Articles in the ‘Book Reviews’ Section
More and more language learning is taking place, fully or partially, on online platforms and the affordances of these platforms for communicative interaction are exciting. Unfortunately, most platform-based language learning experiences are a relentless diet of drag-and-drop, drag-till-you-drop grammar or vocabulary gap-filling. The chat rooms and discussion forums that the platforms incorporate are underused or ignored. ...
Film in Action by Kieran Donaghy, Delta Publishing You've just walked out of class and your Director of Studies calls you into their office to discuss a problem - a complaint by one of your student's angry parents no less. What have you done wrong? Have you been setting enough homework? Are you playing too ...
Being trained to train: Is it necessary? Many teachers become engaged in training when their boss approaches them and tells them: “Okay, you´ve done your DELTA or you´ve been teaching here for many years: let´s make you a Coordinator, Assistant Director of Studies, etc. However, rarely do we get training on how to conduct these activities. ...
In the past two weeks of my teacher training work, I’ve been asked several questions by teachers of all levels of experience: DELTA candidate: How do I improve my definition of aims? CELTA candidate: But what is the ‘receptive skills’ procedure? State School teacher on the IHCYLT course: What do you mean by ‘assumptions’? State School teacher in a ...
Overview “A radically new approach to studying the culture of English-speaking countries around the world.” This is how Blackcat publishers (www.backcat-cideb.com) are promoting their new coursebook. The course materials consist of student’s book, with audio and DVD materials, with downloadable activities to accompany the DVD lessons (which I did not sample), plus a teacher’s book. It’s ...
Overview of the books Collins Academic Skills series is a new set of books covering several aspects relevant to academic study. They are designed in particular for students from abroad who are studying, or intending to study, at an English-speaking university. The two volumes reviewed here are Writing, for learning to write better academic essays, and ...
As the title implies, this self-study course is for students going to an English-speaking country or on an Erasmus experience, where English is the language used at the university. For a language teacher, this resource could be useful in presenting research skills. The first chapter, as well as synthesizing the keys for success at the ...
Motivation is often cited as a reason for success or failure in L2 learning and for many teachers motivating their learners is one of the toughest jobs they face. Though academic study has explored these issues in some depth, motivational strategies are rarely included in course designs and there have been few resources for the ...
Twenty years after Michael Lewis popularised lexical chunking in The Lexical Approach, Paul Davis and Hanna Kryszewska take the lexical chunk and corpus analysis as the basis for their impressive addition to the Delta Teacher Development Series, The Company Words Keep. In the introduction, Kryszewska poses the question ‘Does a new language description have to ...
Look at how the definition of the word ‘dictionary’ has changed in just six years: ‘a book that gives a list of words in alphabetical order and explains what they mean. …. a book that lists words in one language and gives translations in ...