Last month, we hosted Gareth Davies’ webinar, ‘Making the Impossible Possible: How to get your students writing’. During the webinar and on his previous blog post, we called for questions for Gareth that we could ask him post-webinar, to delve deeper into creative writing in the EFL classroom. Here’s the full transcript of this interview:

What is your opinion on teachers writing a sample text for students to get used to writing?

This is a good question, reading and writing go hand in hand and there is evidence to suggest that the more reading a student does the better their writing will become, so in general having as much exposure to different texts can only help students.

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Across the world, an educational trend is becoming increasingly popular. Subjects such as Science, Maths, Geography and Economics are being taught through the medium of English – known as English Medium Instruction, or EMI.

My definition of EMI is: “The use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions in which the majority of the population’s first language is not English”. (Dearden, 2015)

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For this professional development webinar, Richard Whiteside discussed the benefits of getting students to do digital projects as a way to build 21st century skills and global awareness. He also provided practical ideas and tips for doing digital projects with your class, using examples from Eyes Open and Uncover. Catch up with the recording below! 

Richard began by stating that digital projects can be very interesting to students, and a great way to get them motivated. The idea that the work they have produced will have an audience (be that via presenting the finished project, or putting it online) can add to that motivation.

So what are digital projects? 

Richard unpacked this to look at what is a ‘project’ in it’s own right. Respondents shared that group work, creating something, problem-solving, tasks, were all key definitions of what they believe a project is.

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