Past

In 1981, Spotlight magazine was founded with the aim of helping German-speaking learners to improve their English via journalistic content that was more up-to-date and entertaining than course books and also more accessible than regular English-language media. Forty years later, Spotlight Verlag is part of the ZEIT Publishing Group in Hamburg and publishes six magazines […]

Being efficient and effective - this is the goal of many teachers. Technology can help, but good organisation is key. When planning or creating lessons, we should ensure we get the most out of everything we do. Take inspiration from the environmental mantra ‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’ - reduce the amount of time we spend looking […]

The role of grammar in overall language proficiency (central or peripheral?), the best way to teach it (e.g. explicitly or implicitly?), and even its very nature (e.g. patterns, structures or constructions?) are issues that continue to engage teachers, course designers and materials writers. In this interactive webinar I invite you to pose your own questions […]

At lower levels, it makes sense to teach a core vocabulary based around the most frequent 2000- 3000 words, but beyond that where do we go? Many students develop a core productive vocabulary that allows them to operate within their comfort zone and although their receptive vocabulary continues to grow, the range of words and […]

Impression management is about how we seek to look and sound good when we interact with other people. Successful communicators know how to do this, and use specific language and techniques in order to create the right impression. The workshop will be in two parts. First we will examine what we mean by impression management […]

Many of us may find it challenging to deal with conflict proactively because we lack fundamental conflict management and resolution skills. Conflict is a natural part of our lives, and, probably, we learned the strategies we do have before the age of 7... This workshop will offer a range of tools and useful skills to […]

Born from an article written by Scott Thornbury almost exactly 21 years ago which sparked the emergence of a global, grassroots collective counter-movement against both the prevailing waste and excess in ELT courseware and the lack of genuine conversation in classrooms, 2021 is - literally - the year in which Dogme ELT, also known as […]

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The excitement generated by the arrival of the Communicative Approach all those years ago included attention to activities in which students had a communicative purpose, focused on content rather than language form, and encouraged students to use all and any language at their disposal. But how useful are such activities in reality? Do they genuinely […]