Articles

I consider the greatest problem facing me as a language teacher is knowing how to motivate my students: how to get them past the hurdle of seeing learning English as just another academic subject, to regarding it as developing a communication tool that will be useful for them throughout their lives.

This is the first of two articles by Gavin Dudeney for TeachingEnglish, during his month on the site as Guest Writer.

The web is a limitless source of linguistic examples for your students. Google (and other search engines) can be used to organise and select web-based text in a way that is pedagogically useful.

I’m a big fan of social media. Facebook, X, blogging platforms and other ‘web 2.0’ sites offer users the ability to publish their thoughts and exchange ideas with a global audience.

In his first article for TeachingEnglish, Pete Sharma considers some of the controversies surrounding the use of technology in and out the classroom.

I was teaching a monolingual group of 12 teenagers (15-17) at upper-intermediate level who were following a course book. The students were motivated but they needed a 'real' communication task, the opportunity to communicate with students who didn't speak Russian or Ukrainian. I decided to record them and send the tape to students in a non-Russian speaking country. 

What are podcasts, why might your students benefit from listening to them, and how might you go about using and producing them?

This article examines how a video exchange project can stimulate motivation and interest by providing such a context.

When, in a speech in Cape Town in 1966, Robert F Kennedy invented the 'ancient Chinese curse', "May he live in interesting times" he might well have been talking about education at the beginning of the 21st century; for while the ubiquity of Internet access has indeed made our times interesting, it has also cursed educators into poorly defined online roles.