Met Editor

A spotlight on spotting and converting learning opportunities from your materials Gareth Davies | Wednesday 19th November 2025 | 16.00 – 17:00 (London time) | FREE When do you replace the toothpaste tube? A recent post on LinkedIn highlighted the difference between a father and a teenage son about when to replace a toothpaste tube. Whereas the son started a new tube when the effort to get toothpaste was a bit too much, the father squeezed every last bit out of the toothpaste tube. It made Gareth Davies think about teachers and learners in the classroom. Whether we use published materials,...

Do it backwards Gareth, Wales The editor of this magazine and myself have a few things in common, we both love cricket and we both love doing cryptic crosswords. I learnt the basics of how to do cryptic crosswords at the knees of my father, but I really worked out how to do them when I spent a summer doing them backwards. By this I mean I would look at the answers in the next day’s newspaper and then try to figure out why they were correct. What has this got to do with teaching? Well, it occurred to me that...

In this issue we focus on one school and one country – Myanmar. The land of golden pagodas In Myanmar, once known as Burma, land of golden pagodas and multiple cultures, a small group of language schools offer hope, stability and professional development to teachers, as well as much-needed skills to students young and old. The cities nestle between jungles and low clouds, golden temple domes peeking into the sky. Once popular among tourists, Myanmar is significantly more complex to visit nowadays. The language academy opened less than a decade ago as 'SPACE', in 2017, with just two classrooms. There are now...

Activities for Social-emotional Learning: Developing social-emotional competences in the ELT classroom By Anna Hasper and Luis Jabier Pentón Herrera DELTA Publishing ISBN 9783125017757 About a year ago, I decided to swap a regular warmer for one of my teen classes with a question and an instruction: ‘How are you? Discuss in pairs’. I wrote these words on the board and waited for the students to start speaking, but nobody uttered a single word. When I realised they were struggling to talk about how they were feeling, my response was at first one of complete disbelief, followed by a sad realisation that these young...

Generation Alpha in the Classroom By Erika Galea and Olga Sayer Oxford (2025) ISBN 978 0 19 409781 9 Generation Alpha in the Classroom is the new title in the Oxford Handbook for Language Teachers series, designed to serve as a reference and foundation for training courses – and it certainly delivers in this book! Erika Galea and Olga Sayer introduce us to a new generation of Young Learners already present in our classrooms, helping us consider what makes them different and unique. As someone who has worked, and continues to work, with Young Learners in various contexts, this book is really interesting...

This article describes a professional development scheme from the perspective of two mentors and two mentees on a teacher support programme at the British Council. It outlines the full observation cycle and highlights the benefits of such a programme from both the mentor and mentee perspective (such as gaining greater confidence), and the main challenges, for example mitigating anxieties around being observed. Lastly, the article provides some practical advice for modern English teachers wanting to set up their own formal or informal mentoring project in their own contexts. Professional development In EFL and ESL contexts, both formal and informal peer observations...

A spotlight on communication and differentiation Rachel Tsateri | Wednesday 19th February 2025 | 16.00 – 17:00 (London time) The MET Spotlight Series shines a light on key topics we’ve explored in MET. In these webinars, our fantastic MET contributors will explore their chosen topic in more detail, and share their expertise alongside practical tips, useful ideas and more. Lesson planning can be time consuming and, by the end, it often doesn’t feel as though it has been productive enough. Planning lessons that encourage learners to communicate, whilst differentiating for different levels in your class can be a huge challenge. However, in an article in Modern English Teacher in March...

In this webinar, David Byrne and Mark Heffernan will explore the importance of discussing voice and persona with learners. With the development of AI, it’s become even more important for learners to know their voice, to know how they want to come across, and to stand out from AI generated content.

María Elena, Peru Hello! I’m María Elena Mendoza, from Peru, and I’ve been teaching English for about 20 years. Over that time, witnessing how teaching and learning have evolved has been nothing short of an adventure. Think of it as a front-row seat to the world’s most unpredictable reality show – where technology constantly raises the stakes and teachers like me learn to adapt, often on the fly! I’ve had the privilege of working for a distinguished Peruvian language school that’s been around for over 80 years. Yes, we’ve been teaching English since long before ‘googling it’ was even a concept....

English language learners (ELLs) have many options for learning colloquial language, but what propels them into academic and higher levels of fluency is academic vocabulary acquisition. Jim Cummins (1981, 2000) conceptualised the distinction between basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), where BICS is colloquial English and CALP is academic language. Although students demonstrating high levels of BICS appear to have commensurate levels of fluency and vocabulary, this ability can mask diminished levels of CALP vocabulary development. To lift the BICS mask, it is imperative to design lessons that drive a deeper acquisition of academic...

In his ESL teaching bible, Learning Teaching, Scrivener describes classroom management as a teacher’s most important job, which is to ‘create the conditions in which learning can take place’ – a mammoth task that involves far too many things to cover in one short article. So, rather than try, I thought I’d take you on the journey I travelled when learning teaching – specifically learning classroom management. Where did it all start for me? When I consider my own approach to classroom management, and any success I had in the early days, I find myself thinking of my mother. Years after the...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all over the news, and it’s especially making waves in education. But here’s a reality check: 85% of teachers haven’t even touched generative AI tools, according to the On EdTech Newsletter (2024). Even so, there’s one area quietly undergoing a profound transformation due to AI: language learning, especially for refining English speaking skills. Compared to previous generations like mine, today’s learners are experiencing a monumental change in the learning process. No longer held back by barriers of opportunity, cost or geography, English language learners are now empowered to achieve proficiency, unlocking global academic and career opportunities. Game...

Since the pandemic, I have been teaching on online pre-sessional English courses for a UK university, with the students dispersed across China (which is why the Chinese context is cyclically highlighted in this article). Many of these students lack authentic English practice, and some admit to never having spoken to a foreigner before (issues that are not exclusive to Chinese learners). Even though they are set regular collaborative discussion-led homework tasks, such homogeneous class groups invariably end up communicating overwhelmingly in their first language. Last summer, I devised this list of realistic ideas for my online students to get more...

I started working with Ukrainian refugees in March of 2022, soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine broke out. As the number of refugees from Ukraine and other countries is steadily growing, I believe it is important to share my experience, and that of people I have interviewed. I hope to be able to increase teachers’ understanding of how to provide useful, compassionate and relevant English lessons for those that require such help. While I have experience and data relating specifically to refugees from Ukraine, I believe the information that follows is helpful to teachers who work with students...

  Anna Machura The MET Spotlight Series shines a light on key topics we’ve explored in MET. In these webinars, our fantastic MET contributors will explore their chosen topic in more detail, and share their expertise alongside practical tips, useful ideas and more. How can you turn your classroom into an oasis of growth? In this interactive webinar, experienced teacher and dedicated therapist Anna Machura will show how she puts a range of proven therapeutic strategies and techniques into action to create a feel-good lesson. Link to VIMEO video