Category Archives: Vocabulary

Language Never Stops

Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Is it possible for a language to become outdated? Daniel Tammet (2018) answered this question in Every Word Is A Bird: “Language never stops.” “Language evolves over time to reflect the way understanding and beliefs change” (Lellman, 2021). Some expressions that were common a few years ago might not be so common now. This has made choosing good materials more challenging when it comes to real-world language learning.

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 1

Speaking English like a native speaker or an expert user?

Image by Naassom Azevedo from Pixabay

According to IELTS Cambridge books, an expert user of English is someone who has fully operational command of the language: appropriate, accurate, and fluent with complete understanding. This user gets the score of 9 in the IELTS speaking test which is the highest score in this English proficiency exam.

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 2

Create Visual Interactive Activities with Quizlet Diagrams

Quizlet Diagrams

image source: John Allan

A commonly used tool for teaching and learning vocabulary are labelled visuals. Labelled visuals are especially important for lower-level language learners when visual examples of concrete vocabulary items are essential for conveying meaning. They are also helpful in teaching English for Specific Purposes, such as studying the parts of an electric motor. However, learning parts of a scene, diagram, chart, illustration, photograph or a map is often boring and tedious for language learners, but the Quizlet Diagram feature can make this much more interesting for learners. 

Continue reading

POST COMMENT 0

Have a Holly Jolly Practice!

A person using a laptop while surrounded by holiday gifts, decorations, and treats.
Image by Samira Rahi from Unsplash

You may be wondering if you need to send off students with some work over the holidays to make sure they keep practicing. The reality is that everyone wants to feel free for a couple of days! So why not make the practice fun for them?!

Due to COVID students probably are spending most of their time at home, so they may thrive watching fun movies or exploring websites. Here are some fun websites that your students could use to practice their English language skills for free:

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 0

Hello, My Name Is ED And I Have a Story for You

ENGLISH DICTIONARY inscription coming out from an open book, educational concept
Image source: bigstockphoto.com

Hi ESL Teachers,

My name is ED – English Dictionary – but most language learners call me “Oh, you again”. But I’m pretty sure that I’m one of your favorite things in life. For a while I’ve wanted to have a talk with you about something shocking I recently came across. It’s all about my casual talk with your students about my presence and role in their language learning. And believe me, that talk came out as a big surprise!

Continue reading

POST COMMENT 2

Good Practice in teaching vocabulary

Image containing the title of the post.

If you’re on Twitter, join the next #CdnELTchat on Tuesday, June 25th. Here is a summary of the June 4th chat compiled by Bonnie Nicholas

On June 4, 2019, the #CdnELTchat community brought their best and briefest words to talk about good practice in teaching vocabulary. We chose good practice over best practice because what is best can change and can depend on context. Agree? Disagree? Tweet your comments using the #CdnELTchat hashtag.

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 0

The Role of the L1 in the EFL Classroom Part III: Where to Begin? Ideas for Incorporating Cross-linguistic Strategies


Foreign language school persons. International languages people teaching communication translations, men and women foreigners students, vector illustration
image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Bringing the L1 into the EFL classroom does not need to be an overhaul of current practice in the classroom, nor does it need to be applied to each and every classroom activity. It is something that can be applied strategically and with intent at the teacher’s discretion. The point is not to create a new method, but to understand that cross-linguistic awareness is one of many useful teaching/learning techniques that are available to us as language teachers.

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 3

Yes, you can! Making Virtual Tours

image source: John Allan

Last year in the post, Change the Routine Without Disrupting the Class – Take A Virtual Field Trip, I shared suggestions about taking students on virtual field trips. Since then I have been exploring different virtual spaces with students and my peers.  It has been fun and rewarding.  A few topics that we explored included: Continue reading

POST COMMENT 8

Getting in the Way of Progress

image source: bigstockphoto.com

This blog post is about the verb “to get,” and how sometimes this verb can get in the way of progress. Biber and Conrad (2001) list the verb “to get” as one of the twelve most commonly used verbs in spoken English, which explains why it would be an important verb to know. However, too much of a good thing can sometimes get in the way of progress. The verb “to get” and all its inflections can end up replacing every other possible verb, which in turn might prevent some learners from moving to the next stage of language proficiency. Continue reading

POST COMMENT 6