This course has been slowly wearing me down, there is just so much to read and studying part time really isn’t easy. After a day of working the last thing I want to do is have to read something. If I can choose to read something then it’s completely different but when it is something you have to do, you have to focus on and you have to remember the important information, it becomes a chore. Add on my small staffroom and it really hasn’t helped me to discuss and reflect on some of the ideas. Basically, I’ve felt behind and under pressure almost all the time and I finally just gave up trying to do any writing at the same time as studying.

But hey! That’s the way it goes sometimes. Without further ado here is my round up from the last three weeks.

Unit 7

Unit 7 had three parts. Lexis, Writing and Phonology 3 as well as another exam training that looked again at paper one tasks five and paper two tasks two and three.

Exam Tasks

I feel that paper one task five might actually be the most useful and practical task of the whole exam. In task five you are given a task and a students answer. You have to identify three strengths and three weaknesses and then, in part b, you pick one of the weaknesses which you would work on with the student. It’s incredibly practical because it’s the sort of thing you have to do day in day out and it has really forced me to stop thinking “This student makes this mistake a lot so we should work on it!” but instead “this error hinder their completion of the task” or “this error will help them in the future…” etc.

I’ve actually seen the difference this has made in my classroom teaching where I’m less likely to pick up on “annoyances” (he go to the school) and more on those which inhibit communication.

Lexis

Unlike the previous Lexis session this one looked at how students learn Lexis and theories about how it is stored in the brain (though it seems like there is little research into how L2 language is stored and even in L1 there’s a fair amount of “we think/it seems”).

Writing

The second writing part was rather shorter and looked more at helping students to realise what they need to focus on in different writing tasks. This also brought up the criteria and skills that are needed within task 3 in the Delta assessing students production of a task and anticipating problems students will have with a text.

Phonology 3

This time it was focused on intonation. This was another unit of where it ended with some very unclear conclusions. Which can perhaps best be summarised as “There are some trends but lots of speech cultures don’t follow these trends. In addition students generally don’t focus on intonation and don’t learn it very well, so maybe we shouldn’t focus on it, but we don’t usually focus on intonation in the classroom so maybe that is the reason why students don’t pick up these trends… OH but we should focus on a few thing, the tonic stress, widening students pitch range and focusing on stress and rhythm” [This is an unfair reduction of the text but still]

Unit 8

Unit 8 had a round up of the previous units and some very interesting articles on of prepositions and a very interesting and useful section on Self access.

Prepositions

Preposition can be a neglected area of teaching and I don’t remember many blog posts on it (feel free to share one in the comments if you know a good one). Some of the interesting parts include the difficulties of prepositions with their multiple meanings and large number in English. It made some good teaching suggestions for grouping prepositions into broad groups and thinking about the levels that these types of prepositions are taught at. Finally there was a look at multi-word verbs and phrasal verbs. This was only a brief look though.

Self access

This section was really interesting and very practically. I really enjoyed the practical ideas for setting up a self-access system (and ideas of how to set up a self-access on a budget too). Perhaps the most interesting part of this section was…I can’t really see any application for this unit in the exam! However, it is certainly useful for my job, school and possibly for the other modules.

Revision

So all that’s left now is to revise and prepare for the exam. Honestly I’ve been putting off doing revision for some reason. I used the classic procrastination trick “I’ll just plan my revision first…” Finally today I managed to review the parts of the test that I found difficult and work out a revision plan based on that.

So for the next week and a half it’s going to be fingers/head to the grindstone, lots of reading. note making and practice answer…ing.

I’m not sure how well I’ll do and certainly don’t expect to have a high score but I’m going to do all I can to finish well. After I finish I’ll post my thoughts about Module one. I probably won’t post a lot over the next few weeks but you might get the odd quote here or there.

The post Delta Diary Unit 7 and 8 appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

-Thornbury 2005 Beyond the sentence.

The post The teachers role according to Thornbury appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

Last time I asked you to share some of your favourite #oldeltpost by Leo Selvian or Lexical Leo

• Teaching Lexically in 2013
• Binomials 
• Does digital mean better?
• Explaining the differences between (near-) synonyms
• One word leads to…or you’ve been lexically primed 
• Highlighting Lexical Chunks with Diigo

I’d also add that Leo’s Lexical Tool kit is a great page to help you adapt to a more lexical form of teaching.

Leo’s Favourites

I asked Leo which posts were his favourite and he…well he cheated. But I won’t hold that against him. Instead of sharing one or two posts he told me a bit about the purpose of his blog.

I like [my classroom activity posts] most because this why I originally started a blog: in order to share classroom ideas and activities. This was before I went on to write more serious, reflective posts about topics that are a little above everyone’s head, according to [this blog post, a letter to a young CELTA graduate]

Leo’s classroom activities are great…and Lexical! For some teacher’s it can be easier to get some idea of the concept of the Lexical approach but not really see how it would work in a classroom Situation. Leo’s Activities can provide you with an insight there.

The future of #OldELTPost

Thank you everyone who took part and recommended a blog post, Unfortunately there were fewer people than previous times (I blame myself for not promoting it as much and being less active on Twitter these days)

As such I’m not going to do another #OldELTPost Until someone recommends the person to be targeted  I feel this is a good security measure to make sure people will take part in it.

In fact, It might be time to set this idea free, If someone else would like to organise and host the next #Oldeltpost on their blog then please contact me and we can discuss it more.

The post The best #oldeltpost by Leo Selivan appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

His blog (Lexicon.blogspot.com) is where you can find most of his writings but he has also appeared on other sites, including the Guardian Newspaper.

You can find out more about him from his About page.

Nice to meet you Leo, what’s #OldELTPost?

The idea behind #OldELTpost is that we find and share our favourite blog posts by another blogger (in this case Leo) after a week this means there are some great old blog posts to read that people might never have read but also we recap and refresh our memories on the great blog posts we’ve read before. Perhaps this will remind us about some ideas we had but never actually put into practice, or maybe it will just encourage us for next time.

The way to do it

The process is simple.

• Go to Leo’s blog
• Find a good blog post (check out the popular posts or use the search function if you don’t know any by Leo)
• Share it with everyone else (either on twitter, with the hashtag #oldeltpost) or in the comment section here.
• Relax with a good book till next week
• Read the other suggestions next week (with your drink of choice)

That’s it! Simple right?

If you’re up for the challenge and want to ask more people to join in then you can tweet this post

What’s your favourite blog posts by @leoselivan ? please share it for #oldeltpost [click to tweet]

Or if you’d like to read more about #oldeltpost and check out some other people’s blog post then click on this link

The post Lexical Leo’s #OldELTPost appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

Welcome to May!

And with that, we’re a third of the way through the year and approaching European holidays! (The end of term is near friends). It also marks a month till my module one Delta exam, and I’ve found it is a chance for one last big push before the end of the year.

This is the time to launch that big project or try that big experiment and actually see some result. If you want to start later you’ll have to wait till next year as there won’t really be time to see it get under way. So if you are thinking of starting a new project, why don’t you tell me what it is in the comment section bellow.

ELTchats this week

This week ELTChat continued the IATEFL talk inspired discussions with two chats on

• The great coursebook debate (better off with or without)
• Evaluating Web tools (Which I managed to attend! Finally!)

Best of the blogs this week

Anna Loseva confessed that she was a hypocrite this week. Her post was honest and highlighted an important point. There is a chance you suffer from this negative trait as well so make sure you read what it is.

The Secret Dos (Anne O’Nymous see what she did there) published her bold manifesto this week! It’s time to rise up and take to the streets! Or join the debate.

Sharon Hartle shared some views on Error correction this week (great minds think a like clearly)

Tom Randolph shared some great multi-sensory ideas to help students with pronunciation, this appeared to be aimed at typical issues of oriental learners but there is value for everyone here. [I agree with Luiz in the comments, this is a gem of a post]

Mike Griffin shared a post which I feel would best be titled “extensive reading for English Language teachers” Where Mike shared some of the different books he has been reading over time and the impact of reading on his teaching. I wonder a bit about the “cause and effect” on Mike’s professional life as a teacher. Did he start reading more about topic X because his moved towards more teacher training or did he start moving towards more teacher training because of what he was reading (or is it just a coincidence). I’ve been reading more than a handful of books on Meta-learning recently (learning about learning) and I suspect this has been cause by my growth as a teacher and desire to help students become more effective learners.

On ELTSquared this week

This week I had my usual two blog post. On Tuesday I shared some lessons from Unit 6 of my Delta in my Delta Diary and on Thursday I published the first small part of my thoughts about error correction (I’d love your thoughts here).

Image of the week

What do you think? Are any sites missing?

P.S. Don’t forget that next week is #oldeltpost week! Get ready to recommend your favourite posts.

[Image adapted by Pawel_231 on Sxc.hu]

The post Weekly ELT round up 3/05/2013 appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

Photo Credit: Just Joe ( Trying to catch up after tax season) via Compfight cc

I mentioned in one of my recent DELTA diaries that there was a lot of information about error correction and feedback and this was an area that I wanted to reflect on more. After writing for a while (and reaching 2000 words) I realised that one post wasn’t even enough so I have more coming soon but even this might be a bit too much for you to read in one sitting. If that’s the case then why don’t you book mark it now or put it to the side till you do have time to read it.

Why is error correction important?

To many people “error correction” is seen as the essential function of a teacher. It’s rare to find a student who wouldn’t want/expect some form of error correction and even rarer to find someone who would want no feedback at all (I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but it’s rare).

A students can read the rules of a grammar book, memorise a list of vocab, practice reading different texts and listening to audio texts via the internet and generally find great resources for learning…but even if they have the “answer sheet” error correction and feedback is something that they won’t necessaries get. Good feedback will help them identify their strengths and weaknesses, why they got something wrong or what they did well and help them progress to the next stage.

Of course unconstructive (or destructive) feedback can hinder or even reserve progress so this is an important area and one we need to think about, research and put good practices into…er…practice.

The general “rule” of error correction and feedback

The classic CELTA rule for feedback goes something like during more controlled tasks where students are restricted in their options and focusing on a particular language item, errors should be corrected straight away so that students don’t incorrectly learn a language item. In freer tasks feedback should be delayed so that communication isn’t inhibited and the more general goals of communication in realistic tasks can be achieved. or in quicker words

“In the Practice stage correct straight away, in the production stage delay feedback.”

There is a lot of truth in this general rule but it’s certainly not the end of the discussion.

Some inspiration from Audiolingualism

In audiolingualism errors were seen as very negative, if a student reproduced an error too much they would possibly embedded in their memory rather than the correct form! If you are a student of a foreign language (and you should be) I’m sure you can think of a word or two where the mistake is deeply entrenched in your memory. For me in Russian it’s the different between the words for “Pity” and “Hot” which can lead to some awkward conversations.

Later investigation into language development changed the perception of errors to that of experimentation and part of natural learning (a key example is irregular past tense verbs where students always add -ed endings. Some of my favourites that I’ve heard recently from a young bilingual child are “I dided it” and “I swamed.” As such mistakes and experimentation were encouraged. [This post by Luiz Barros is great on subject verb agreements and their natural development]

However, I find the response from the Audiolingualist was very interesting. They used very restricted situations so that students “couldn’t” make mistakes and only practice the target language. Having studied with a method based of audiolingualism I can say that this certainly helped reinforce my confidence by knowing I wasn’t making many mistakes. However, restrictive tasks can be very boring and don’t really help prepare you for real tasks.

Real speech can go off in many directions away from the original topic, by restricting things too much we don’t prepare students for spoken discourse.

Some inspiration from The Natural Approach

I remember one day in Russian class having a bad day, the teacher seemed to be correcting almost every sentence I made and I was getting fed up. In the end I just shut up. I couldn’t face making more mistakes and being corrected more so I let others speak. Krashen pointed out that sometimes when we correct students they will just shut up and stop trying to express themselves or at best reduce to using simpler constructions rather than experimenting.

The Natural Approach suggested that taking a more relaxed approach to errors might help encourage that experimentation and especially as some errors will naturally be corrected over time and exposure to the language.

Error correction won’t always result in a student just shutting up or using easier language constructions but we need to avoid this from happening in class.

Demanding more?

In general the trend in ELT has been from a strong focus on error correction and feedback to more relaxed attitude which of course has inspired some others to take a different approach. The demand higher movement has pointed out that maybe we are now too soft on our students and doing push them hard enough. We accept their single word answers and don’t take the opportunity to work on their pronunciation, or extract a full sentence from them.

I used to get very annoyed by students who would do “short cut answer” saying only 1, A for a matching activity or something similar. How dare they be so lazy and couldn’t they see that this would actually be further practice for them. However, I realised they were doing the most natural thing in the situation and if you asked any native speaker what the answer to number X was they would do the same thing to. It’s not exactly a natural speaking task. So a better form or task to check answers is more important in my opinion rather than forcing the students to do the unnatural fuller construction

However, the point remains that when students are challenge and find a task more difficult they value the task more (and skill more). Getting the balance right is important…so what factors do we need to consider?

The error, the student the situation

There are three important factors in deciding whether or not to correct the students error and if you think back to the statement at the start it is only really considering the situation (Is the goal practising and remembering the language item or is it communication.) But the other two factors are equally important in deciding whether to correct or not.

The error

Often we focus on the errors that we hear the most and that have been taught longest ago (Basically third person s, I’m willing to bet that almost every class someone makes a third person s mistake, in fact I’d bet in most conversations a Native speaker will correct a third person s mistake). But are they really the best criteria for correction? Especially when we consider that some errors seem to just take time for a student to correct, perhaps we shouldn’t necessarily focus on most common most.

But what criteria should we use?

Task relevancy

Is this an error that is related to this task or is this an error where the student is trying to operate above/beyond the task? Is this something they haven’t learnt yet but are experimenting in? Basically the more relevant to the task the more it should be corrected.

Hinders communication

Is this something that makes communication more difficult or impossible or is it just annoying (every time a third person s is omitted, somewhere a teachers eye twitches). This is made more complicated by issues of L1 interference where a fellow student who speaks the same L1 might understand the false cognate or the literal translation of the phrase but someone from a different speech community would not. So in this case communication wasn’t hindered but normally it would be.

Slips vs errors

Is this a slip, where nine times out of ten the student will say the correct thing but on this occasion or this day they just aren’t (due to tiredness, stress, etc) or is this an error where they still don’t really understand the language or they are trying to balance what they learnt before with some new information they learnt. If it is a slip then you should be more lenient, if it is an error then tougher.

The student

Certain personality types will react to different types of correction in different ways. Let’s consider two straw men extremes

Dave

Dave is a shy and unconfident student, he rarely speaks in class and as such is (or appear to be) a bit weaker than other students, especially when it comes to communication tasks. When he is corrected he usually spends time thinking to himself and trying to internalize the knowledge, he doesn’t usually talk afterwards

Anna

Anna is very talkative and appears to be very confident. She usually quickly rushes through the practice tasks and always tries to turn every task into a communicative task, She doesn’t always listen to the teachers error correction and frequently makes exactly the same mistake straight afterwards.

Let’s be honest with these two students we should take a different approach to error correction for each of them. With Dave we will probably try to be more subtle, distant the error from him, delay the correction till after communication is complete but perhaps we should also make sure to include very controlled practice to help provide him with the confidence for the latter communicative tasks.

In Anna’s case it might appear that we also need to be more direct with her and this is probably true, her responses suggest that she will carry on communicating no matter what. However, Anna’s confidence might actually be an act. I should mention that Anna is based on a real student with details changed. She frequently tried to communicate in L1 as well and I suspect that she was ignoring the errors more as a way to ignore that she had made a mistake (which she didn’t like)

But what about non PPP frame works

Most of what I have been looking at has been from a PPP (or ECRIF) perspective but not all lessons follow this framework. Sometimes one to one, business and Dogme lessons follow a framework more akin to Produce, present, practice framework to work on material the students bring to the class. In such cases the factors for interfering are still the same.

The same can be said of TBL where during analysis of a model task or the first attempt it can be viewed similar to a “practice” stage and when working on the task it can be viewed similar to the “production” stage.

Ongoing feedback and correction

So far everything has been looking at error correction within the class and not really ongoing feedback or correction but at over 1000 words I feel it would be best to save that for another post.

As such I am currently left with a few practical teaching implications and considerations to try to balance during a lesson:

1. What is most important in the situation? Practising the Language item or practising Communication?

If it is the language item then try to focus on only the language item (but still don’t expect this to lead to perfection), if it is communication then allow for more errors that don’t hinder communication and delay feedback.

2. What is the students personality like?

How will they react to your correction? Are they going to brush it off and ignore it or take it to heart? Try to adjust the method and timing of correction in light of this.

3. What is the students general ability?

Are they a strong or weak student? Is this a normal error for them or not?

4. What is the error?

Is this an error that they should/shouldn’t be making? Are the consistently making it or was this just a slip of the tongue? Is there some L1 interference or new knowledge of a new language item? Are they over generalizing a grammar rule? Are they attempting a language item that they haven’t learnt yet?

A conclusion and the next part?

So those are my thoughts for the moment, I’d love your input and advice, I’d love to look at a couple of extra parts such as ongoing feedback, a closer look at feedback as opposed to error correction and tactics and activities for error correction but at over 2000 words I feel I should stop for today.

Do you stick to the traditional error correction framework or do you have different guiding principles?

The post Error correction and feeback in the ELT Classroom appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

Exam Practice

This unit we looked over task 1, 2, 3 and 4 for paper one which we’ve already looked at before. We went over some of the tips and advice to ensure that you get full marks for the activities. Partially this was repeating the same points we had looked at previously but it also included looking at more material that we had covered, reinforcing some of the key points (always give and example and extra information) and some more practice tasks. Very useful.

Spoken discourse and speaking

In many ways Spoken discourse complimented and backed up the input from “speaking” but addressed different aspects. Where as spoken discourse looked at more unique features of speaking and was directly applicable to task 3 in paper one, Speaking looked more at teaching speaking and theories about how this could be best achieved. So complimentary but not conflicting.

Speaking is just vocalising grammatical constructions isn’t it?…er. no, not at all (but I’m sure you knew that already).

Like written discourse, spoken discourse looks more at a “Genre” approach to viewing texts where certain different features are used or not. Yet again we see the CLOGS framework appear (It get’s around doesn’t it!)

However, it’s not just about what language features we use in different places. The act of speaking (Usually interactional and in real time) means that certain features emerge that we don’t get in written grammar. We might repeat things to make sure people have understood what we are asking. We might give (and look for) visual clues to show (lack of) understanding, and instead of going from A to B we may going all around the park touching on a whole host of different topics

Speaking

So we can just give students some topics and some resources and let them talk right…well maybe. There is certainly some benefits to this but maybe there is more we can do to help students with speaking.

In many cases it seems to be a similar “encounter, raise awareness and then produce.” but it also pointed out the importance of helping students to understand the cultural and contextual context so that students can understand how the meaning might be different and how they should speak and listen differently for the different situation.

So it isn’t just a case of saying “SPEAK!” and then nothing happens (we also looked at some common reason that students don’t speak as well)

Reading

I sometimes wonder if reading is the most taken for granted skill, generally it is the skill that most of my students find easiest as it is receptive and doesn’t occur in “real time” and also occurs a lot in the class around the world (your more likely to have done reading than listening/speaking/writing at a guess). All this means that it can end up being neglected. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I wrote a blog post about reading and I don’t think I see as many on reading as other topics ( a quick look at the #eltchat hashtag on twitter starts to back my claim up!)

There was an interesting debate raised about whether we can/should teach “reading skills/strategies” (and if there is a difference between the two) but I thought the interesting comment in the text about reading strategies that students sometimes don’t think to use the strategies that they do in L1 when it comes to the target language (hence the very slow, read every word, look up every word to make sure you know it exactly…etc approach that we sometimes see.)

One of the points that it came back to again in reading was…Genre (surprise!)

If students aren’t aware of the features of this genre then it can lead to miss understandings of the meaning and intention of the text from the author.

At this point in the course I know that I’ve covered a lot and learnt a lot but I also feel a bit like the main lesson has been how to write for the exam and to phrase things in an “acceptable way” perhaps this is enhanced by not doing Module two at the same time (where you certainly need to apply these ideas in the classroom). However I am thinking much more about cultural and contextual issues that can block understanding and communication within the “four skills” and I’m definietly trying to take an approach of teaching skills and strategies more rather than just testing students capabilities.

The end of this unit means I am now over half way through the input and, as of this Wednesday I have only 5 more weeks before my exam :S Time flies

The post Delta Diary Unit 6 appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

#ELTChat

This week there was another double chat on ELTChat looking at the flipped classroom and based off the IATEFL talk by Paul Braddock. You can check out the transcript here.

[Update, there were actually TWO chats this week, thanks Mike Griffin for point that out, and the second was "confessions of a recovering recaster." based off Cecila Lemos's talk from IATEFL]

Best blog post

James Taylor raised a question and a challenge. “Professional Development, Not an option.” I suspect anyone reading James post is going to be biased in favour but I think the real question is how to create a culture of PD…Answers on the back of postcards (or on James’s blog comments)

A slightly related follow on post, Josette LeBlanc posted a great summary of Susan Bruduhn’s IATEFL talk on “What motivates ExPat teachers” (here’s a clue, there is a mention of Professional Development)

Nick Peachy shared a useful little tool for all us Delta students (and English teachers in general) a program that converts texts into Phonemic script. I am not certain of it’s reliability (especially when it comes to connected speech) but it could be useful to checking/testing phonemic skills and perhaps is a nice way to introduce phonemics, read first rather than just asking teachers to produce phonemics straight away)

Michael Griffin had a selection of brilliant posts as part of Tyson Seburn’s 5 blog posts in 5 days challenge but his post on Pictures in Coursebooks make me literally laugh out loud.

Kevin Stein shared an very interesting post about “tech for techs sake” which goes against some of the assumptions I’ve held for a while that tech isn’t inherently motivating. I still feel there is a degree of truth that the classic characteristics that are motivating in a non tech environment make technological activities even more motivating but it was an interesting read for sure.

On ELTSquared this week

This week I posted about the way I’m using Evernote to help study and revise for my Delta. I only published one post this week as I’m working on a BIG post for next week really looking at one topic (more to come soon). Also next week see’s the start of May so Suggestions for the next blog and blogger for #oldeltpost would be appriciated.

Picture of the week

From Eye on Education

Image adapted by Pawel_231 on Sxc.hu

The post Weekly ELT round up 26/04/2013 appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

Photo Credit: joe.ross via Compfight cc

I’ve mentioned that I’m using Evernote for my DELTA but I thought I’d gone into a bit more detail as to how I’m arranging my system and how it is set up. If you don’t know what Evernote is then check out some of my older posts about it.

3 notebooks

The main function I’ve gone for is a notebook for each Module. This helps to keep the different modules together and allows me to scroll through my notes.

Note titles

In every note title I include the unit and the topic title. For example Unit 6 spoken discourse. This helps separates the topics and keeps it organised by the unit I am studying. It also helps with searching via the search box.

Tags

I also use the tags for search purposes too. This allows me to keep units together and the topics. So I can click on “writing” and see everything in my Evernote system on Writing, including old blog posts that I’ve read.

Web clipping

I’ve clipped a few old webpage, using the clearly plugin, with different advice and tips centred around doing the Delta and different topics around the Delta. When combined with useful tags it means I can compare the notes from the distance delta and what past exam takers have said as well.

Using Skitch to steal and annotate images

In some of the input notes there are images or requests to make a mind map. Evernote doesn’t have a built in picture tool but you can attach pictures. As such I’ve made mind maps using Google drive drawing and then taken a screenshot in Skitch and attacked them to a note in Evernote.

Writing notes

When I go through the input notes I make my own note as I go, abbreviating and rephrasing to be the way that I would say it. I find that this helps me retain more information than just reading and doing the tasks that are part of the Input readings. It also provides me with quick notes in Evernote which I can search rather than having to scroll and search through the online Delta notes.

Exam Practice tasks

Every unit there is an exam practice task, I don’t use Evernote for this as I have to submit them online in Word .doc format and Evernote can’t create that. Instead I use Google Docs

Advantages and limitation

The main advantage is that I can easily reach my notes and search to find them as well as having access across a range of devices. When I went back to England and then on to Barcelona, I still had access to all my old notes and the same tools for creating new ones despite only taking my smartphone with me.

There are some problems though, there have been a couple of moments when I’ve lost my internet connection on my computer and it hasn’t saved the note that I was working (not a problem on my smartphone though) and there is also some evidence that suggest reading on a computer screen results in remembering less of the information than reading from paper.

Still this has been my system so far.

If you have any tips I’d gladly accept them.

The post My DELTA Evernote system appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.

adapted from ywel on sxc.hu

After last weeks IATEFL conference there were still a load of blog post floating around with summaries of different talks and ideas, in fact you can still view some (all?) of the talks at the IATEFL site. However, I tried to find some other blog posts that were’t IATEFL related (and did an okay job) so with that in mind, sit back, grab yourself your favourite drink and enjoy some great blog post in another weekly elt round up.

The return of #ELTchat

This week saw the return of ELTChat in a new format! Instead of having people suggest and vote for topics each week a topic is chosen in advance so people have a chance to read up on the topic. An interesting move and I’ll miss getting to vote for topics but maybe we’ll see a system where both ideas can be included.

The topic this week was a follow on from a talk at IATEFL on “the six abilities for competent teachers.” You can read the transcript here and the summary here.

Best blog post this week

Sirja shared some incredible insight as to being a non-native speaker who is a teacher of English. I think it’s a must for any native speaker to read.

Jo Cummins has set up a blog page with some suggested Creative writing prompts.

Martin Bex share a brilliant extension to a running dictation that she picked up from another teacher.

Sophia Khan shared a post on “the value of the unexpected” reflecting on a talk at IATEFL by Adrian Underhill and Alan Maley by the same name. It looked at the importance of having a plan but being willing to change.

Rose Bard shared a great post about her experience of a linked classroom and virtual exchange projects between her class and Gemma Lunn’s in South Korea. There are also some valuable links at the end.

On ELT Squared this week

I posted two blog posts this week. The first was the next part of my Delta Diary where I looked at connected speech, error correction, and my increased Motivation. The second was about the number of items that people can remember in one go (thanks to Mura and Rachael for the great additional comment).

Image of the week

From Teachbytes.com

The post Weekly ELT round up 19/04/2013 appeared first on ELTSquared.co.uk.