Can our students progress in acquiring a foreign language without developing strong listening comprehension skills? Can two people communicate orally if one of them is not able to understand what is being said? Listening is the main door for learning. As Rivers (1981) pointed out, in normal life we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak,...
Whenever we need to train reading text, the first thought we frequently have in mind is: “Students aren’t terribly fond of reading; I need to motivate them so that they enjoy the activity”
As good teachers, we prepare everything needed to teach our learners how to read. For instance, we prepare videos related to the topic or use different visual...
There is always been the feeling that teachers are not being very successful in instructing students to write properly and effectively even in their own language, let alone in a foreign one. Naturally. It did not come as a surprise when Steve Graham and Dolores Perin, after a careful study, concluded that some of the methods used in teaching...
When it comes to grammar, students’ (and even teachers’) reactions can be quite diverse: from enthusiasm to boredom. It should not necessarily be like that. Students do need grammar to speak and write correctly. Without that knowledge, they may be fluent, but not accurate. As teachers, we must keep in mind that grammar should be contextualized; otherwise, any grammar point...
Nowadays very few people refute the convenience of using textbooks in the endeavor of teaching English as a foreign language, at least at the primary or secondary levels of instruction, when they are considered indispensable. The question is: what considerations should we have at the time of selecting a textbook or a series? There are various important points to...
Corroborating students’ effective learning is one of the central concerns for us teachers, especially at the end of the school year. The question is whether by this time we have at our disposal the precise information to substantiate students’ learning achievement. Is it enough to take the final exam and bestow the scores to say the process has been...
