Stephen Tarbuck

Choices to be made When a language school starts planning for a new academic year, there’s an important question to be answered: What coursebooks are being used? This question prompts a lot of reflection as coursebooks are one of the foundations of a language school, with poor choices here negatively influencing everything from the quality of the lessons to the motivation of the teaching team. If we consider only those two factors, there is already a lot of pressure to choose the right coursebook. What does the ‘right’ coursebook mean, though? Would that be the coursebook that makes teachers, students, parents,...

The issue Last academic year I was having an issue with my classes, namely: I didn’t know what topics or language points to cover in my syllabus-free classes. This meant it was necessary to do some research into emergent language and I want to share the results with you. Imagine yourself in a situation where you have some year-long classes but lack a syllabus, now in this situation you might find yourself asking: what language should I actually teach in syllabus-free classes? For most people the first solution that comes to mind would be some kind of needs analysis, wherein you identify...

When preparing students for writing in the Cambridge English B2 First exam, we should provide our students with as many opportunities as possible to practise the writing papers. Unfortunately, the frequency of this practice is often limited. There are many possible reasons for this limitation but I want to focus on one specifically: the time involved in consistently grading each paper to a suitable standard that fulfils the marking criteria of the institution, while also providing actionable feedback. In order to address this with my own classes, I designed and implemented an after-writing checklist that focuses on the B2 First exam....

The article describes the importance of getting ready for a summer programme and of being ready to cope with the unexpected..