Damian Willians, Autor em RichmondShare Blog | High quality content and interaction in the ELT world

Damian Willians

Ten Tips for Teaching Private Classes

14 de outubro de 2015

These days, faced with low pay and poor working conditions in most private language schools, more and more teachers are going it alone and teaching privately. Before starting, it’s good to have certain things in place in order to make it a smoother transition. Here goes: 1. Find out what they don’t like. Obviously, it’s...Read More

Teacher Development

aulas particulars, EFL, elt, esl, private classes

Truly PUNishing

14 de agosto de 2015

by Damian Willians

English teacher, ‘How are you feeling today?’ Student, ‘Tense’ English teacher, ‘How were you feeling yesterday? How will you have been feeling by the end of the week? How have you been feeling this month?’ Did you groan? I hope so, because that makes two of us. I certainly let out an audible ‘oh…’...Read More

Vocabulary

EFL, elt, esl, punny, puns

Idioms? Not my cup of tea.

14 de julho de 2015

by Damian Willians

I’ve always had a strange sense of foreboding when teaching idiomatic expressions. A while back I was teaching a lesson based on personality, and we ended up looking at some idioms: couch potato, wet blanket, backseat driver, chip on your shoulder, etc. We explored the meaning, did some practise, then discussed some questions about people we know...Read More

Language Acquisition, Reflections about Education, Speaking and Spoken Language, Vocabulary

damian williams, idioms, lexis, linguistic landscapes, phrasal verbs, tailor made english, tme

Pendulum swings, babies and bathwater: an appeal for common sense

14 de junho de 2015

by Damian Willians

I recently came across a blog post by Cathy Moore titled ‘How to respond to learning styles believers’, in which she talks about the perils of debunking theories to which people have become quite accustomed and attached to over the years, but which have been shown not to be based on evidence – in this...Read More

Reflections about Education, Teacher Development

common sense, contra-fads, EFL, elt, esl, esol, fads, TEFL, tesol

You know you’re an EFL teacher when …

14 de maio de 2015

by Damian Willians

1 You listen to songs, mainly paying attention to the lyrics for examples of language use you can practise in class. 2 You have a huge bank of useful but interesting general knowledge, entirely gleaned from coursebooks. 3 You gesticulate wildly all the time when speaking to people, something you learnt when trying to explain...Read More

Reflections about Education

EFL, elt, humour, you know you're a teacher when

My journey through the Linguistic Landscape

14 de março de 2015

by Damian Willians

Photo by Higor Cavalcante | CC BY 2.0 No matter where you are in the world today, English is everywhere you look. It’s used in shop signs, products in the supermarket, the names of buildings, menus, graffiti, airports, public transport, shopping centres, notices, advertising posters and hoardings. In fact, here in Brazil there is even an...Read More

Language Acquisition, Lesson Ideas, Resources, Vocabulary

Linguistic landscape, mull, murbll

In defence of coursebooks

14 de fevereiro de 2015

by Damian Willians

Good morning. My name’s Damian and I like coursebooks. I’ve liked them for about 20 years now. Coursebooks are a funny beast in our profession. They seem to take a lot of flack from various sectors of the industry, yet they are – and continue to be – all pervasive. Whatever your connection with ELT,...Read More

Resources, Teacher Development

authentic materials, coursebooks, dogme, grammar mcnuggets, materials, mcnuggets, thornbury

Solutionism in ELT: magic bullet or malady?

14 de janeiro de 2015

by Damian Willians

One of the books that made the biggest impression on me last year was Evgeny Morozov’s To Save Everything, Click Here: Technology, Solutionism and the Urge to Fix Problems that Don’t Exist. In it, he describes the rise of tech companies into all-pervasive areas of life, their inherent solutionism, and the threats this process poses to society...Read More

Educational Technology, Games, Technology

Revisiting ELT Mantras: know you think

14 de dezembro de 2014

by Damian Willians

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What...Read More

Teacher Development

conclusion, critical thinking, elt mantras, summary

Revisiting ELT mantras #9: Quoting people

14 de novembro de 2014

by Damian Willians

Kitten! by Sergey Ivanov CC BY-SA 2.0 This month’s post has nothing to do with kittens, but do we really need an excuse? This month I’m straying from the topic of teaching slightly to look at what happens when we, as teachers, write about our profession. It’s a topic that’s quite close to my...Read More

Career, Teacher Development

critical thinking, elt matras, quotes, teacher development, teacher training, writing

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