A

I saw the new website - I looks great. Very easy to navigatge. 

Cheers,

Terry

B

Hi, Hania,
Just had a good nose through the new HLT site: WOW, a million times better, slick and vibrant! Are you happy with it?
Have a great weekend,
Kev

C

Hania,

Thanks for letting me know about HLT August issue appearance. I really appreciate its new layout and design.

Best from me, 

Boryana

Hi

This week I need your help. It has come to my attention that the English language is in desperate need of a new word or phrase. And I would like you to help me invent one.

Consider the following situation which I am sure you will be familiar with:

You receive an email.
You open it.
You read it.
You realize that you have to reply to it.
You decide not to reply to it at that moment, but you intend to reply to it later.
You close the email.
Unfortunately, you forget to mark it as unread.
You forget about the email.
The email goes unanswered.
Weeks later, you remember about the email.
You use a search facility to find the email.
You reply to the sender.
You begin your email by apologizing for your late reply.
You want to refer to the problem that I have just described.
Unfortunately, there is no simple way to do so.
You are unable to express yourself accurately.
You make a standard apology for a late reply.

Personally, I can't think of a more fundamental and familiar, modern-world situation that defies concise description. And if we had a word or a phrase to describe it, I am sure that our lives would be just a tiny bit simpler. Mine certainly would be.

And that's why, this week, I have partnered up with the Oxford English Dictionary to ask you – my subscribers – to invent a new word or phrase. The winner will see their new word or phrase included in the next version of the Oxford English Dictionary. And I have been assured that if we can submit it in time, it may even be selected as word of the year.

Important note: The previous paragraph is not true. The Oxford English Dictionary is in no way endorsing this week's Sunday Post.

Yesterday, I spoke with my colleague, friend and associate NILE trainer Chris Rose about this. His suggestion was:

To commit an FMU (= Failed to Mark as Unread)

That's not bad. I but I reckon that we can do better.

Whatever word, phrase, acronym or initialization we come up with, you can be sure that it is going to make my life so much easier. So thank you in advance.

So, please think about it and drop me a line with your idea. Together, we will make the world an easier place to express.

Have a great week!

Jamie Keddie

​

Welcome aboard! To get you started, we'd like to suggest some learning resources we've chosen specifically for you based on your profile. You can pin any of these resources into your subject folders to start building your own personal library for reference or revision.

​

Remember, the more you interact on GoConqr the more we can help you. By knowing what interests you, we can suggest resources that are tailored to meet your particular needs.

​

Hi Hania,

New articles have been posted on the Visual Arts Circle site: Difficult Topics Made Easier with Film.

You can find them here: https://visualartscircle.com/difficult-topics-made-easier-with-film/

and

https://visualartscircle.com/registration-for-the-image-conferenceathens-is-now-open/

Contact Nora Hennick the Commissioning Editor about anything you would like to see on the website that would help your in your teaching.

Go well!

The Visual Arts Circle Committee

For: Humanizing Vocabulary in Language Teaching

Subject: POSITIVIZERS

From: Francisco Gomes de Matos, a peace  linguist. Co-founder, ABA Global Education, Recife,Brazil

In Language Teaching, lexicogrammatically to humanize ?

A new Word Class let´s  creatively  devise

As  POSITIVIZERS  it would be known

By those words, POSITIVENESS would be sown

NOUN-POSITIVIZERS  let´s  exemplify :

friendship, affect ; cooperation, respect

VERB-POSITIVIZERS  let´s  illustrate:

to cooperate, to educate; to advance,to enhance

ADJECTIVE-POSITIVIZERS  let´s enumerate :

good, kind ; cheerful,peaceful

ADVERB-POSITIVIZERS   let´s  single out:

constructively,positively; cooperatively,dignifyingly

To the list of word classes, POSITIVIZERS let´s  aggregate:

The humanizing quality  of Language Teaching we`ll elevate

POSITIVIZERS  help probe the lexicogrammatical  dimension:

​

Top ten tips for writing notes

Expanding on her column in the latest print issue of ETp, Chia Suan Chong offers ten tips of how we can take better notes - a skill that will come in handy both for teachers and students.
 
Simultaneous note-taking is an important skill that can serve us well beyond our academic lives. Whether we are taking minutes at a meeting, jotting down a message on the phone, summarising the key points of a long email or article, or organising our thoughts on paper, good note-taking skills are essential to our lives.

Many of these tips may not be rocket science, but by spending a little time considering and implementing these pointers, you could find yourself making the best use of the time you spend listening in presentations, classes, workshops, meetings and lectures.

Read Chia's latest blogpost

Fail in class? Fail better!

In this week's complimentary online article, Alison Carse presents a positive perspective on pressures and problems.
 
While we may embrace the idea of failure in principle, it’s a lot less appealing in practice. Teachers face considerable pressure to avoid failure – in the form of observations, performance management, student demands and personal expectations. Students, meanwhile, often invest heavily in their courses and may experience pressure from family, employers and peers to achieve rapid results.
 
Indeed, one of the most painful aspects of failure is the sense that others are watching and judging us. If we are to experience failure in a positive sense, then we need to do so in an atmosphere of trust. The classroom needs to be a place where all the participants (including the teacher) feel comfortable making – and learning from – mistakes.
 
Other English Teaching professional articles are only available to ETp subscribers. If your subscription is about to expire or you are not yet a member, you can subscribe from as little as £31 per year.

Read the article

Top ten tips for writing notes

Expanding on her column in the latest print issue of ETp, Chia Suan Chong offers ten tips of how we can take better notes - a skill that will come in handy both for teachers and students.
 
Simultaneous note-taking is an important skill that can serve us well beyond our academic lives. Whether we are taking minutes at a meeting, jotting down a message on the phone, summarising the key points of a long email or article, or organising our thoughts on paper, good note-taking skills are essential to our lives.

Many of these tips may not be rocket science, but by spending a little time considering and implementing these pointers, you could find yourself making the best use of the time you spend listening in presentations, classes, workshops, meetings and lectures.

Read Chia's latest blogpost

Fail in class? Fail better!

In this week's complimentary online article, Alison Carse presents a positive perspective on pressures and problems.
 
While we may embrace the idea of failure in principle, it’s a lot less appealing in practice. Teachers face considerable pressure to avoid failure – in the form of observations, performance management, student demands and personal expectations. Students, meanwhile, often invest heavily in their courses and may experience pressure from family, employers and peers to achieve rapid results.
 
Indeed, one of the most painful aspects of failure is the sense that others are watching and judging us. If we are to experience failure in a positive sense, then we need to do so in an atmosphere of trust. The classroom needs to be a place where all the participants (including the teacher) feel comfortable making – and learning from – mistakes.
 
Other English Teaching professional articles are only available to ETp subscribers. If your subscription is about to expire or you are not yet a member, you can subscribe from as little as £31 per year.

Read the article

Communicating about communicating

In her latest blogpost, Chia Suan Chong explores the benefits of communicating about communicating. She argues that striving to better understand each other’s underlying intentions and beliefs will ultimately make communication more effective.

Read Chia's latest blogpost

Rehearsing for real life

In this week's complimentary online article, Colin Sowden writes about why one-to-one roleplays are good for targeting authentic situations and how to plan them.
 
"Increasingly, many non-native speakers need to inhabit two worlds: one determined by their native language(s) and one by English. It is with this consideration in mind that English language teachers need to help their learners not merely to develop mastery of the language, but also to build a vision of themselves operating in this other world. Such an approach should be both functional and directed toward some purpose, but also imaginative and open-ended, one in which the learners are helped to create and develop the new identities that they have chosen and to perform ever more effectively the roles that they expect to play."
 
Other English Teaching professional articles are only available to ETp subscribers. If your subscription is about to expire or you are not yet a member, you can subscribe from as little as £31 per year.

Read the article

​    

6 Tips for a Top Teaching CV

In the second post in his series on career development, MET resident blogger David Dodgson offers some advice on expanding and putting together your CV ready to grab the attention of potential employers. Drawing on his own experience as a recruiter and an applicant, he discusses what to include, what to highlight, and how to present it.

Read the blogpost

The beauty of failure and disappointment

In our complimentary online article Daniel Xerri discusses a topic many teachers deal with on a daily basis.
 
As English language teachers we experience failure and disappointment on a number of occasions in our professional lives. Whether it is due to our unrealised ambitions or the thwarted expectations of our students, we cannot really avoid experiencing failure and the disappointment that accompanies it. These dispiriting experiences are compounded by the failures and disappointments we go through in our personal lives. Being able to persevere in the face of unfulfilled intentions seems crucial for our emotional, mental and physical health as professionals. As we were reminded by Sarah Mercer’s (2017) plenary at the IATEFL Conference in Glasgow, teacher well-being is not yet widely discussed despite its vital importance. In this article I reflect on the nature of failure and disappointment and on how perseverance might require a shift in perspective.
 
Other Modern English Teacher articles are only available to MET subscribers. If your subscription is about to expire or you are not yet a member, you can subscribe from as little as £31 per year.

Read the article

Using news creatively to teach vocabulary

In our complimentary article this week, Mohamed Elness of Washington State University outlines an approach using authentic materials to help students improve their vocabulary.
 
"The textbook I used for one of my reading classes did not attract my students’ attention. They felt it was both boring and too long. However, I noticed these same students showed a strong interest in reading news stories as they offered options on topics that met everyone’s own interests. 
 
From international world news to stories on business, sports, entertainment, historical events, and more, these students were constantly discussing their favourite piece of news. So, I decided to utilise the news for teaching one of the most important language skills: vocabulary."

Read the full article

Facilitating reflective and collaborative learning in EAP

In this week's featured subscriber article, Anthea Fester and Dilani Gedera report on a pilot study of the use of ePortfolios.
 
"This research project was conducted in an EAP course that focused mainly on Reading and Listening skills, with Writing and Speaking as subsidiary skills. This was a blended learning course which comprised face-to-face sessions, supplementary materials and activities uploaded on the institutional learning management system, Moodle...
 
The key focus of assessment was on the learners taking more control of the assessment process, together with increased collaboration."
 
If you're a subscriber to Modern English Teacher, click the button below to read more about the study - and its illuminating results.
 
Not yet a subscriber? Click here to purchase a subscription to MET from as little as £31 per year.

Read the article