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Good morning
By the time you get this (with a bit of luck and a negative Covid test) I'll be heading across the channel to the UK. Our 90 days is up and Christmas beckons, so it's back to the cold for a while at least.
I've got a bit of a themed newsletter today with a focus on skills, both receptive and productive. There's plenty here for trainees, novice teachers and perhaps those a bit further down the line, too. Let's get started.
Something old
It's not a great idea to always do things in the same way, but frameworks for lessons can be helpful, especially in the early parts of your career. Think of them as recipes that you can adapt. I made this series of videos a few years ago as an overview of receptive skills methodology - if you're on a CELTA course and you've got reading or listening for your teaching practice or you're doing your Language Skills Related Task assignment, they'll be really helpful, too.
Something new
Reading aloud has a bad press, and in many cases, this is deserved. It can be a dull, difficult and rather pointless exercise. BUT it can also (with some thought) be a really useful way to develop pronunciation, confidence in speaking and help with vocabulary memorisation. My new video this week will show you how.
Something borrowed
Finally, this is a site that's been around for a while and has such an enormous amount of material that the only difficulty is in sorting out what to use. If you've never seen Breaking News English before, you're in for a treat and if you have, I think it's worth reminding yourself of it, anyway! The site has a wide variety of authentic reading texts so you're bound to find something that will interest your learners and it's always being added to, so plenty of topical interest too. Texts are written at different levels - you can choose which is right for your class and there are loads of different exercises for each text. You could look at the text in class and set some of the exercises for homework. All free! The internet is a wonderful place sometimes :)
That's it from me for today - enjoy the rest of your weekend and see you next Sunday.
Best
Jo