Cafe

Leslie Hendra reveals her secret teaching tip and the importance of the lexical approach to teaching English. Recorded at IATEFL 2012 in Glasgow. Leslie is one of the co-authors of "English Unlimited" (Cambridge University Press)

Andi White from the BESIG online team interviews Vicki Hollett about ELF and BELF.

Whether you are a teacher, a teacher trainer or an ELT manager, this session is relevant to your work. Coaching and mentoring skills are techniques used to help people achieve their goals, whether those are language learning goals, or professional development objectives, or career ambitions.

In this talk on English language teaching (ELT), Scott Thornbury, associate professor in the New School MA TESOL program, briefly reviews the work of six educationists whose ideas have helped shape his own practical theory of ELT. Professor Thornbury suggests that situating ELT within a broader educational context has important implications and benefits.

Cambridge has a great website with a teacher zone that has free lesson plans.

Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (cofounded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

The Definition: The flipped classroom inverts traditional teaching methods, delivering instruction online outside of class and moving homework into the classroom. Increasingly common in the last few years and made more popular by Khan Academy, the flipped classroom concept is a perfect match for the SMRT curriculum. ESL students in particular can benefit from watching grammar lectures before school starts and having�extra class time for active learning and skill building. Want more information? Try the Teacher's Guide to Flipped Classrooms by Edudemic. �This technology education blog has compiled a comprehensive list of flipped class resources with teacher support, examples and videos.

In his blog Nik's Quickshout, Nik Peachy informs us of different ways to use these visually arresting and vocabulary rich resources in the ELT classroom. He also gives tips about finding and selecting the best infographics for students and designing appropriate tasks to accompany them. Infographics easily lend themselves to a vocabulary, writing or even a grammar lesson and are perfect for visual learners.

From the online counterpart to magazine Mental Floss comes an article about four subtle linguistic trends in the English language that have emerged over the past 50 years or so.

Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? In this infectiously exuberant talk, leading lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the many ways today's print dictionary is poised for transformation. An oldie but a goodie from TED.

Jack C. Richards discusses top down and bottom up processing and how they affect listening comprehension.

Read Theory is a website offering free online reading exercises to students of all levels, from beginner to GRE, focusing on comprehension and critical thinking. The program encourages students to continue reading and moving up levels with badges and contests. It also allows teachers to sign up an entire class at once and track students' progress and activity on the site.

Storybird is a website that allows students to make and read short stories accompanied by beautiful illustrations. The site is easy to use and the great artwork stimulates students' creativity and story-telling skills. Completed stories are easy to share with peers and other classes on any device.

Here are some great new ideas and examples from Youtube on creating your own instructional videos for blended learning classrooms like ours.

In this quick two-minute interview Jim Scrivener gives his best tips on classroom management and the one thing he thinks all teachers could do to improve their classes.

Social bookmarking can help you save time by accessing your bookmarks from any computer and sharing great professional development resources with your personal learning network. This article provides an intro to social bookmarking and some links to the most useful tools out there for teachers.

"Technology is changing not only how people write, but also how they learn to write." This free ebook discusses necessary changes in pedagogy and introduces approaches and experiences of real teachers teaching writing with technology.

This post explains how and why educators should begin to form personal learning networks. It also discusses some easy ways to start the process and includes links to some great resources.

Teaching can be stressful and teacher burn out rates are higher than ever. This article from Cambridge offers some reasons for teacher stress as well as some helpful coping strategies.

Great Ted Talk for any teacher. Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response: "Kids don't learn from people they don't like. A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.