Improve your skills: Listening

Watch and listen to the interview with Tony Wheeler, co-founder of the Lonely Planet travel guide books. Choose the best option that finishes each statement.

Improve your skills: reading & writing

Fiona has written a letter asking for advice because her husband works too much time and that is affecting their relationship. Fill in the gaps with an appropriate word.

Now you have completed the task, what advice would you give Fiona to solve her problem? Write your comments in the comments section below.

CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ON A BUDGET

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is mandatory for teachers in order to stay up-to-date with current trends and innovations in your profession. Not everyone is able to enrol in development courses or start an MA due to time limitatons but also to money issues, but thanks to the Internet it is now possible to improve the quality of your work without spending too much (money and time). There are a lot of actions we can take to improve our CPD and I will comment on the ones I have found particularly useful recently.

LESSON IDEAS: WHAT'S IN YOUR FRIDGE?

This is a lesson plan that combines new technologies with classroom practice and introduces the concept of flipped classroom or student-centred learning where strong focus is given to the student whereas the teacher takes the role of the guide in the learning process. This methodology means a lot of work outside the classroom on the part of the student but turns into more engaging lessons for the. Click on this link to see a very helpful infographic about this concept of flipping your classes.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CLASSROOM: USING EDPUZZLE

It seems all seminars and workshops being organised these days talk about the use of technology in the EFL classroom. Teachers seem to be eager to use new technologies and they demand more and more training on this topic.

SEMINAR WITH BRIAN ENGQUIST

This post follows on the one I wrote last week about the Pearson event for teachers held in Valencia a few weeks ago. Brian Engquist, head of the teacher training department at Pearson Spain was responsible for this second seminar. The focus of the talk was how to integrate exam preparation into our day-to-day teaching. The title of the talk, Stay calm and teach: making exam skills invisible, already suggests that our main focus as teachers should actually be that: teaching, and that exam skills should be implied in the teaching process.

SEMINAR WITH ELENA MERINO

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to attend the Pearson event for English teachers in Valencia. Such event took place at the hotel Barceló, near the City of Arts and Sciences and it was a great success in terms of organization and the content of the seminars. Today I am going to write about the talk by Elena Merino, Pearson's most recent addition to their team of teacher trainers. She has a degree in English language and literaure plus she has studied a Masters in TESOL in the United States.

FOLLOWING THE IATEFL 2015 CONFERENCE FROM ABROAD

One week after Manchester hosted the 2015 IATEFL conference I can now talk about my experience following all the sessions and workshops that were available online. Thanks to the British Council, which offered many of the talks and lots of interviews live, the work of those who attended the sessions and tweeted the main events happening, and those have been actively blogging during the last week, I must say it has been a very enjoyable experience that has provided new insights and thoughts about the concept of English Language Teaching. I would like to express my gratitude to all the people that took part and made it possible.

AN INFOGRAPHIC IS WORTH A 1000 WORDS

I have recently discovered how infographics have become a very useful tool in education and how learners seem to like them a lot. The old saying "An image is worth a thousand words", which was first coined more than one hundred years ago, is still valid today and can be used in the English classroom.

IMPROVING STUDENTS' READING SKILLS WITH FLIPBOARD

I've recently read an article talking about how new technologies and social networks could be introduced in the classroom to improve teacher-student interaction and motivate them with apps they are familiar with.