If you teach EFL, especially in Europe, you're probably preparing at least one of your classes for an English exam, and probably a Cambridge exam. These exams are a necessary evil in TEFL, and usually students and teachers don't find exam prep useful nor fun.
It doesn't have to be that way
In this episode of the More Than English Podcast, we talk with Terry Lodge, an expert teacher, teacher-trainer, Cambridge exam coordinator and examiner, and he shares his insights from the other side of the exams. He also shares some of his most effective lesson ideas for you to prepare your students in exam-taking skills and psychology.
Jesse and Terry share language teaching and learning philosophy, and you can watch tutorials on how to give engaging English lessons for speaking, listening, reading, and writing. This will serve you especially well in the classroom because these activities will prepare them for the exams, but more importantly, they have a real-life English focus on them.
Watch the video version:
Modify and Adapt - Use these ideas as a guideline and adapt how you use them to your style and your individual classes. (For example, I have a smaller class of 6 students, and I brought in 3 tennis balls to have the students pass pack and forth.)
Routine - Do these activities on a regular or semi-regular basis so the skills will become automatic for what the students need them whether for an exam or real life.
Real Life English - Remember, the purpose of exams is to get the candidates to prepare to use English in real life. Train them for this in your lessons.
Easter Egg Lessons
Pressure - Get your students used to pressure (eventually) by stepping them out of their comfort zone with some of these ideas.
Learning without Learning - For many of these, the students don't feel like they're "studying", but they are improving these skills.
What else can you find?
The internet is changing the face of language learning and making it more convenient and effective to learn and teach foreign languages online. In fact, language-learning is one of the fastest growing industries to do online. Learners are not restricted to a set time and day to travel to a brick-and-mortar school and study with a class full of people with minimal opportunity to actually use the language.
As effective as we teachers try to make our activities in class, there is always the dynamic of embarrassment of making mistakes in front of other students, distractions that can occur, and inconvenient times of classes.
Online lessons can be tailored specifically for a specific student and what they need. This is what we talk about with Camille, a professional online French and English teacher on italki, a language-learning platform that connects teachers and students. (sign up here and receive a bonus).
In this episode:
Learn the basics of teaching English or another language online. Jesse talks with Camille about many different aspects of teaching a foreign language online including:
Whether you're thinking of getting started teaching English online, or you're an experienced teacher, there is valuable information in this episode for you to enhance your career as an English or other language teacher.
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