Cafe Language

The four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking have dominated the EAP classroom for many years; however in the last decade academic word lists has given much greater prominence to vocabulary teaching. This talk will give an overview of some of the main studies into creating Academic Word Lists and look at the impact of vocabulary knowledge of skills such as reading.

Check out these excellent apps for your mobile device of choice!

Steven Pinker talks about Language Pragmatics and how language is learned through context.

Scott Thornbury's history of second language acquisition (SLA) in a nutshell. A lot of great ideas.

This talk was given by David Crystal for The English-Speaking Union annual lecture, in partnership with the British Council. There is a widely held view that one of the consequences of the rise of English as a world language is global intelligibility. However, at the level of everyday communication, cultural differences between the countries that use English often present a barrier to understanding. The talk illustrates some of the conversational cross-purposes that have taken place, and discusses the kind of cultural awareness all English speakers need to have when they interact with others on a global scale.

Dr. Krashen is perhaps best know for the general theory of second language acquisition.

In this video, Jack discusses professional development for ELT/ESL professionals.

Leslie Hendra reveals her secret teaching tip and the importance of the lexical approach to teaching English. Recorded at IATEFL 2012 in Glasgow. Leslie is one of the co-authors of "English Unlimited" (Cambridge University Press)

Andi White from the BESIG online team interviews Vicki Hollett about ELF and BELF.

In his blog Nik's Quickshout, Nik Peachy informs us of different ways to use these visually arresting and vocabulary rich resources in the ELT classroom. He also gives tips about finding and selecting the best infographics for students and designing appropriate tasks to accompany them. Infographics easily lend themselves to a vocabulary, writing or even a grammar lesson and are perfect for visual learners.

From the online counterpart to magazine Mental Floss comes an article about four subtle linguistic trends in the English language that have emerged over the past 50 years or so.

Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? In this infectiously exuberant talk, leading lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the many ways today's print dictionary is poised for transformation. An oldie but a goodie from TED.

Pronunciation practice with minimal pairs. This website has the image, phonetic symbol and pronunciation for each word. Great practice for students of all ages.

A vocabulary learning platform with images, games and activities for all types of classrooms. A resources for teachers and students to practice vocabulary.

With a different approach, language lessons for students with special education can be inclusive, exciting and relevant. Adapting lessons so they include more visual and audio aspects could help when teaching languages to young people with learning difficulties.

There are a lot of ways technology can help ESL students learn. Here you will discover ways to use technology in your classroom to help students further their language learning.

Word Bucket is a personal English dictionary, notebook and vocabulary learning game. Students can save all new words to their personal Bucket and learn them through tests and games.

Last year it was "selfie" and in 2012 it was "GIF". Oxford University Press have chosen "vape" as this years winner. The word, which the dictionaries's blog defines as both a verb and a noun for the whole category of popular tobacco atomizing devices.

Contronyms are words which have two more or less opposite meanings. The word is a contronym; it can mean hit, as in hitting someone, or it can mean miss, as used in baseball.

Take a look at Slide Share and there collections of various slide shows. This slide show includes a side by side comparisons of Arabic and English, along with illustrations to understand the mistakes of your Arabic language learners.

Paulo Freier encouraged a broader definition of literacy to include the ability to understand both "the word and the world". Literacy includes reading, writing, listening, speaking and analyzing a wide range of texts that include both print and non-print texts.