Have you ever taken part in a Show and Tell, a TeachMeet event or something similar?

I had the privilege to attend such a gathering last weekend, and I can highly recommend it!

Once someone has taken the initiative to organise and provide a venue, they pretty much run themselves after that.

It’s a testament to the dedication and commitment of the teaching profession that around 70 people gave up their Saturday to gather together in order to learn from each other and share ideas on learning and t..

When I buy bread in my local supermarket, it generally looks something like this:   

[Source: capl@washjeff.edu]

But when I’m visiting another country, it might look like one of these:

  [Source: ELTpics]

What I really want is to show my students what an item actually looks like in other countries, to put things into context, to show the differences (or similarities) around the world.

Finding those images, ones which are freely available and importantly, not breaching any copyright issues..

The UK Government yesterday announced its proposals for a new National Curriculum for England.  (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own education systems, and are not directly affected by the proposals.)

Whilst a big debate continues around how English pupils and schools should have their progress assessed and their skills and knowledge examined, language teachers have been interested to read how the government views the place of foreign language learning in the curriculum.  Here i..

The LanguagePoint is 1 year old on 23^rd January 2013. We want to celebrate our first birthday by giving away presents to some of our randomly selected followers.

To be in with a chance of winning an Amazon voucher to the value of €50 (or equivalent), here’s what you need to do:

Follow us on Twitter, and send a tweet which contains a link to your favourite LanguagePoint resource.  Don’t forget to include the hash tag #HappyBirthdayLP. Then you’ll be automatically entered and be in with a chanc..

Do your students enjoy learning independently?  Or do they tend to rely on you a lot in class?

It’s always been a tricky one for language teachers.  Tell them every single word or structure they need, every time they ask, and it probably won’t get committed to memory. Leave them to their own devices, and we’ve all seen the strange language that emerges …

Two blog posts struck me this week in this respect.  Firstly I saw this one by John Pfordresher exploring the different roles of teacher and co..

This last week in the UK has seen a fair amount of response to recent comments by Sir Michael Wilshaw, England’s chief inspector of schools, about how hard teachers work and how they should be paid accordingly.  The comments were made to The Times, and in case you don’t have access to their article (which is behind an online pay wall), here is a short section from the article:

"As a head I would make it clear that if you teach well or try to teach well, if you work hard and go the extra mile,..

For many teachers in the Northern Hemisphere, this time at the end of August and beginning of September is the start of a new school year.

Even for the most experienced of teachers, that ‘back to school’ feeling can sometimes be quite difficult to overcome after a lovely long break.  We’re usually full of resolutions and good intentions, and it’s easy for them to disappear in a pile of paperwork by the end of the first week.  So it’s good to have a couple of tips up your sleeve to survive the f..

We just wanted to let you know about a cute piece of recording software which is available free of charge to The LanguagePoint users.

If you’re looking for something that’s simple to use, but has a bit more to offer than just recording your own voice, then we recommend that you take a look at the Study Lite Recorder.

For teachers:

• Prepare listening activities to be used in class.
• Record simple audio files for your students to take home to practise.
• Record yourself asking questions for your studen..

Is it important for senior leaders, or the managers in your school, to teach?

My experiences have been in the UK, and things may well be different in other countries.  I’ve worked for head teachers who didn’t spend time in the classroom, and for those who did, and even for some who taught languages in my own department.

Clearly the demands of a head teacher mean they can’t have a full timetable, but do you think it would help if they had to teach each week?

I suppose what I’m asking is, do you ..

Do you remember being told stories when you were young? I bet you can still remember them now!

Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of human communication and plays an important role in our language development as children.  Rudyard Kipling once wrote: “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”   It strikes me that you could just as easily replace ‘history’ with ‘language’ and the statement would still ring true.

Reading stories aloud immerses the listene..