Preparing students for tests is a burden all teachers must bear. Test preparation can be taxing and take away valuable learning time from students as well as the enjoyment of learning a new language. However, learners want to know how well they are doing, and schools need to know who is making progress and who is falling behind. The problem of preparing...
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. The person diagnosed with dyslexia face difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition. What is more, poor spelling is a very common result of the deficit in the phonological development. Finally, reading comprehension as well as reading ability in general can be...
Text by: Dimitris Primalis
Whether you teach a traditional EFL (English as a Foreign Language) class, or a class with CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) books, your students may come across long and more demanding texts in terms of vocabulary, structure. CLIL texts are usually different in terms of task types (e.g. students may have to...
The new classroom environment, the online classroom, involves adapting the printed coursebook we have been using so far, to fit the needs and demands of online teaching and learning. When adapting materials for online use, the teacher goes through the usual procedure but with some added stages-considerations. Reading materials in particular, whether...
Choppy, hesitant reading got you down? Does your child’s lack of fluency affect her comprehension?
There is a simple trick that you can apply to your child’s reading practice to accelerate his reading fluency. It’s called “rereading”, or sometimes “repeated reading”. Academic studies and anecdotal evidence from reading professionals and parents alike...
Text by: Marina Siskou
A rarely defied teaching practice is the random introduction of the target language vocabulary beyond content.
Being presented with a bulk of target language words to ingest might turn out to be functional, if L2 learners are good at memorization. However words need to belong somewhere in order to mean something. Out of...
The time has come for you to teach the so called certificate classes and you’re thrilled and can’t wait to put into practice all those elaborate strategies you have acquired from your university years on how to do everything. This is your moment! You can shine your light on the highway of star teachers. Ha! Wrong approach. Think again! Teaching...
Does reading really matter that much now that we’re in the digital age?
Yes! In fact, in the digital age, when we encounter so many different texts and messages every day, our critical and analytical abilities may even matter more than ever. Without a rich vocabulary and background knowledge that we can apply and utilize, we will get tripped up in the...
The approach to building basic vocabulary involves identification of the most basic vocabulary, the benefits of extensive reading, the strengths of explicit instruction in vocabulary and the importance of using word notebooks and dictionaries. English-language learners (ELLs) face a learning paradox: on one hand they need vocabulary to be able to read...
