All Videos – Page 3 – Advance Consulting for Education

Techniques for Fully Exploiting a Listening Text

In this session, we introduce three different lesson patterns to use to fully exploit all of the language learning potential in a listening text. The first lesson pattern exploits the listening text for both meaning and form. The second lesson pattern exploits the content of the listening text for meaning. Finally, the third lesson pattern exploits the language of the listening text for form. With these three lesson patterns in your planning repertoire you can make strategic decisions about how to use a listening text for maximum learning effect with a specific group of students.

View Course

Teaching the Academic Word List

In 2000, Averil Coxhead determined that there was a set of words that was crucial for success in an English academic context, the Academic Word List. This brought about a large change in the way vocabulary for English for Academic Purposes was viewed. In this course, we will look at what the Academic Word List is, the background to its development, why it is important for both instructors and students to be aware of it, and finally some strategies and activities to use when teaching the Academic Word List.

View Course

Teaching Students ‘Unstress’

In this session, we look at the importance of stress in determining the intelligibility of student pronunciation. One of four main components of the suprasegmental features of pronunciation, stress is often overlooked in our teaching of pronunciation. Because English is a stress-timed language, however, stress plays an important role in English pronunciation. Interestingly, the main student challenge is not putting stress on syllables or words, but unstressing those syllables or words that should NOT be stressed, hence the concept of ‘unstress’ that we explore.

This session was developed and first presented by Silvia Rossi of Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta.

View Course

Teaching Multi-level Classes

Many teachers, especially those in rural settings, are faced with the challenge of teaching a class where the students exhibit a variety of English language skill levels. This course will present ideas on how to incorporate activities for a multi-level setting. Rather than planning several activities for a range of proficiency levels, this course aims to demonstrate how one activity can be adapted for use with all students, regardless of the extent of their English competencies.

View Course

Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students have quite a challenge ahead of them. Not only do they need to learn the English language to quite a high level of proficiency, including complex vocabulary and complex grammar, they also need to learn different ways of thinking that will enable them to be successful in a higher education setting in an English-speaking context. In this session we will discuss the concept of critical thinking and its relationship to EAP student success, we will explore some of the cultural assumptions behind the concept, and finally, we will take a look at some possible approaches to teaching our students critical thinking.

View Course

Teaching Critical Reading Skills

Higher level students, particularly those who are looking to move into higher education studies at an English-speaking university, need to learn to read critically. Reading critically means not just understanding the words in the text but also being able to ‘read between the lines’ for other layers of meaning presented by the author.

View Course

Taking Grammar Practice out of the Textbook

The typical grammar practice activity comes right out a textbook. It is usually a fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, matching or sentence completion activity. While there is a place in our language classrooms for individual written grammar practice from a textbook, this is not the only type of grammar practice activity that we should use. If we restrict our grammar practice to textbook-based activities, our students will not have the opportunity to work on the language in a more productive, interactive and spontaneous way. In this course, we will take you through different activities that will allow you to take your grammar practice activities out of the textbook to give your students a more engaging and memorable learning experience.

View Course

Managing Large Classes

Large classes are usually defined as classes with more than 30 students. Large classes can be both challenging and rewarding. With a high number of students, large classes provide plenty of opportunity for student collaboration, cooperation and self-directed learning. Language teachers can employ a variety of stimulating partner, group and class based activities to get students discussing and sharing their language skills in a setting that is both controlled and interactive. This session will review a variety of classroom management techniques and activity adaptations to maximize language learning in a large class scenario to fully exploit the teaching and learning opportunities presented by this type of class.

View Course

Management Through Coaching

Managing is no longer about ordering our staff around or demanding that they do this or that. Managing is about helping our staff to do the best job possible. One of the most widely used definitions of management in this new approach to management is “the job of getting things done through others”. As managers, one of the skills we have to master, in order to get things done through others, is the skill of coaching. In this session, we will take a closer look at what coaching is, which skills you need to develop in order to coach successfully, and how you can gauge whether or not your coaching is effective.

View Course

Listening Activities for Low Level Classes

Teaching low level students is very challenging because these students have a very limited amount of language knowledge to draw upon in order to complete even the most basic of language learning tasks. When teaching listening to low level students, we have to keep two main strategies in mind. The first is to make sure that we use every opportunity in the class to provide students with exposure to the language. The more English they hear and see, the more familiar they will become with it. The second strategy is to give students ways to demonstrate understanding of what they have heard that do not require them to produce a lot of original language. Students rapidly gain confidence if they are able to successfully complete tasks. We can make students successful with listening tasks by taking away the pressure of language production. In this session, we will take a look at these two strategies in more depth.

View Course

Topic: All Videos