Well, my talk for ACEIA is coming together, although admittedly I haven’t had the chance to try out all the activities in class just yet as we had a four-day weekend 🙂  However, one thing which preparing the talk made me think about is how it can be quite tricky to isolate the different sub-skills of listening in order to teach them effectively in class.  It’s very easy to approach the listening text as coursebooks often do and I find that this often means that we are testing learners’ listening comprehension rather than working on the skills which would make them more effective listeners.  That said, the Face2Face series often uses phonology as “Help with Listening” which is one approach which will benefit learners immensely.  Do you know of any other resources which provide learners with more support in listening?

My next fortnightly focus is going to be working with my 10-year-olds who are quite weak linguistically.  Having taught the material before to much stronger groups, I’m struggling to pitch the coursebook to their level, but also aware that they need a lot more routine review of much simpler language too.  So, I’ll be working on that and hopefully make the lessons more engaging and beneficial for them.