David’s ESOL Blog is one year old today, and we have also just reached a total of 21000 views. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who follows this blog or has visited it and contributed to its success. To celebrate, here are the top five posts from this first year:

1.  How I learnt English … and how I didn’t.

I came across this graphic on Facebook recently and, as an English teacher, it depressed me a great deal, especially when I went to the original page and read the comments, as person after person spoke of the video games which helped them to learn. While it is great that they have been able to learn, and that they have taken responsibility for their own learning, as a teacher I feel bad that this is the image that at least some students have of our work. So for the past few days I have been thinking of ways to redress the balance. Luckily, there are many ways in which we can incorporate elements of what the students identified as helping them to learn English into their mainstream classes… (read more)

2. Speaking exams: What to do … and what to avoid.

As the main external exam season starts, I thought this would be a good time to write a post giving tips for how to approach the speaking exams in particular. To kick off, here is a new video from Cambridge English TV with some useful ideas about answering questions in the speaking tests… (read more)

3. Getting Them Speaking: Activities for the conversation class.

In this workshop, my aim was to demonstrate a series of activities which can be used in class as a way of encouraging our students, particularly teenagers, to develop their speaking skills… (read more)

See also: XXVII Jornadas GRETA, October 2013

4. Picture dictations.

Day five of the Five days five posts series, and unfortunately this is just post four. I’m writing this on the train bound for Córdoba, where I am giving a workshop on speaking activities for teenagers at the XIV Jornadas CETA (Córdoba English Teachers Association)… (read more)

5. How to … exploit video in class.

It should be a motivating experience, indeed you may even have conceived the activity as a prize, or an end of term treat, but too often the use of video in the classroom has the opposite effect. In this post we will look at some different ways to incorporate video in the classroom, in a fun and, hopefully, motivating way… (read more)