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.
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:
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…]
Lots of students read as much as they can, all at once, to take in as much information as possible. However, sometimes it is better to leave space to guess in your reading.
A lot of people studying English find that as they grow to love English-speaking culture they find English speakers more attractive, too. This post cannot guarantee anything but it may help your search for love.
Reading and listening are excellent ways to learn new vocabulary but they can also help you learn more about a subject if you ask yourself questions afterward.
Yes, you do, eventually. If you never learn phrasal verbs there are going to be huge gaps in your vocabulary knowledge. This could cause you to be unable to express yourself properly or to misunderstand other people. “But you could just use normal verbs, couldn’t you?” You could in some situations but not in others. … [Read more…]