Articles written by Johanna Stirling
I have written various reports and articles that you can read
here. They all contain many practical ideas that you can use in your
teaching, as well as issues you can relate to your own situation.
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Portable Electronic Dictionaries
seem to be here to stay! This article describes reactions of teachers and
students to them, a close examination of some and practical
techniques and advice for using them to enhance rather than interfere with
the learning process. |
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This report will focus on the difficulties that some of our
students experience with spelling, particularly those whose general
language level markedly exceeds that of their writing. As this often applies to Arabic students, we will also explore their
specific problems. The
report sets out detailed recommendations for the teaching of spelling in
various situations to all nationalities
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If
only students could use all the vocabulary that we taught them! This paper attempts to explore ways in which we can encourage our
students to systematically and effectively record lexis that we have taught
them in class. Then it asks how we can help learners to transfer this record
into their long-term memories so that each item is added to the repertoire of
words and phrases that they can understand and, when necessary, use. There
will be a description of a system of keeping a class record of vocabulary and
ideas for activating this. We
will also note some recent research and theory that supports suggested
methods. |
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This paper explores the value of homework
from both the teacher’s and students’ point of view. We will ask if homework is a useful part of our students’ English
training and if so, how we can deal with it most effectively. We need to consider the amount and different types of homework that we
give and what preparation students need in class before they tackle tasks at
home. Then we will move on to
think about how students actually do their homework and whether this matters. Then there is the thorny question of marking – who does it, how and
what students do with work that has been marked. |
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Activities
for developing and activating vocabulary in the English classroom |
How
much vocabulary did your students learn yesterday? How many words and phrases can they remember that you taught them last
week? Last month? We may teach lexis very clearly, comprehensively and competently in the
classroom, but how can we ensure that what goes into students’ notebooks
gets into their long-term memories? This
article sets out some very practical ways to do this. It does not focus on how we teach the lexis but on how we help students
to actually learn it. All the
activities are very low-tech, suitable for different levels and require a
minimum of preparation by the teacher. They
have all been tried and tested and they work! Students do manage to incorporate the lexis taught into their
repertoire for productive use and they enjoy it. |
Of course you are very welcome to
take seeds or cuttings from my garden but please don't steal or
genetically modify my plants! In other words, please feel free to use anything from my articles but please acknowledge fully. |
