When you are at university you need to take notes in lectures. This is something you can practise online with video lectures (about your field of study or some elective courses you might take) so you develop the skills you need before you start university. In this post, I explain how to take lecture notes, … [Read more…]
My fantastic students have added to the set of open-access SDGs Lesson Plans we are producing. At the moment, there are only 4 of the SDGs without lesson plans and this should be remedied by January, all being well. Feel free to download the plans. All are available as PDFs for your convenience, or as … [Read more…]
Hannah from the Futurelearn contacted me recently to let me know about courses that the British Council have free IELTS preparation courses available. It says that there is a price on the page BUT it’s free if you only want access to the course for 5 weeks. You only pay if you want to see … [Read more…]
Here is a TOEFL Challenge, where you can use real materials to try to do tasks based on the TOEFL test. Watch this TED talk and read this article from Quick and Dirty Tips. Summarise the differences and similarities between the talk and the article. Leave a comment below with your answer.
I went to a conference about teaching English a couple of weeks ago and saw a presentation by Paul Raine, the owner of a great website Apps4EFL.com. It’s a free website for students and teachers.
If you have problems in understanding what people say in your listening, either in face-to-face conversations or when listening to recorded material, why not try using word stresses to help you.
What is Extensive Reading? It’s the kind of reading you do where you choose the things you read, not your teacher, and you decide how quickly to move on. Here are a collection of sites for Extensive Reading:
I know that I haven’t put up a podcast in a while; I am working on something that I hope is really cool. In the meantime, here is an interesting podcast for intermediate speakers and higher. I particularly recommend it for TOEFL or IELTS students but anybody who likes philosophy or thoughts about life should … [Read more…]
There are so many different standardised tests available to test your English skills: the Cambridge certificates, TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS, BULATS and, here in Japan, the Eiken/STEP test. For a lot of people, these tests are pointless. If you need the certificate to get a job or a college place, go for it. If not, read … [Read more…]
When you are talking and can’t find the words you need, you need something. I’m going to tell you how ‘something’ can help you when you can’t remember vocabulary.