Newsletter 2021#12

Good morning

I've had a great couple of walks this week in spring sunshine watching lambs frisk about in the fields, so I hope that you're managing to get a bit of R&R, too. On that note, this is the twelfth newsletter since January, so I think it's time for another short break. Don't worry - the newsletter will be back in four weeks (on April 25th) and in the meantime, ELT-Training is always here. If you'd like a bit more of a personal touch, remember that the special offer on Coaching for the Classroom is available for another week. One to one support for reflection, planning and feedback at a discounted price with code COACH60.

But let's not get ahead of myself - this week, I thought that I'd have a 'listening' theme and I have some useful videos for you about teaching listening and a resource with some fab free listening materials. Before we get onto that, though, I've got another in my occasional series on Inspirational ELT Stories.

Medical English - Ros Wright's story
English teaching is a profession with many interesting niches that you may not know about. In this post, I want to introduce you to Ros Wright, an English teacher and materials writer who specialises in Medical English. It costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to train a doctor, so it makes perfect sense for all kinds of reasons to give already trained doctors the language skills they need if they migrate to another country. You don't need a huge amount of specialist knowledge to do this - read Ros's story and maybe she’ll inspire you to consider it, too!

Teaching Listening
I've got a few videos on the site about teaching listening, so I thought it might be a good idea to showcase them here. If you want a basic, blow by blow account of receptive skills staging, you can find it in Section 11 of the free CELTA Toolkit. If you'd like a few thoughts on the differences between top down and bottom up processing and how this translates to classroom practice, you might like these two videos. And finally, this video has a great activity for intensive listening practice.

Rants and Raves from Teaching English
If you are looking for listening texts that are a bit different, this is a great little resource. It has audio clips of people talking about things that they hate (rants) or love (raves) and each one has downloadable guidance and advice on how to use the recordings with students. There are a series of suggestions for pre-listening, while-listening, and after-listening tasks and activities. Some of the audio files include a short lesson plan, too. Topics include TV talent shows, saying please and thank you and Queueing. See what you think.

OK - I'm out of here! I just wanted to end by saying how much I appreciate all of the lovely emails I get from you, saying that you like this newsletter. It's great that you're finding it useful and I'll see you all in a month's time.

Best
Jo