I know this was a blog challenge some time ago (possibly a year ago or more!), but at the time I had just started this blog, so I didn’t take part. Anyhow, I now feel it is the right time to share a bit more about who I am and what I do (besides teaching), …
Author Archives: Capybara
'I don't understand nothing!'
How many times have we hear this phrase coming out of one of our student’s mouth? The student who feels she can’t understand ‘nothing’ because she missed a word — or even a phrase — and so switches off completely for the rest of the listening activity, or of the whole lesson. Recently, one of the tasks …
Book: the Road Ahead
DISCLAIMER: this is by no means a book review. I am not qualified to write reviews and would not know where to start. What follows are my very personal thoughts on an interesting book I came across by chance. Feel free to disagree or comment if you have read the book. The Road Ahead — …
Exam preparation: a lesson plan
Today I’d like to share a lesson with you. It’s a lesson structure more than a lesson plan, as it is easily adaptable to many exams — I used it with all the Cambridge suite, but I’m sure you can adapt it with IELTS or TOEFL too. I generally use it as first lesson for …
#teacher5aday
I’ve had ups and downs at work lately, and March-April have been and will be hectic. So today I would like to tell you a bit more about what I do to unwind after a long day of teaching, planning and travelling. These things are essential to keeping my motivation — and my life balance.
How yoga is helping me
As part of my #teacher5aday plan, I’ve decided to follow Adriene’s 31 days of yoga. I’ve been trying my best, but since all my fitness resolutions usually collapse under the weight of work, stress, and laziness, my expectations were quite low. I am now past day 12, and I couldn’t feel better.
Delta task: real-life listening
In this task, I was asked to consider what is involved in real-life listening, and what the implications for classroom teaching are. Here is my reflection on the topic (I have dome this before reading the recommended book on the topic).
Planning one-to-one lessons
Some time ago I wrote about how I (am required to) plan my lessons. What I wrote there actually only applies to groups. Apparently, I do not have to produce such an accurate plan for my individual students. To tell you the truth, nobody ever told me what I am supposed to produce for these …
Why and how I became a vegan
Today I’m writing a non ELT-related post. The title is a question I often get, and since my third anniversary of being a vegan is coming up I thought I put my reasons in writing. I hope someone will read these words and think about going vegan themselves. 🙂
2017 Eaquals conference workshop: quality fallout
I am thrilled and terrified to announce that a colleague and I will be presenting a workshop at the upcoming Eaquals Annual Conference in Riga, Latvia, in April this year.