Met Editor

Presenting your skills in the right light Well, what a timely issue this is. At the time of writing, after sixteen years working for the same English language school, David is on the train on the way to his first day at a brand-new e-learning job and Mark is emailing him about wanting to reduce his workload. Career is very much front of mind for both of us. But how did we get here? Indulge us a moment as we skip down memory lane. Both of us began our careers in a similar fashion, a fashion that I think will be...

The 3-min express Anna, Ireland Do you love surprising your learners with new, engaging ideas? If you say yes, you must try ‘The 3-min express’ activity. I have created this short, personalised, brain-friendly exercise for sessions with Young Learners to spark their joy for learning, provide an opportunity to create short stories and practise their writing skills on the go. It is now loved by all neurodiverse minds. Not only does it boost learners’ imagination and creativity, but it also strengthens their working memory, fosters communication skills and helps with time management and organisation – all this within 3 minutes! It...

Reading tips Story building Here’s a quick learner-generated writing and reading activity. Give out a sheet of paper to everyone. Ask them to write the following secretly: A meeting place (for example: park, cafe, train) A person (living or dead) Food / a drink A hobby / interest Another person (living or dead) A country / city / town Clothing / accessory An object An item of furniture An animal Another person (living or dead) Another meeting place Another object When everyone has written their items, give them another sheet of paper (or they can use the reverse side) and ask them...

From foe to friend Min Lun Yeh describes a way of including smartphones in class Mobile phones are often prohibited during lectures or activities because many teachers see them as enemies, constantly vying for attention with buzzing notifications from video games and social media. Too often, instructors lose this battle simply by not taking charge. Why not turn the foe into a friend and make life easier for everyone? In one successful implementation, I had teenage students use their own smartphones to practise tenses and Wh- questions in a turn-taking Q & A format by using Slido, the online polling and Q...

Methodology – a personal perspective Christina Latham-Koenig My teaching years covered a period in which methodologies moved from grammar translation to communicative via all kinds of different teaching ideas, some more wacky than others. Most of my colleagues had been trained by International House, and the PPP system – Presentation, Practice, Production (or Personalisation in some cases, both are now considered somewhat dated, but nonetheless used in a recent AI lesson planning tool) – was what had been ingrained in us, and what was reflected in many of the coursebooks of the time. The aim was usually to get the students...

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...