Teaching Tips and Ideas

This is where you can ask for teaching ideas for specific situations. Feel free to contribute your own ideas and help each other out too, just like in a real staffroom!

From Evelyne, transferred from General Chat:

Hello, I’m French but spent 12 years in England and now teach English to adults and children.

I’ve also noticed that the global language is predominantly American English. I’m having to learn new words to comply with the latest schoolbooks of my “soutien scolaire” students. As Helen said, the children now learn about the US not the UK. America is portrayed as a cool place, whereas England is old fashioned!

I remember a few years ago being really surprised by the fact that my students in a logistics company had never heard of the word “lorry”!

Stuart: I agree with you, different students need different methods. It’s obviously easier in a one-to-one situation but it can be done in larger groups by varying the activities.

I actually could do with some advice from the group here: I’m currently giving English initiation lessons to a 5 year old boy. He’s very musical and responds well to songs but he’s not interested in drawing or visual activities. My children are very “visual” so I’ve having to adapt to this young boy but I’m not sure what activities I can propose to grab his attention for an hour. I don’t want to sing continuously! .