Formative Assessment

 

Differentiating between Assessment and Evaluation is critical to effective teaching; the former is often called formative and is a teaching approach, the latter summative and it is used for measurement and reporting. Formative assessment is not marked or graded work where the grades don't count, nor is it test preparation nor mock examinations. 

Positive Education

 

Professional, philosophical and methodological seminars related to Positive Education.

COVID Learning Loss - a survey of the reports

 

While it is stll "too early to tell", emerging evidence suggests that Covid-19 and responses to Covid-19 have had deletrious effects on student learning. What are those effects, and what might this mean for teaching and learning in the short and medium term? 

Advanced Use of English Practice & Feedback - gerund or infinitive

 

A particular bugbear for Chilean students and teachers of English, knowing when, how and why to use gerunds or infinitives can be challenging. In fact, this is so challenging that we have created three challenge levels, and to date, no-one has scored 100% on any. Will you be the first?

"Stop to help" and "stop helping" are not so hard; "I hate smoking" and "I hate smoking" a little more so. Getting going or getting to go? What about aspect in "going skiiing" compared to"going to ski"?

Advanced Use of English Practice and Feedback - Present Perfect with for and since

One of the problematic areas for learners is that English discriminates between points in and periods of time, consider preposition for example. One of the effects of this does not just appear in the use or not of the present perfect, but also in the differences between for and since. Join us as we explore some of these tricky, and oftimes not so obvious, uses. 

My favourite MS dictionary

 

This must be the best general and quick-access dictionary for G5 - 8 students and/or B1/B2, and for EFL students across all subject disciplines. These Longman dictionaries are based research on the most common and most important words for learners at these levels, and in its day the Longman corpus was revolutionary and groundbreaking.

My favourite HS dictionary

 

This must be the best general and quick-access dictionary for students to G10 and/or C1, including language, literature and lang&lit. Even E1L and C2 students will find it useful. 

Why I like "Murphy"

 

When I was a teacher and Head of Department, my "go to" grammar book to use with students was Raymond Murphy`s English Grammar in Use. In fact, as a teacher, I had a class set (well, one between two) along with dictionaries, and as Head of Department, I provided a set in each Middle School and Lower High School English classroom.

Condensing

 

Condensing is reducing the length of an utterance without losing meaning, encompassing editing, rewriting and "substitution and ellipsis"; it is not paraphrasing or summarising. This session review four main types of condensing language, examples and approaches, for Advanced English users and teachers.

Summarising