Express Publishing ELT

A recent survey of employers found that when it comes to recruiting young people, they value creativity and adaptability above paper qualifications. The Common European Framework for education outlines competences, rather than the knowledge as the aim of education. It’s not so important what you know, but rather what you can do, so we have a duty to ensure our students practice the sorts of skills they’ll be needing in the future as well as teaching them a language     read more >>

Don’t we just love tests! We are constantly evaluating, assessing and examining our students. Some of them revel in the opportunity to shine while others get stressed out. We use the results to diagnose student problems, place them in the correct class and measure their overall level of progress, proficiency or achievement. Our course books come with regular revision sections and tests. Students, parents, school administrators, as well as teachers want to know how things are going and tests are supposed to show that.
Well, a good test is reliable / consistent. The same student taking (and completing) two different versions of an exam such as the Cambridge FCE should get the same score in both.
A test should be valid – it tests what it is supposed to be testing and it has face validity – it looks like a test and has tasks that the student is familiar with.
It should be practical, that is easily administered and marked (two different markers should arrive at the same grade); and meaningful (If I tell the students the 10 vocabulary items they will be tested on, I should not be surprised if they all score 10/10)     read more >>

Lesson in brief: Students will explore anger using similes.

Introduction: Explain that this activity will foster creative thinking by asking students to make connections between things they don’t usually think of as connected. Review or explain the meaning of simile: a figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared.     read more >>

Organize your material in a way that helps readers to grasp the important information quickly and to navigate through the document easily. Your document will be an interruption to your reader’s busy day. They’ll read in haste, picking out the information relevant to themselves. They’ll be asking two questions with every sentence they read     read more >>