Reflections on lesson planning
My considerations on lesson planning on a daily basis.
practical aspects of teaching
2016
practical aspects of teaching
Freelancing vs working for a school
As some of you may know, I recently went from self-employed to working for a private language school. It was a welcome change as I was getting really tired of working long hours for peanuts, and after a few month I can still say that I’m happy with my decision. In case someone else is
Delta, module one, teacher training & CDP
Delta module 1 – first month
After about a month of online course in preparation of Delta module 1, I’d like to share with you some of the impressions, feelings and doubts I have with this course.
practical aspects of teaching, teacher training & CDP
My own activity book
I read Marc’s blog post on a very interesting first day activity book. In the comments section, Chris suggested every teacher should create a personal collection of first day activities. From this discussion, I realised I already do that, so I thought I might share my experience here.
personal life
Thank you for trespassing
“I’ve always been the kind of person that doesn’t like to trespass, but sometimes you just find yourself over the line.” ― Bob Dylan
vocabulary
My 10 favourite English words
Hello and welcome back. It’s now proper autumn here in northern Italy, the time of herbal teas, roast chestnuts and new students. No wonder it’s my favourite time of the year! 🙂 To celebrate this amazing season, today I’m going to write something OT, which was inspired (copied?) by this blog post. I find it
language systems, vocabulary
Noticing in action
Since English is my L2, I’ve started noticing how I retain new vocabulary since I think I can learn a lot as a teacher from this. Read this post to find out what I noticed and see if it is similar to your own experience of learning a second language.
practical aspects of teaching
Mindfulness?
Stemming from the news of a school apparently substituting punishment with Mindfulness practices, a range of articles and commentaries have been written in the past few days on the effectiveness of so-called ‘Mindfulness’ for teachers and students. Since I have been growing fond of Buddhism in the last few months, and I have read more than one book on the topic, I would like to add my two cents.
error correction, language skills
Error correction in speaking
Just a quick link to say: I’m all in favour of error correction, and I’m glad to read there is evidence to prove it works!
methodology
Why is grammar-translation so persistent?
Today I’d like to share with you some questions and — possibly wrong — ideas I had last week, during our Delta preparation week. One day we were reviewing the development of methodologies in language teaching (from grammar-translation all the way down to humanistic approaches and so called post-communicative era) when I realised how most