Google Translate

I use Google Translate in my work, and like to introduce it to advanced English students who need to do translation at work. But you need to study very closely what this great tool does and doesn’t do. Based on the World Wide Web, Google Translate is really quite helpful for suggesting collocations (word partnerships) […]

Hans Rosling’s creative teaching technologies – realia, boxes, Lego

I’m thinking through how useful I find using small manipulable toys like cuisinaire rods and Lego to visualize information, to explain and teach things in a small classroom, for example in one-to-one training. Recently I’ve joined a group exploring the terrain of using Lego, and so I’m thinking back to how I have used these […]

Interview with an old potato

A few years ago when I was teaching English students at the LMU Munich, my students told me how in a creative writing class, Gill Woodman, head of Sprachpraxis there, had given them a bag of potatoes and told them to select one and imagine its personality, and then write its biography. Such a great […]

Teaching the present perfect

A longstanding client of mine recently wanted to pick up lessons again with the aim of refreshing his grammar skills, to increase his confidence in using the language which he is already quite proficient in and uses on a daily basis. While I generally am more of a business and communication skills trainer, teaching the […]

Presenting science to your peers

I gave a morning workshop yesterday on scientific presentations to students of Geoscience and updated my approach a little. It now includes the concept of creating storytelling cycles of tension and resolution (situation, complication, resolution, example), as explained by presentation guru Andrew Abela, whose book, Advanced Presentations by Design, I have just ordered. Also see […]

Ian Badger on Listening, and apps for teaching

I had the opportunity to hear Ian Badger speak at MELTA in the mid-2000s, and even back then he was saying we should be teaching the English people need at the workplace, not the standardized language codified and prescribed in Business English course books. Now he has an excellent book/audio CD, Collins English for Business: […]

After and before

Yesterday we had our second EULEAP meeting, and I’ve just put together the minutes and tried to do some more networking to get people involved. EAP practitioners are notoriously shy about networking – or could it be a lack of interest, after all? There is #EAPchat, which is connecting up many of the players, and […]