Articles

Assessment is a crucial part of learning. It can be difficult to know how to identify learners with special educational needs (SENs) in the classroom and how to include learners with SENs in the assessment process. 

Many of us work with groups of students from more than one cultural background while others teach largely mono-cultural groups of students. In both cases, there is opportunity to celebrate diversity through the telling of traditional tales, whatever the age group and profile of our students.

This is the second in a series of articles by our Guest Contributor Barry Tomalin.

This is the first in a series of articles by our third Guest Contributor Barry Tomalin.

As the saying goes, ‘Art is all around us’. In its many forms it presents fantastic opportunities for discussion, focused language work and skills-based activities.

Every teacher – actually everybody – uses NLP. They use it knowingly or unknowingly! Maybe some would think that NLP is not useful and others would say it creates miracles.

Non-verbal communication (body language, paralinguistics) has been a focus of attention for some time in areas such as the refinement of presentation skills, developing social skills, and even as a realistic alternative to the lie-detector test.

For the purpose of this article 'inquiry' will be taken to mean 'a language act in which one attempts to elicit another's help in going beyond his or her present understanding.' (Lindfors 1999)

Body language plays a key role, especially at the subconscious level, in communication and an awareness of it and how it can vary from culture to culture, can be particularly important in helping students to develop their ability to understand in a real environment.