Reflecting on the experience

Yesterday it was my last day in the summer course.
As for the teachers, it was good to have the experience of team work, especially with Alan. If he had more experience with ELT he would be superb teacher.And he also helped and supported me a lot. The bad times with my junior teacher didn’t stop with [...]

Read Full Post »

Horror stories

I suppose that if you are an NNS EFL teacher you have already heard a lot about these horror stories of schools employing NS’s for summer courses and delivering really poor quality lessons. We all talk about these horror stories but it is the first time I can see it unfolding before my very eyes. [...]

Read Full Post »

Discipline vs. Motivation

The school I’m working for has a very interesting system to work with the groups: for the first two lessons of the day we keep our main groups and them we take over each others’ groups for the third period in order to develop what the call ‘a project’. We started swaping groups yesterday and [...]

Read Full Post »

Creative presentations

Overcoming teenagers’ self-consciousness, shyness and defensiveness is not an easy task. We have had three lessons so far but I suppose I have already broken the ice with most of them. I do like them –  to start with – they are nice kids, some a bit lost, some fed up with our marvellous summer [...]

Read Full Post »

Back into teaching

In the summer Britain is literally invaded by thousands of foreign students coming for short English language courses. They range from teenagers to adults and EFL teachers coming from all over Europe.
As I’m on dissertation time, without a fixed timetable, and in need of some extra cash, I decided to get a summer job in [...]

Read Full Post »

The place of technology

When people read my comments at Teaching English about the need to be careful about how we see and use technology in education I’m almost certainly some think I’m a reactionary. Far from it, I’m a British Council certified online tutor, I keep 5 blogs, moderate the IATEFL LMCS SIG discussion group at Yahoo Groups, coordinate [...]

Read Full Post »

Looking back at Cardiff

The IATEFL Annual Conference in Cardiff was a fantastic experience in many aspects, and I’m referring both to the face 2 face conference and the *virtual* one. Starting with Cardiff Online, I believe we have advanced a lot in terms of online coverage. Each year new changes are introduced, new challenges have to be met [...]

Read Full Post »

Radom, Poland

Thanks to an invitation by the LMCS SIG coordinator I had the opportunity to visit Poland and speak at the Culture Lane conference in Radom. It was a great experience to go to Poland and meet teachers from Eastern Europe.
The conferene was devoted to various cultural manifestations – literature, drama, visual arts – and how [...]

Read Full Post »

Equal Opportunites and Diversity

It was the first time I spent my birthday in London. Actually, I wasn’t in town with the purpose to celebrate it, but it happened that I was invited by the organisers of the Equal Opportunities and Equalities Seminar to present in the event and it took place on 20-21 February. I’m really thankful for [...]

Read Full Post »

What is missing?

I can really consider myself privileged because I have all the time to read, write and study now. This is just a dream come true: a library available almost 24/7, piles of books at your disposal and full support from your tutors. Besides that I have more time than I had ever had to work [...]

Read Full Post »