower conversations” (see this video for how to do […]
Playing a game is a great way to end a lesson. Take 10-15 minutes and try one of these with your class today. Most of these games are quick and require little to no preparation. I have a lot more links for ESL teachers here. Quick tip: How to make funny team names: If you’re pressed for time you can just name the teams “team 1”, “team 2”, etc. You can make it more fun […]
ELSA stands for English Language Speech Assistant. It’s a new app available in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. If you’re learning English as a second language, this is the app for you. It will listen to how you say a word. If you make a pronunciation mistake, ELSA will hear it. Suggestions for improvement will be offered based on how you said the word. In addition to helping you with pronunciation, it […]