My name’s John Hughes and I’m a freelance teacher trainer, consultant and ELT author. This blog began as a place for teacher training resources and comment. It’s all still there under Teacher Training but now I’m going to increase content related to writing ELT materials and information related to my talks and presentations. So if you have attended any of my sessions at conferences and workshops you’ll also find talk summaries and related information. I’ll also be adding to the information about my books and published materials. Feel free to contact me via the comments section on this page.
I am a teacher of English language .I have dreams to see better teaching especially in my area Saudi Arabia .Because of that I made a blog .I would like you to read my posts and share me by posting comments .
This is my last post link
http://learningstep.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/please-teacher-get-me-out/
Thnaks
Hello Mr Saeed
Thanks for visiting this blog. I’ll repay the visit!
Hi John! I’ve just seen you in FAAPI in Argentina. I’m training to be a teacher and I’m jut getting my feet wet with teaching and you’ve provided some very nice insights. Thanks a lot!
Gabi
Hi Gabi
So glad you found something useful from my session at FAAPI. It was such a great conference and so many people made me feel welcome. Hope you find something interesting to read on the blog. I’ve been so busy with travel this month that I’ve rather neglected it. Hope to get blogging again in October.
Dear John, Lovely blog! Just slighly confused: I tried to link specifically to one of your posts. Though this is a WorPress blog, I wasn’t able to. What technology is keeping me “out”? Thanks!
Hi Anne
Thanks for visiting. Maybe I’ll see you at BESIG this month! I’m confused because there should be no problem on the link. Was it one post in particular or all of them?
Hi John
I’ve just found your blog through your comment on Scott Thornsbury’s blog. The current MA module I’m doing is about the education of language teachers so I might come back and read more.
Btw, I have the same problem as Anne. No matter on which blog post or page I am, the link in the address bar stays the same (www.trainingeltteachers.net). I think you need to change something in your WP settings.
Nergiz
Thanks Nergiz. Hope you find some things of interest. Will take another look at the link problem.
Hi John,
Some really great suggestions for interview questions, as well as the other blog posts. Thanks for sharing with us all.
Valéria
Thanks for visiting Valeria! Hope it’s useful.
Hi John,
This is a great blog, especially for the ones involved in teacher training! Lots of great insights, loved reading them all!
Thanks for the sharing,
Nesrin
Thanks for visiting Nesrin – hope it helps!
John
Hi John,
I came across your website through a link on FB!…. I must say that it is impressive plus a valuable tool for Teacher Training and development. It has become a favourite!
Do pop by when you are on the island!
Sarah
Hi Sarah….glad it might be useful. Hope to be in Malta in mid-November at MATEFLA so maybe see you then.
John- great blog
My two cents – http://allthingslearning.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/bedtime-reading-for-teacher-trainers-this-time/
T..
Thanks for visiting Tony!
Hi John, I attended your webinar on “Introduction to business English” and I have this doubt in mind: The majority of general English courses are course-book based as students fit into the school schedules. However, business English, in my opinion is different, in the sense that the teacher hast to fit himself into the students ‘need. For this reason mainly, should I consider teaching Business English, focusing in the content they have to learn, regarding a prior needs analyses, and keep up with the course as long as they have achieved a proposed level of English to communicate efficiently, or approach likely customers/students in a more length course centered way, in which, I would then sell them yearly courses.
Hope you can help me.
Yours faithfully,
Teacher Alex Lorejan.
Hi Alex
Let me check I understand your question. Are you asking if a course book is appropriate for a business English course given that the needs analysis is important? If you are, then yes it’s true that not everything in the book will be relevant to the needs of the learner. However, there are different ways to approach this. Once you’ve done the needs analysis you can select the relevant parts of the book and supplement with other materials (both published and authentic). However, on year-long courses it’s especially helpful to have the book because a student’s needs change. Also in group courses where you have to balance everyone’s needs, then following a book with something generic on, for example, ‘giving a presentation’ will be a good way to address everyone’s requirements. Does that answer your question?
Hello John, thank you for taking the time to answer my question, that was pretty helpful. Just to clarify the whole story, I´d like you to answer another question, which is related to the same topic.
Thinking of organizing a one year course to business people, how would you recommend me to address the prior- to- the- couse- start discussion regarding the course lenght, starting from the principle that, I want to include more specific materials than only the course book, which we are already acknowledged with.
Having it all said, my question is, how will I tell my students that we´ll not use only the course book, instead making use of other different materials when they had to pay for the course book.
Hope you can help.
Faithfully,
Teacher Alex Lorejan
Hi Alex
Course length will be decided by how much they want to speand presumably. Then I think most courses include specific materials alongside a course book. The main thing is to make use of it in most lessons and supplement with extra specific materials. Also, if you explain to students your rationale for bring in other materials, then I think they will be ok. I agree it’s important to use the coursebook if they’ve paid for it, but a good balance of both types of materials is normally acceptable for students.
Good luck!
Dear John
My name is Stephen Shine and I attended a recent presentation you gave in Dublin. It was really informative and I’ve used many of your techniques in the classroom to great success. I’m just wondering if I could ask you for 2 video links. One is the Butler Training School link and the other is Modern Times link with Charlie Chaplin. It would be a great help.
Our school, the Galway Cultural Institute received your book in the post today and I have passed it onto management. It got a great reaction from the staff.
Hi, John!
My name is Gagik Darbinyan. I am both a teacher and an author. Besides teaching I writes poems and short stories. My nickname is Harry Smith. It’s the direct translation of my full name from Armenian into English. I have been teaching English for more than 30 years. A couple of days ago I attented your seminar ” A day in the LIFE of a coursebook.” at Gymnasium #5 in Volgograd. I really liked the ways of teaching you delivered an interesting lecture on. Thanks very much. I hope the textbooks, you presented at the seminar, will become very popular in the near future.
Hi Gagik
Thanks for your interest and coming to the talk in Volgograd.
Hi John,
Great presentation at the ETAS this weekend, with wonderful ideas on activities. Could I have your presentation please?
Thanks again,
David Mills
Hi David. Did you receive this by email or are you still waiting? I can’t remember if I sent it or not.
John
Hi John, thank you very much for a very useful webinar on Successful Presentations recently. It was extremely helpful for me to know what things I should focus on when teaching presentation skills.
I did have one question after the webinar and I hope you can give me your suggestion. It’s regarding peer feedback from the participants. When asking students to give focused feedback, especially in a larger group setting (~8 to 10 people), would it be a good idea to have each student have a different focus task for one speaker? (ex. one person focuses on visuals while another listens for good use of signposts, and so on).
Thanks again and looking forward to purchasing your book.
~Jason
Hi Jason. Thanks for your interest. Yes, you can set it up so that everyone focuses on a different area but my feeling would be that it’s something you do later in the course rather than earlier. In other words, perhaps they’ve all focussed on visual aids, signposting, handling questions and body language in previous presentations, and now you want to revise those areas and bring them all together so you assign a different area to everyone so that after the presentation there is a broad collection of viewpoints. If your students are used to the format of peer feedback and they are becoming experienced at giving presentations and receiving feedback it’d be a good idea. Hope that helps. John.