Volume 8 Issue 3

Perspective, Pace and Passing: Teaching English in a Foundations Programme (OUP ELT Blog)

Post author:Tarun Patel
Post published:January 18, 2016
Post category:ELT Articles and Research Papers ELT Newsletter ELTWeekly ELTWeekly Volume 8 English Teaching Tips Vocabulary Development Volume 8 Issue 3
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[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 3 | January 18, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

A decade and a half. That’s how long I have been teaching on a Foundations programme in Dubai, and it has been, from a teaching and career perspective, an amazingly positive experience. When I arrived fifteen years ago, I had been teaching general English in Barcelona, and teacher training. The Middle East was as yet unknown to me, and I soon found out that teaching here was a massive change from fun and language games to a serious, high-stakes, assessment-driven academic context. As time passed and I changed my teaching style and persona, I started to find the challenges really absorbing, and my focus changed to developing methodology that worked, writing materials to support this methodology, and sharing my insights. All in all, it has been very satisfying.

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The art of juggling: developing the language learner’s vocabulary (OUP ELT Blog)

Post author:Tarun Patel
Post published:January 18, 2016
Post category:ELT Articles and Research Papers ELT Newsletter ELTWeekly ELTWeekly Volume 8 Vocabulary Development Volume 8 Issue 3
Post comments:0 Comments

[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 3 | January 18, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

The word ‘thesaurus’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘treasure’ or ‘storehouse’ and the traditional thesaurus is a kind of storehouse of language. Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases lists over 70 synonyms for fast, including zippy, fleet and nimble-footed. The editors have made no judgement about how useful each word is. The thesaurus marks words that are particularly formal or informal, but otherwise gives no information about how to use each word. The purpose of a thesaurus such as Roget is to remind native or expert speakers of the language of words they already know, but cannot quite bring to mind. It does not teach.

The needs of language learners are rather different. Even if they use a smaller thesaurus thanRoget, with fewer synonyms, they may still not know which word to choose, without information on the exact meaning and use of each word.
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