The Comeback

Hello, there!
It's been a while since I last published anything substantial here. My bad - I've been travelling.
To my regret, I found out that my oh-so-much certified English was useless in a wonderful country of France:) So make sure you take a couple of French lessons before you set off to the land of beauty, wine, perfume and exquisite delicacies. Still don't believe me? Check the video!

Now, let's get down to business. My choice of the week - www.busyteacher.org.

Browsing this amazing web-site can take you ages, so I'd like to focus on the following articles and tools:

1) http://busyteacher.org/12331-how-to-get-students-stop-translating-start.html

A nice article about things which any ESL teacher should be concerned about. The advice how to make your students think in English cannot be called revolutionary, although the article gives a summary of techniques which can help a teacher induce the students to stop translating. Do you know what is the question that I personally dread most of all: 'Shall we traslate the story?' No, my dearest students, we shall not. Let's think English!

2) http://busyteacher.org/12714-esl-teachers-are-you-making-these-mistakes.html

Ok, we are not perfect. Let's make a clean breast of it: we all make mistakes. Look through the list of the most common ones and find yourself guilty. I'll be the first to make the confession: I repeat my students' sentences. Yes, I'm a parrot:) Now, your move!

3) http://busyteacher.org/wordpuzzle/

My fav find! A very convenient tool to check your students' vocab at the beginning or at the end of the lesson. Quick, easy and fun, can be saved as pdf on your computer. This tool can be used in a computer lab in class if you ask the students to create wordpuzzles for one another. One drawback: the answers are given on the same page as the puzzle.

That's all for now. Sorry again for the hiatus:)