Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.

2014

Liz Regan's 20

Teaching
Tips
For Training
Teachers How To
Teach ESL and
EFL English

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

Teaching Tip 1:
Pairwork/Groupwork
How:
1. Make a list of pairs of names before the lesson starts
or while the students are coming in, or just tell them
when the time comes: "Gianni, you work with Paola;
Chiara, youre with Stefano this time."
2. If there is an odd number of students make a group of
three but break them up later in the lesson and put
them into pairs with someone else so they get more
chance to speak.
3. You could put them in small groups to start with if the
activity allows. You could even make the activity a
competition in small teams if the activity allows, seeing
which team gets the most answers right. Use the board
or a piece of paper for keeping score.
4. Change the partners quite often so that the students
dont get bored with their partner. This is especially
important if there is a student who isnt very popular
with the others.
Why:
1. Its good for the students to speak to each other in
English (see TT5 for further explanation).
2. Its good for the students to work with another student
sometimes rather than alone (see TT5 and TT13) for
further explanation).
Extra Info:
I dont put my students into groups bigger than 3 because I
dont think they get enough chance to speak in such a large
group so they switch off, start fidgeting, get frustrated, let
the hard-working students do all the work, fall asleep etc. In
a pair, one student is speaking and one is listening and

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

formulating a response, in a group of three, one is speaking,
and usually the other two are listening and formulating
responses, in a group of four (or more), one is speaking,
one or two are listening and formulating responses and the
other one is asleep, aware that s/he hasnt got much chance
of getting a word in edge-ways. Or of course, in a group of
four, two speak to each other while the other two often
either fall asleep or end up speaking to each other too, in
which case you might as well have put them in pairs in the
first place.
If you have an odd number of students dont pair the extra
student up with yourself - make a group of three
somewhere. I used to take on the "odd" student myself
when I started in EFL but I found that it didnt work. The
other students werent daft - they realised they were
missing out on the teachers attention and I realised they
were right - I was short-changing them by not monitoring
them as I should.
If youve got some talkative and some quiet students, pair
the quiet ones together for the fluency activities (as opposed
to the vocabulary/grammar activities) to encourage them to
talk more. I used to put one talkative student in a pair with
a quiet one, thinking that the quiet one would speak more if
his/her partner was the chatty type. I was wrong - the
talkative one monopolises the conversation and the quiet
one is happy to let this happen.
NB: If you only have one student, simply "pair up" with your
student. The worksheets are designed to be used in
individual lessons as well as group ones.

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Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

Teaching Tip 2: Reading Aloud

How:
1. Pick a student and ask him/her to read the instructions
for Activity 1/2/3 or whatever. "Marco, please read the
instructions for Activity 2 for us".
2. Pick a different student each time.
Why:
1. It saves you doing it.
2. You can check pronunciation.
3. The other students may well understand the
instructions better when read by another student.
4. The students are more likely to listen to another
student than to you.
5. If they all read the instructions silently they will all
finish at different times. If they listen to someone
reading the instructions out loud they all finish at the
same time.
Extra Info:
Getting students to read aloud used to be unpopular
because the powers that be said that it was unrealistic as we
never do it in real life - you read books silently, dont you?
Things have changed since then as it has since been argued
that we do do it, e.g. "hey, listen to this, it says in the paper
here that Prince Charles is already, secretly, married to
Camilla! Listen - 'Prince Charles allegedly married Camilla
Parker Bowles in a secret ceremony at Windsor Castle
yesterday. The ceremony was attended only by the princes
closest family and friends. A palace spokesman denied the
rumour, saying that...'"
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Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

Teaching Tip 3: Checking

Understanding
How:
1. Ask your students "Is that clear?".
2. If its clear, fine. If anyone says "No, can you explain
that?/Can you explain again?", dont. Ask if one of the
other students can explain it.
3. If nobody understands it, go through an example step
by step together. They should get it then.
4. If they still dont get it, go through another example
together.
5. If the poor things are still lost either...
o do the whole activity together as a class, if
possible, or...
o give up and go to the next activity.
o If its a word they are having difficulty
understanding, you could set it for homework and
get the students to explain the meaning to you
next lesson.

6. Another way to check understanding of instructions is

to ask the students to imagine that you are a new
student who has just come in - can they explain how to
do the activity?
7. Another way to check understanding, not only of
instructions, is by concept checking (see TT19).
Why:
1. You need to check that the students have understood
because they are unlikely to tell you if they havent they will simply bumble through the exercise, doing it

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

wrong, probably aware that they are doing it wrong,
and losing confidence.
2. You need to ask "Is that clear?" rather than "Do you
understand?" because the chances of a student saying
"No, I dont understand" are very slim - they will feel
very stupid. Would you admit to not understanding
something in front of others in a classroom situation? I
wouldnt!
3. The student who doesnt understand will be convinced
s/he is the only one who doesnt get it and will not
want to admit that in public. Questions like "Is that
clear?" shift the blame to the quality of the instructions
instead. Neutral ground - much nicer.

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Teaching Tip 4: Pronunciation

How:
1. Model the word yourself. (This means you say it in a
normal way to the students). Then get the students to
repeat it after you, all together like in a chorus until
they get it nearly right. Dont worry if they arent
perfect. Who is?
2. Then model the word again and ask individual students
to repeat the word after you.
3. You could put the word on the board and ask the
students how many syllables it has and then practise

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

some stress placement. Ask them which is the stressed
(strong) syllable. For example:
before = 2 syllables be FORE = The second syllable is
stressed.
after = 2 syllables AF ter = The first syllable is
stressed.
computer = 3 syllables com PU ter = The second
syllable is stressed.
afternoon = 3 syllables af ter NOON = The third
syllable is stressed.
If you know the phonetic alphabet you could write the
words in that too.
Why:
1. It helps the students to improve their pronunciation
which is very important because theres very little point
in students learning a new word, learning what it
means and how to use it in a sentence, if no one
understands them when they say it because their
pronunciation is so bad.
2. Doing a little pronunciation work can fill time here and
there in a lesson. Its especially useful as a filler (a
quickie activity to fill those few minutes at the end of a
lesson when youve run out of material but its a little
too early to let the students go).
Extra Info:
If youre planning to do some syllable work or stress
placement or use the phonetic alphabet its a good idea to
write the words, syllables, stress and phonetic spelling down
before the lesson because, I dont know about you, but I
find it hard to do it spontaneously during the lesson! For
some reason I get muddled and write the stress on the
wrong syllable etc.
If you want to do some stress placement work but you dont
know which syllable is stressed, look in a dictionary,
especially one for students - it will have the stress indicated,

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

usually by an apostrophe thingy. The syllable after the
apostrophe thingy is the stressed one, usually.
For example: be'fore 'after com'puter after'noon
If you look in the first few pages of the dictionary it will
explain how it indicates stress placement. Not all
dictionaries indicate it in the same way. (For more
information about dictionaries in general see TT20).

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Teaching Tip 5: Speaking to

Other Students in English
How:
1. Put the students into pairs or small groups
(See TT1 for further explanation).
Why:
1. Making students speak to each other instead of the
teacher maximises STT (Student Talking Time) and
minimises TTT (Teacher Talking Time). This is a good
thing because the students are the ones who need to
practise their English - you, hopefully, don't!
2. A lot of students will be using their English to speak to
non-mother tongue speakers anyway so they might as
well start getting used to it. For example, my students

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

are Italian and they often need English to speak to
other European clients and colleagues. Some of them
never use English to speak to mother-tongue English
speakers at all!
Extra Info:
Students like talking to the teacher because it makes them
feel important and that they are getting value for money.
While this is fine in a one-to-one lesson it is no good in a
group because while one student is monopolising the
teacher/conversation everyone else is losing out.
When I encounter students who want to talk to me all the
time in a lesson (flattering though it is) I advise them
(politely) to consider having individual lessons if they want
the teacher's full attention all the time. If that doesn't work
I explain like this: 60 minutes divided by 6 students = 10
minutes each; so they can each talk to me for 10 minutes
and I will listen to each of them for 10 minutes which is sad
really when they've paid for a 60 minute lesson. And, let's
face it, it wouldn't really be 10 minutes because you have to
take time off for taking the register at the beginning of the
lesson, giving everyone time to hang their coats up, sit
down, get settled, receive their worksheets, read the
instructions, listen to the teacher presenting grammar points
or whatever, do a listening exercise or a roleplay, go
through homework together, receive more homework, get
ready to leave etc. 5 minutes would be more realistic. So
there you have it, pay for 60 minutes and get 5. Where's
the logic? If that doesn't work I do this: Let the student
have his/her way. Yup! Smile and listen very attentively.
Make sure that everyone else is listening too. Let him/her
start rambling, taking up everyone's valuable time and then
just pick him/her up on every grammar mistake and correct
his/her pronunciation every second word. I find that the
student in question usually enjoys this to start with, getting
so much attention - having a one-to-one lesson in front of
everybody - but the novelty soon wears off. I either correct
the student aloud, frequently, or write his/her errors up on
the board as s/he goes along ("don't mind me, do keep
going, we can all learn so much from your mistakes").

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

Generally speaking, correcting a student every few seconds
destroys the impact of whatever s/he was saying and makes
them (and everyone else) lose the thread. Writing their
mistakes up publicly on the board tends to make students
shrivel up and die (SeeTT11 for an explanation about how to
do error correction nicely). After this, in my experience, the
student is generally quite happy to get on with pairwork.
And so are all the other students! Sometimes I have
students who don't want to speak much until they can be
sure of getting it right and not making mistakes because
mistakes are bad things, right? (Wrong! See TT11 for
further explanation). These students tell me that they want
me to talk to them (individually) because they will learn
correct English through listening to me. (By osmosis,
presumably!) They can't see the benefit of talking to each
other because if they make a mistake the other student
won't be able to correct them. (Actually, the other student
often can correct them, and does correct them and that's
what they don't like!). In such cases I explain like this:
Learning English is like learning to play the piano/to drive/to swim etc. When you want to
learn to play the piano/drive/swim is it enough just sit and watch other people doing it or
do you need to have a go yourself and make mistakes and practise a lot until you get it
right? Speaking together gives you that chance to have a go yourself and the time to
practice.

Or like this:
If you honestly think that you will learn correct English by listening to a mother-tongue
speaker speaking correct English, why don't you just rent an English video? It's a lot
cheaper than paying lesson prices to listen to me.

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Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

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Teaching Tip 6: Guessing

Answers
How:
1. When there is a list of possible answers, encourage
students to guess the answers (by saying things like
"There are two words to choose from and only one gap
to fill so you've got a 50% chance of being right!)
2. Encourage students to look at the words before and
the words after the gap (in a gap-fill - a.k.a. cloze exercise) to help them decide what type of word is
needed in the gap. Will the answer be a verb? an
adjective? a noun? In most exercises this will limit their
choice of answers and therefore increase their chances
of guessing the right one (see the previous point I
made).
3. If they are still looking a bit blank it's probably because
they are suffering from "gap-fill tunnel vision" which
means that this is what they see:
Irrelevant gobbledegook an __________ with I needn't
read this because it comes after the gap.
Would you know what to write in the space? I wouldn't!
4. Encourage them to try to guess the meaning from the
context (i.e. the sentence or paragraph the gap is in).
Lets look at the same example again, this time with
the context: It rained yesterday when I was out but I
hadn't got an __________ with me so I got wet.
In this example the context tells us that the missing
word is probably going to be "umbrella".
5. This technique also works well when there is a word
which the students don't know in a sentence. If they

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

have never seen the word "umbrella" before and it is in
the sentence then the sentence will look something like
this to the student:
Irrelevant gobbledegook an umbskjdhfskjflla with I
needn't read this because it comes after the gap.
Some students will panic at this point and ask you
what an umbskjdhfskjflla is. You don't need to
spoonfeed them the answer. If the students use the
context to help them they will probably be able to work
out the meaning for themselves (see point 4 above)
and thus gain confidence as learners.
Why:
1. The students know a lot more than they think they
know - the posh term for this is "passive knowledge".
This basically means that somewhere in the past they
have seen or heard this word or phrase but they don't
remember it consciously. (They don't know they know
- they think they don't know, but you know better, you
think they know - confused yet?) Anyway, if you can
get them to make a guess, the chances are that they
will get it right quite a lot of the time. If you put the
students into pairs or small groups the chances are
that with their combined passive knowledge they'll get
most of the answers right, though they won't know
how they did it. They'll probably think it's just luck. It
isn't.
Of course, the upshot of all this is that they get most of
it right and consequently feel very good. Their
confidence is raised and that is half the battle with
speaking a foreign language.
2. In real life (outside the classroom) the students will be
put in situations where they don't know all the answers
or they don't know all the words etc. If they have
developed the confidence to trust themselves to make
an educated guess here and there it'll help them
survive linguistically.
3. In many English language exams it is necessary to do
gap-fill or cloze exercises. Students taking exam

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

courses should be encouraged to make guesses left,
right and centre in order to avoid ever leaving a space
on an exam paper. If nothing is written in the gap the
student will receive no marks. If something is written
in the space there is a chance, a fair chance, that the
answer will be right.

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Teaching Tip 7: Stopping an

Activity
How:
1. If you have a small enough group that you can be
heard by everyone, just say something like "OK, you
can stop there. Well done everyone. Thank you, you
can stop now. Yes, that includes you, Giovanni!" Then
give the students a few seconds to finish their
sentences until the room falls quiet. Let them finish
what they were saying.
2. If you have a big group so you won't be heard if you
try talk over everyone then don't bother to shout
yourself hoarse, simply have a certain place in the
classroom where you go and stand when you want
everyone's attention and go and stand in it. The
students will stop talking very soon. (I stand in front of
the board, facing the class which gets their attention
because for the previous ten minutes or so I've been
cruising round the room monitoring). You can explain
to students at the beginning of the course, "When I
want your attention I will stand here and you will stop
what you are doing and listen to me because I don't
like shouting for your attention. Is that clear"?

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

When:
1. It's not important if the students have finished the
activity - it's the taking part that counts, as they say.
2. It's a good idea to stop things while they are going
swingingly because it means you never hit the
students' boredom threshold. Leave them wanting
more and enthusiasm will remain high. On the other
hand, don't stop it too soon because not everyone will
have had a chance to speak or guess the answers yet
so they'll feel cheated.
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Teaching Tip 8: Feedback

How:
1. Ask one of the students what the answer to question 1
is. If s/he gets it right, fine. If not, ask if anyone else
knows the answer. (If nobody knows and nobody can
guess, you'll need to give it to them).
2. Ask one of the students what the answer to question 2
is. If s/he gets it right, fine. If not, ask if anyone else
knows the answer. (If nobody knows and nobody can
guess, you'll need to give it to them).
3. Ask one of the students what the answer to question 3
is. (Are you getting the hang of this?)
4. In the "True or False?" activities on my worksheets,
the feedback questions would be: "How many of your
guesses were right?/How well do you know your
partner?/Which of your partner's answers surprised
you?"

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

Why:
1. Getting feedback from the students (i.e. information
about what they've just done) means you can check
how they coped with the exercise. You don't only need
to get the answers. You can find out if they liked that
type of exercise or not - if not, can they suggest ways
to improve it?
2. You can check their pronunciation. You can deal with
queries. You can allow the feedback session to develop
into a class discussion, if you like. Whatever.
Extra info:
You can initiate a feedback session about the lesson as a
whole as a filler (five-minute activity) to fill the last few
minutes of a lesson by asking the students to decide which
of this lesson's activities was the most enjoyable/useful and
why, then compare their choices with their partner's or have
an open-class discussion about it where the whole group
talks to you and airs their views.

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Teaching Tip 9: Dealing with

Vocabulary Queries
How to avoid doing it:
1. Get the students to read the exercise completely
before starting to actually do anything. They can
underline the words they don't know, or (more
positively) underline the words they do know. 2. When
a student asks you to explain the meaning of a word,
don't. Ask the other students if anyone can explain it.
2. You could put the students in pairs or small groups and
get them to explain the words they don't know to each
other. This sounds daft but it's quite logical really - the

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

words Gianni is having difficulty with won't necessarily
be the same ones that Marco is struggling with.
(Beware of the students' tendency to translate the
words. See TT17 for info on Translating).
3. It's a good idea to get the students to try to guess the
meaning of the word from the context it's in.
(See TT6 for further information on "deducing meaning
from context").
4. Get the students to look the word up in a (preferably
English to English a.k.a. monolingual) dictionary,
should such a thing be available (see TT20 for further
information about dictionaries).
Why to avoid doing it:
1. You are not a dictionary. You don't even look like one,
do you?
2. There's a world of difference between telling someone
something (spoon-feeding students who soon get into
the habit of switching off, being passive, letting the
teacher do all the work for them and not bothering to
try to remember a single thing) and teaching someone
something (creating an environment and a set of
circumstances in which someone can actively learn,
practise new skills, and develop confidence in his/her
own abilities).
3. One day, out there in the big wide world, the students
will be faced with situations in which they will not know
all the words and you won't be there to help them.
Then what will they do? (With any luck they will be
able to fall back on all the useful skills you've taught
them in class.)
Explaining new vocabulary
As a last resort, give the students an explanation of the new
word or phrase in English. It's a good idea to give them an
example sentence or two containing the word or phrase so
that they can see how to use it. You may find it useful to
demonstrate or mime the word to convey it's meaning

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

quickly. Or maybe a quick line-drawing (of the "stick-man"
type) would convey the meaning more quickly? Sometimes
a synonym (similar word) is useful (e.g. wealthy = rich) or
an opposite (e.g. wealthy = the opposite of poor).
Extra info:
If a student still thinks I should explain all the new words to
him I refuse and explain like this: If you give a starving man
a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish
he can feed himself for life. (I explain "starving" as "very,
very, very hungry").
In this case the "fish" is the explanation of a word, given by
you. The "how to fish" is the ability to guess words from
context, the confidence to ask a peer (a classmate, a
colleague etc.) if they know the meaning, and the ability to
use a dictionary.

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Teaching Tip 10: Monitoring

How:
1. While the students are doing an activity you walk
slowly round the classroom and listen to their
conversations.
2. You can sit down too, if there are enough chairs, but
try to sit in the background a bit or the students will
direct their conversation to you.
3. Look at one pair whilst actually listening to a different
pair nearby. Correct the pair nearby (which will
probably make them jump because they thought you
were listening to the pair you were looking at) just to
keep everyone on their toes - they never know when

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

you're listening to them so they can't ever switch off or
revert to their mother-tongue.
4. Be ready to massage any flagging conversations back
into life, to stop students monopolising conversations,
to stop students falling out with each other and to offer
encouragement and praise where appropriate. Listen
and supervise.
5. Take a piece of paper and a pen with you on your
travels round the classroom so that you can jot down
any howlers (which can then be dealt with at the end seeTT11 for further explanation).
Why:
1. If you spend your life in the classroom sitting down,
this is your chance to stop numb-bum syndrome - get
up and wander round. If you spend your life in the
classroom on your feet, this is your chance to put your
feet up (not literally, maybe, though I did when I was
pregnant!) - sit down to listen to the students.
2. Monitoring gives you the opportunity to hear how the
students are coping with the activity and to make
notes about pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar
points that are causing difficulty. I see the role as one
of listener/supervisor/facilitator/encourager - not as
one of error corrector.
Extra Info:
Although it's a good idea to indicate that you're actually
listening to the students (even to the point of feigning
interest in what they are saying) I wouldn't suggest
crouching down to table height in order to listen to the
students - it looks silly.
Apparently, (according to books on body language) tipping
your head to one side gives the impression that you are
listening avidly to someone so if you were thinking of
switching off and not listening to your students at all

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

(...me??...never!!), tip your head to one side first and they'll
be none the wiser!
I generally don't correct mistakes very much when I'm
monitoring - I jot them down and do a bit of error correction
later because if I get caught up correcting one student's
mistakes during the activity I can't monitor the other
students properly and by the time I get back to monitoring I
find that everyone has reverted happily to their mother
tongue.

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Teaching Tip 11: Error

Correction
How:
1. Let the students make mistakes. They need to. We all
learn best through making mistakes. Trial and error is
the name of the game.
2. Give the students time to realise they've made a
mistake and try to correct it themselves. If they can't,
maybe someone else can help them. If nobody can
help then you can either step in and give the correct
form or make a note of it for later.
3. As far as possible, correct mistakes anonymously. Do
this by making notes of students' mistakes as you
monitor (see TT10 for further explanation) then putting
them on the board later and give the students
themselves the opportunity to correct them, in pairs or
small groups. If no one knows the right answer, give it
to them, but only as a last resort. Anonymous error
correction is a kind way to deal with mistakes. It isn't
important who made the mistake originally - the point

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

is, can the students all correct it? I tend to doctor the
mistakes so that even the perpetrator doesn't
recognise them as his/her own. For example:
Original error: "I have been to Paris last year." = On
the board: "I have been to London last week."
Extra Info:
Mistakes are good things and students need to know that
they are. I explain like this: "Please make lots and lots of
mistakes in my lessons - new mistakes, mind you, not the
same old ones over and over. I like mistakes because we
can all learn from them and because if you don't make any I
won't have a job. If I find a student who doesn't make any
mistakes in my lesson I will move that student to a higher
level class because s/he obviously isn't learning anything at
this level."
Learning English is like learning to ride a bike - you fall off a
lot, but you get the hang of it in the end. You will make a lot
of mistakes but you will be able to communicate effectively
in the end. Very few people become successful international
cyclists and the chances are that even though you can ride a
bike you are not a professional cyclist. Very few students
reach mother-tongue (supposedly error-free) level but many
students learn to communicate very well in English in spite
of this. You will probably never have error-free English so
accept that you will always make some mistakes - just try to
learn from them and learn to live with your linguistic
imperfections.
When a student makes a mistake it is usually counterproductive to say "No!"/"That's wrong!"/"Are you
serious?"/"How long did you say you've been studying
English?" etc. It's often kinder to say "Not
bad"/"Nearly"/"Good try"/"That's an interesting mistake"
etc.
Some say that you shouldn't laugh at students' mistakes but
I often do. They're often very funny so why shouldn't I? I
find it breaks the "mistakes taboo" and makes linguistic
risks and disasters an acceptable part of the classroom

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

culture. Students catch on very quickly and we have a good
giggle together when someone messes up.
The ability to correct themselves when they make a mistake
is an important one for students to develop. Encourage it
and give them time to correct themselves - don't jump in
immediately to correct them, keen though you are to prove
that you are doing your job. Most students (and indeed
some teachers) seem to think that it is the teacher's job to
correct students mistakes but this is not necessarily so. Yes,
teachers can correct their students endlessly but how will
that help the students' when they go out into the big wide
world - who will be there to correct them then?
It's much better for the students if they get into the habit of
listening to themselves when they are speaking and correct
themselves as they go along. Obviously they won't be able
to correct all the mistakes they make but they will be able to
correct a lot of them.
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Teaching Tip 12: Eliciting

How:
1. Instead of giving information, ask if anyone in the class
can provide it. When a student asks "What does this
mean?" or "What's the past of this verb?" etc. say
something like "That's a good question - what do you
think?" Can you guess? Can anyone help Maria here?"
2. If you want to teach some vocabulary, for instance,
then rather than giving it to the students, try to get
them to give it to you. For example: I want to teach
the word "cow". I could draw a little picture on the
board. I could explain what a cow is. Or I could elicit

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

the word from the students along these lines: "What do
we call/What's the word for an animal which makes
milk and goes "mooo"?! With any luck the students will
say "cow". There you go - I've elicited the word "cow"
from the students. I didn't say it to them - they said it
to me; that's eliciting.
Why:
1. 1. If you don't elicit you run the risk of telling the
students everything they want to know and ending up
spoon-feeding them (see TT9 - the "Why to avoid
doing it" part for further explanation).
2. 2. Eliciting means getting information from people as
opposed to giving it to them - asking, throwing
questions back at the students, in a nutshell.
Extra Info:
When I take the register, I always elicit today's date from
the students ("What's the date today?") because I find that
even at high levels students are shockingly bad on dates.
Sometimes students don't understand the value of eliciting.
They think that you're not doing your job if you don't
answer their questions. If I have a student like that I tend to
explain like this: "I know I know the answer but I'm not the
one learning English here. What is important is, do any of
you know the answer?" or "Why should I explain again? We
did this last week!"
If you try to elicit something and obviously no one knows
what you are getting at or they've all forgotten it or they
haven't done their homework then don't keep on trying to
get it out of them. Flogging a dead horse will get you
nowhere and it just embarrasses/irritates the students and
wastes valuable lesson time.
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Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

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Teaching Tip 13: Checking

Together
How:
1. When the students have finished doing an activity on
their own, put them in pairs or small groups and tell
them to check their answers together.
2. Tell the students that if the answers are the same,
they are probably correct but if they are different they
need to explain/justify their choice of answer to their
partner - in English! They can change their answers if
they like.
Why:
1. It's a good idea to let the students check their answers
together before feeding back to the teacher because it
gives them the chance to rub out/cross out any glaring
errors before the teacher sees and thus avoid looking
stupid in front of the class.
2. If a student hasn't a clue about some of the answers
it's reassuring to find out that their partner hasn't the
foggiest either. The students realise they are not alone.
They can also copy their partners answers (if their
partner has some that they don't) but their partner
might not be right!
3. Peer teaching is considered a good thing in the world of
EFL. Peers are equals. So in this case a students peers
are a student's fellow classmates. Working together
and checking work together is a form of peer teaching.
This means that instead of the know-it-all (and/or)
mother-tongue teacher always teaching them, the
students can teach each other (by explaining grammar
points, correcting pronunciation, explaining new words

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

and phrases etc). The beauty of it is that the students
are all equal to each other and are in the same boat,
linguistically speaking.

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Teaching Tip 14: Reading

before Writing
How:
1. Tell the students to read the whole exercise first before
writing anything. (This will be unbelievably hard for
some students to do).
2. Once they've read it all, let them begin doing the
exercise.
Why:
1. It's a good idea to read the whole exercise before
starting to write anything because sometimes more
than one answer is possible but, in the exercise the
students are doing, only one answer is the right one.
For example: (a gap fill with these possible answers:
take photos buy souvenirs):
I always _______________ when I am on holiday
because they help me to remember it.
(Could be either answer! But not if you've read the
whole exercise first because you know that one of the
later sentences is:
I _____ a lot of _____ on my last holiday because I
had a new camera.
This is true not only for my worksheets but also for the
Cambridge exams such as First Certificate and as a
useful strategy in exams in general.

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

2. Another reason is that the students can answer the
questions they know the answer to and guess the rest
(from a smaller selection because they've used some of
the answers already and so have a higher percentage
chance of guessing the right answer). A process of
elimination.
Extra Info:
Exam students are strongly advised to read everything
before putting pen to paper for the reasons stated above.
Apart from anything else it gives them more context to help
them.

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Teaching Tip 15:

Brainstorming
How:
1. Ask the students to think of all the words they know
connected with the topic.
2. Tell the students to write them on a piece of paper.
3. Give them a couple of minutes to do so.
4. Put them in pairs or small groups to compare their
vocabulary and transfer words they hadn't thought of
from their partner's list to their own.
5. Feedback (see TT8) on to the board.
6. Or you could do it all on the board in the first place just ask the class to give you words to write on the
board. (Or give board pens to one or more students
and get them to do the writing!)

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

Why:
1. If students have already activated their vocabulary
related to the topic they will not be searching for words
so much when they start the speaking activities. This
should enable them to be more fluent.
Extra Info:
Brainstorming can be used as a warmer (a five minute
activity at the start of the lesson) just to get them in the
mood and to start them thinking about the topic or as a filler
(a five minute activity at the end of the lesson) to see how
many words they remember from the lesson. It can also be
used as revision - "Write down all the words you can
remember about X (which we studied last month)"! (The
students'll love you for that - not!)

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Teaching Tip 16: Personalising

How:
1. It's been done for you on the worksheets. All the gapfill exercises, question-forming exercises and even the
majority of the grammar analysis exercises have been
made to include that ever-important word "I". The
discussion questions are mostly aimed at encouraging
the students to give their personal opinion on aspects
of the topic.
Why:
1. In my experience, students like talking about
themselves. And why not? Who doesn't?
2. They will remember new words etc. better if they have
had the opportunity to use them in exercises, both

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

written and spoken, that are relevant to their own
experience in some way.
3. Apparently, when mother-tongue speakers talk, some
of the most frequently used words are I, me, you.
Extra Info:
A lot of coursebooks seem to try to make things look
"realistic" for the students in this way. They show a photo of
a man and a woman and say something like "This is Bob and
Pam". Then they provide some sort of exercise which
features "Bob" and "Pam" which may go something like this:
Write the following verbs in the sentences below: get up go
1. Bob and Pam ____________ very early every morning.
2. Bob and Pam ____________ to work by bus.
In my view, the chances of the students being really
interested in "Bob" and "Pam" are slim and so are the
chances of them remembering the target language (target
language is the words and/or grammar structure you are
trying to teach them).
There may well be nice colour photos of people supposedly
called "Bob" and "Pam" but, correct me if I'm wrong, it's
hardly realistic. The students know full well that the people
in the photos are called just about anything except "Bob"
and "Pam" because they are models or actors or whatever.
They certainly don't care what time they get up and how
they get to work.
That's where personalising comes in. Sentences like: "My
partner ______ very early every morning" can be turned
into questions (Do you get up very early every morning?)
which will begin a real, personally relevant conversation
between two students in which they can talk to each other
about themselves. (Yes, I do, I have to be at work by 8.15
every day including Saturday...Really? What do you do?
etc.).
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Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

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Teaching Tip 17: Translating

How to avoid doing it:
1. Refuse to give translations for new vocabulary yourself.
Pretend/admit you don't speak the student's language.
2. Encourage the students to guess the meaning of words
they don't know or to ask each other for help or to look
it up in a monolingual dictionary instead. (See TT6 ,
TT9 and TT20 for further explanation).
3. Explain that you are a teacher, not an interpreter.
4. Remind students that you are a teacher, not a
dictionary.
Why to avoid doing it:
1. If student's translate words and you don't speak their
language you won't know if they've really understood
or if they've translated it correctly.
2. There often isn't a direct translation for a word or
phrase, there is only an "equivalent", sometimes not
even that. Try translating a couple of modal verbs (like
"must" or "would" and you'll see what I mean) and I
doubt very much that there is a translation for
"Yorkshire Pudding" in any language (because it's
something solely British so other countries will
presumably never have needed a word for it). "get" is
hard to translate, as are phrasal verbs.
3. Translating some things word for word doesn't help.
For example: My mother -in-law once told me that my
husband is a "pezzo di pane" which translates as "a
piece of bread". I was none the wiser for having

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

translated this. Did it mean he was soft, I asked
myself? Or stale? (It actually means he's a good sort,
apparently.)
4. Translating slows students down which means you run
the risk of getting bogged down in the fruitless pursuit
of a word which isn't English anyway.
5. Thinking in two languages simultaneously (which is
necessary for translating) is very hard. People pay
simultaneous interpreters quite a lot of money to do
this and you need to be very good at both languages to
do it successfully. ("If you are a professional
interpreter you may translate in my lessons, no
problem" - funnily enough I haven't come across any
such students yet!)
6. False friends can cause problems. In Italian the word
"sensibile" means sensitive. Not sensible. The word
"conveniente" means cheap. Not convenient. I could go
on...
7. Often there is only one word in the students' language
to translate two English words. For example: the
Italian for make is "fare" and so is the Italian for "do".
The Italian for "job" is "lavoro" and so the Italian for
"work". In such cases translating is actually the origin
of the students' confusion over the words, not the
solution to it.
Extra Info:
If I encounter students who are convinced that translating
English into their own language is an essential part of
learning English I try to discourage them by explaining like
this: Let's imagine that I am a piano-teacher and a student
wants to learn to play the piano so s/he has piano lessons
with me. S/he may not be able to play the piano but s/he is
an expert guitarist and brings his/her guitar to the lesson. I
play a tune on the piano and s/he tries to copy it on the
guitar. But it doesn't sound the same. In fact it doesn't
sound like a piano at all. Well, it wouldn't, would it? I
suggest that s/he tries playing it on the piano but s/he tells

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

me that s/he will only be able to play it on the piano if s/he
can play it on the guitar first. The lesson continues with me
playing the piano and the student "translating" the tunes
onto the guitar. At the end of this course of piano lessons,
do you think the student will be able to play the piano? I
think not.
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Teaching Tip 18: Pacing

How:
1. Change the pace of the lesson by breaking things up a
bit. Instead of simply doing one activity straight after
another, allow a little time for something different
(pronunciation work, for example - see TT4 for further
information).
2. You can also change the pace during a lesson by
allowing time for a brainstorming session (see TT15 for
further explanation).
3. Another way to liven up the pace is to put a time limit
on some activities - "You have 2 minutes for this, so
get going!" Or introducing an element of competition put the class into small groups and tell them that these
are teams and the first team to finish this activity is
the winner. (Prize = no homework, or something like
that.) Maybe the activities which involve matching
words with pictures would be a good one for this).
4. Use other material during the lesson - your coursebook
etc.
5. Wake people up by giving them a 2 minute test on last
week's vocabulary.
6. Allow silence at appropriate times during the lesson while students are reading the questions or during
speaking activities when students are formulating a

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

response (thinking of something to say). Silence in the
classroom can be a bit unnerving at first but it doesn't
mean you're not doing your job - students need time
to absorb information and time to think. We all do.
Why:
1. The lesson will become rather monotonous if it's just a
case of "Do Activity 1, then do Activity 2, then [lo and
behold] do Activity 3." (!)
2. The lesson will become even more monotonous if the
students spend all lesson with the same partner change the partners over, make small groups instead,
or (especially in a brainstorming session) have the
group brainstorming directly to you.
Extra Info:
Exercises may be numbered 1, 2, 3 etc but that doesn't
mean you have to do them in that order or feedback
(see TT8) in that order. In the discussion activities I often
tell students to read all the questions, select the 3 that
interest them most and talk about them. When feeding back
from another exercise I may ask for the answer to number 5
then number 2 then number 4 - keeps the students on their
toes!
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Teaching Tip 19: Concept

Checking
How:
1. Ask the students a question closely related to the
target concept. For example, if you are working on a
third conditional sentence like this: "I would have done
my homework if I had had enough time", your concept
checking questions could be these: Did you do your

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

homework? Did you have enough time? If you're
checking the understanding of instructions which say:
"Guess your partner's answers to the true or false
questions below", you could ask: Do you need to speak
to your partner at this stage?
Why:
1. It's another way of checking understanding
(see TT3 for further explanation).
Extra Info:
I suggest thinking up concept check questions before the
lesson and jotting them down somewhere. I don't know
about you but they never come to me spontaneously when I
need them in a lesson.

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Teaching Tip 20: Using

Dictionaries
How:
1. If possible, give the students each an English-English
dictionary.
2. Make sure they know how to use it. If not, teach them
how. (If you don't know how to teach them how, see
Extra Info below for some ideas).
3. Encourage the students to refer to their dictionary
whenever appropriate during the lesson, though they
should try to guess the meaning from the context first
where possible (See TT6 for further info).

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

Why:
1. A dictionary is an extra teacher for the student.
2. It helps the students to realise that you are not a
dictionary and therefore shouldn't be treated like one
(see TT9 for further comment).
3. It makes the student more independent - not relying
on the teacher the whole time - and more able to study
outside the classroom, at home, or whatever, and to
continue studying after the course has finished.
Extra Info:
I help students get to grips with dictionary work and start to
appreciate just how useful one can be by giving them some
words to look up and then discuss in pairs. I often give the
students different dictionaries too, different levels, different
publishers, the lot, so they get the chance to develop a
preference. If they do decide to go and invest money in a
dictionary as a result of the lesson they have a better
chance of buying one that is right for them and therefore a
better chance of making friends with it.
The words I give students to look up are false friends - what
do they mean?, confusing words - what's the difference
between them? (I use "job" and "work" in the sentences "I
enjoy my job/ I enjoy my work" - the nouns "job" and
"work" mean pretty much the same here but there is a
difference because between them, what is it? Words which
are impossible to know how to pronounce - "thorough" is a
good one, - how do we say it? Sentences to complete - "I'm
good ___ using a dictionary" - what's the missing
preposition? Phrasal verbs like "put up with" - do they know
which word to look up? Words with more than one meaning
- I use "get" - what does it mean? And does their dictionary
give too much information about it or too little or just right?
The aim of the game is to get students to realise that using
a bilingual dictionary to translate a word is no way to go
about dictionary work, especially if it is more than 5 years
old - for a start, if they look up the word "mouse" it'll

Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

probably just say "small furry animal" and not mention
computers at all. Using a monolingual English dictionary
could really help them with their studying.

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Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

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Mohsen Mohsen Ali Mosaeid 10.2014

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Liz Regan's 20 Teaching Tips For Training Teachers How To Teach ESL and EFL English