Teaching Methodology and Best Practices

People often intuit what is correct in their first language simply by whether or not it sounds natural, but how can you develop this same intuition in a second language? How can students know if a phrase is formal or informal? How can they choose the right synonym? One shortcut teachers and students can utilize are corpora – large bodies of text – to analyze language and find patterns in order to correct vocabulary and grammatical errors. Join us for a discussion and demonstration of using corpora from English-Corpora.org to correct your students’ errors and help their language sound more natural.

Are you looking to engage intermediate or advanced learners in meaningful conversation? Whether you use authentic materials as inspiration or find ready-made materials and add your own twist, there’s a whole world of exciting topics out there for you to discuss. Our expert panelists are excited to share their sources of inspiration and concrete methods for developing and expanding lesson plans, as well as techniques for facilitating conversation. Join Bridge and Ellii (formerly ESL Library) as we focus on helping English teachers discover materials to generate interesting conversations with intermediate and advanced level learners. For great conversation resources you can use with your students, explore Ellii’s Discussion Starters, Mini-Debates, or a Detective Series. https://esllibrary.com/courses/72/lessons https://esllibrary.com/courses/73/lessons https://esllibrary.com/courses/79/lessons

Do you often feel bored or constrained by the limits of the textbook? Do your students? Would you like to better engage your learners with richer, more diverse material that’s specifically relevant to their interests or matched to their particular learning styles?

Join Bridge’s expert panel to learn about the process of developing unique materials (including authentic, digital, and multi-media) that will excite your students. Panelists will discuss how to find or develop materials and how to creatively integrate them with textbook content to create tailored, targeted lessons that still align with your school’s curriculum.

To prepare for this webinar check out this related Bridge blog post: Top Tips for Creating Materials for the EFL Classroom.

A key contributor to Bridge’s new Micro-credential course on teaching pronunciation discusses the need for specialized training in this area, how pronunciation skills affect the speech habits of learners, and how to address student issues.

Pronunciation materials and lessons often show IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols but what do they mean? And, how can you use them to improve your pronunciation instruction? Join our expert panel for an intro and overview of the International Phonetic Alphabet as well as practical applications to your English language classroom and teaching. We will be reviewing the sounds of both North American and British English.

You’ve held grammar drills, incorporated speaking activities, and given practice essays, but are your students really prepared for the big test day? High-stakes English language proficiency exams can often leave test takers feeling anxious, which can lead to more mistakes or freezing altogether during the exam. What leads to test anxiety, and how can you train your students to overcome this hurdle? Join Bridge and a panel of representatives from three leaders in the English testing industry – Pearson, IELTS, and PrepMyFuture – to learn about the best resources and strategies teachers can use to help students conquer anxiety and succeed on the test!

Do you find yourself spending too much time on lesson planning? Do you feel that your lesson plans are not working when put to the test in the actual classroom? Don’t let lesson planning make you sweat!

Grammar lessons have a reputation for being dry or boring…but they don’t have to be! You can make learning English grammar exciting by including interactive activities featuring topics that are relevant to your students. Join us to learn how you can make grammar lessons more engaging, and see our expert panelists demonstrate specific activities that you can implement in your classroom.

Whether teaching online or in-person, there are many benefits of integrating games and activities in the ESL classroom. Our panel of ELT experts will discuss strategies to maximize those benefits. Games are known to increase engagement in both children and adults, but there are many other benefits to consider. From introducing new concepts and reinforcing old ones to building 21st-century skills, the possibilities are endless. Join us to add new game ideas to your teacher toolkit and explore the full potential of integrating games and activities into ESL instruction.   

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As you’re developing lesson plans, how can your learning objectives and desired outcomes for students be mapped to create “scaffolded” lessons that challenge them to move from lower- to higher-order skills? And how can you check that students are achieving the objectives you’ve set forth? Join Bridge’s expert panelists for answers to these questions and more about Bloom’s Taxonomy in the ESL classroom.

Everyone loves to make learning English fun, but can you play games and still teach your lesson with older, more advanced students? Whether online or in-person, learn to make it fun and conversational!

Whether you teach online or in person, time spent preparing lessons could be time spent in a better place – with your students. The need for quality ESL/EFL lesson plans has inspired growth in the ready-made lesson plan industry. Today’s lesson plans come in multimedia formats, covering all skill levels and a range of topics. How can purchasing ready-made lesson plans save both independent teachers and school-based teachers’ time, creating space for potential income growth? What options are available for lesson plan formats and delivery methods? Are there customizability options? Join Bridge and a panel of representatives from some of today’s leading lesson plan providers for a discussion about the benefits of ready-made lesson plans, where to find high-quality lesson resources and much more.

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There are many formal and informal ways to assess your EFL students’ language learning progress. Join our discussion of effective ways to leverage language proficiency testing as a formative assessment, testing options for your students, and ways to use testing to inform your instruction to support continuous learning progress.  

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You’ve honed your English language teaching skills and know your participles, phrasal verbs and clause structures, so what’s next? Why not leverage your experience into creating custom courses! This is an excellent way to meet the needs of niche English language learning audiences. Plus, once you become proficient, there are opportunities to offer your course design services to companies as a side gig. Join our expert panel to learn about instructional design, curriculum design and the differences between them, and how you can develop and employ your course design skills.

Teaching methodologies have evolved over time, with some touted as “the best” and others falling by the wayside. But is there a teaching method or practice that is better than the rest? Our expert panel will dive into some of the most popular teaching methodologies – new and old – and explore their applications to the online and in-person classroom. Tune in to learn which methodologies may be most effective within certain contexts or with specific learners and find out how to integrate multiple methods to improve learner outcomes and inspire a lifelong learner mentality in your students.