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Connor O'Donoghue
Mar 17, 20243 min read
Helping students to record vocabulary
On a CELTA course, we spend a long time looking at what happens in the lesson itself. How do we get the meaning of a word across to our...
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Connor O'Donoghue
Jan 9, 20243 min read
Deciding when to deviate from a lesson plan
New teachers can sometimes cling to a plan, and there are good reasons for this. A lesson plan is your roadmap. The final stage of a...
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Connor O'Donoghue
Nov 13, 20234 min read
Teaching Mixed-level English Classes: Five Top Tips
In a dream world, every student in a class is exactly the same level - they all know the same words as each other, they are all equally...
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Connor O'Donoghue
Oct 31, 20233 min read
How to teach advanced students
New teachers can be intimidated by advanced students - "What if they know more about grammar than I do?" "What if they correct my...
214 views
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Connor O'Donoghue
Oct 17, 20233 min read
What is controlled practice?
Part of learning anything is to practise it. When I was a teenager and I learned to drive in Ireland in the 1990s, my father took me to...
1,667 views
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Connor O'Donoghue
Oct 3, 20233 min read
Five top tips for writing a CELTA lesson plan
When we meet people at the end of their CELTA courses, one of the comments they often make is that they didn't realise just how much time...
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Connor O'Donoghue
Sep 27, 20233 min read
Receptive skills tasks for the English language classroom
Reading and listening are known as the 'receptive skills' because we receive language while reading and listening. The other language...
802 views
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Connor O'Donoghue
Sep 19, 20232 min read
Correcting students' spoken errors in your CELTA lessons
Students all make mistakes, and it's important we respond to these. When students are speaking in class, and a teacher hears a mistake,...
288 views
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Connor O'Donoghue
Sep 12, 20233 min read
Checking students' understanding of meaning
One of the most important skills to learn as a new teacher is the skill of checking students' understanding. We might think we're...
278 views
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Connor O'Donoghue
Jul 4, 20233 min read
The 3 tools you need to master classroom management
Every lesson is essentially a sequence of activities. Activities come in all shapes and sizes, but ideally, they are student-centred, and...
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Connor O'Donoghue
Jun 27, 20233 min read
Why do students find listening so hard?
Students, even students who can speak, read and write well in English, often struggle with listening exercises in class, and there are...
210 views
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Connor O'Donoghue
Jun 20, 20233 min read
Vocabulary: conveying meaning to students
Learning new words is one of the most important parts of learning a new language. You may be able to get your meaning across with poor...
527 views
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Connor O'Donoghue
Jun 5, 20234 min read
How to teach speaking
Not all students are the same, but in most of the classes I've taught, when I've asked students what they want to do more of, speaking...
219 views
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