Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters

I presented this workshop at ISTEK Schools International Conference in Istanbul on March 28 2010. The topic is a real favourite of mine and forms the basis of a lot of training work I do – teachers, after all, do have to use coursebooks, despite the arguments against them, and they have to have the [...]

Most learners enjoy playing games; most teachers use games convinced of their value for language learning.  This short, post aims to give you ideas for games which deal with subject matter which  is usually considered ‘ heavy’ or ‘ very serious’ and not usually dealt with in such a light-hearted way! The games below are [...]

I am a big time fan of Spike Milligan, who has nothing whatsoever to do with foreign language teaching or foreign language teacher education but who has given me hours of great delight and, at times, inspiration for materials or activity design. In 1985, he brought out a book called “Further Transports of Delight” with [...]

I first became interested in social group theory quite a few years ago, mainly due to a great colleague and friend, Angi Malderez who I met during the 2nd International Conference ever offered in Istabul in 1992 (or 3?). At that time, that most excellent book, “Classroom Dynamics” (OUP ) and bearing a dedication to [...]

My first post in the series is about three applications ReadtheWords in which an avatar speaks out a text you have pasted into a text box Voki which does the same but which also allows you to record your voice xtranormal which allows only text to speech but which offers a range of animations. In [...]