Messages, Discussions and Chats: Increasing Student Interaction (OUP Blog)

[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 17 | September 21, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]


Today’s students are not limited to learning English in the classroom only. Through the use of technology, learning English has become 24/7 – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In this environment, what is the teacher’s role in helping their students learn? More importantly, how can technology help teachers to help their students learn better? Using messages, discussions, and chats as an integral part of their classes, is one way. Through the use of these simple features, teachers can address questions of mixed ability, customised learning and teaching, personalisation, as well as simply being able to increase contact time with the language, beyond the classroom.

Using “Messages” provides teachers with a simple means to contact their students, as well as for students to be in contact with their teacher. In this way, teachers can follow up in individual needs, without taking up valuable class time. Students can ask questions or raise doubts without the pressure of time and classmates that can (more…)

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Bridging the gap between receptive and productive competence (Cambridge Conversations)

[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 16 | August 31, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]


Key characteristics

  • While learners’ receptive competence continues to develop, their productive competence remains relatively static.
  • Language items that learners recognize and understand in the input they hear do not pass into their productive competence.

All language users have greater receptive competence (language they can understand) than productive competence (language they can produce). I can read great novels for example, but I could never write one. Traditionally, in language teaching we recognize this fact in the distinction between active and passive language knowledge, particularly in relation to vocabulary learning, where it is normally assumed that learners should be able to understand far more words than they can use. (more…)

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