Creative English

ThingLink is a remarkable device that will help students to develop their speaking skills, brings storytelling to a new level: the platform for students to construct digital media is a picture or video. To create a multimodal tale, students use an image as the base and add links to videos, information, audio, maps, and additional photos. ThingLink includes interactive hotspots that allow viewers to click and explore a particular subject.

Asking students to make something using ThingLink provides them with an opportunity in a virtual environment to employ comprehension, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Students need to strategically select and embed elements that help make their story easier.

Perhaps it's a map that is interactive with content related to a series of wars, or the history of colonization in the region, combined with particular-era music and art. Perhaps students studied about the author or being able to add tidbits of knowledge about the life and writing of that person. Even teachers may use these tools as a way to coordinate unit resources by creating an engaging experience with an image or video.

By reading the title you must know that this tool will develop the listening skills. ListenNotes is a podcast search engine with an extensive selection of podcasts covering a wide variety of subjects. Podcasts are a perfect source of student listening materials and can be easily downloaded for replay at any convenient time on mobile devices. ListenNotes may help teachers or students find things to listen to that suit their interests. Students can start to 'curate' collections of different podcast episodes they like when they log in, and listen to them whenever they are convenient.

The website also offers an embed code for each episode so if you are designing your students' online learning materials, this makes it easy to insert the podcast into your website, materials or blog. Most podcasts are genuine, making them more suitable for higher rates, although some are also available for ESL / EFL podcasts.

Methods are the mixture of techniques that the teachers in the classroom use to teach their students, and strategies are the teacher's ideas about language teaching that can be implemented in the classroom using various language teaching techniques. Here I want to share several methods that can implement in English teaching.

1. GTM (Grammar Translation Method)

The grammar-translation method was a popular and commonly used method of language teaching between the ages of 1840 to 1940. But this approach was first used to teach and learn the Latin language which at the time was not the language of common use. This method is focusing on students’ language accuracy using translation techniques in teaching a foreign language. The goal of this method is to help the students to understand the language literature and to develop students' minds.

2. ALM (The Audio-Lingual Method)

The audio-lingual method is focusing on students’ pronunciation fluency using the drilling technique. This method focus study is on the teacher center but then the students can also actively join the class. The technique used in this method are various types of drilling and also introducing new vocabulary in every learning process. The goal of this method is to help students to be able to use the target language communicatively and learn to use the target language automatically without stopping to think.

3. CLT (Communicative Language Teaching)

The communicative language teaching focusing on enable students to communicate in the target language. This method help students become more communicative in term of language meaning, function, and linguistic. The learning process using this method requires students to become more talk active. There are some characteristics of this method. The first is an information gap that makes requires students to be communicative in every conversation. The second is choice, the communicative language teaching method the learners have a choice of what they will say and how they will say it. The last is feedback, in this method the speaker will have the feedback from the listeners, if the listeners do not provide the feedback then the exchange of information is not really communicative.

That’s all about the English teaching method that I already learned. Actually, there is many more method that I’ve not mentioned on this page. Hopefully, it will help you for teaching English.

Paraphrase means formulating someone's ideas into other ideas using your own words. To paraphrase a source, a paragraph must be rewritten without changing the context of the original text. Paraphrasing is an alternative to quoting, in which you take the exact words of others and place them into quotation marks. In academic literature, paraphrasing is generally better than quoting, as it implies you have interpreted the source and makes your work more original. Here are some websites that will help you to develop your writing skills by paraphrasing both of the words and sentences

1. Thesaurus

Thesaurus is one of paraphrasing dictionary that will help you to find the synonym of the words that you search for. Thesaurus.com launched since 1995, this site provides the user with more than 550.000 synonyms and suite resources that simplify writing. Thesaurus over 160 years help everyone to find the ideal word easily.

2. Quillbot

QuillBot was created for students and professionals as a full-sentence thesaurus for creative writing. QuillBot has also been found helpful by ESL users to fine-tune their language and introduce new vocabulary. In other words, this web is helping us to make the sentences paraphrasing, not the words paraphrasing anymore. Quillbot also gives several modes for the paraphrasing, there are standard, fluency, creative, suggestive, concision. If you are the free user of Quillbot you can only use the standard mode, because the other four modes are premium so you have to upgrade your account and pay for it. In my opinion, using the standard mode is enough, besides that, you can adjust the word that you think it’s more suitable.

Memrise is a useful tool for vocabulary teaching and phrasing. In the classroom, you can use this app, or advise students to use it at home to review class-covered content. Select from a variety of free courses providing phrases and vocabulary lists for different topics. These tools will help the learning about reading skills. 

Using this tool you may be able to build a set of cards after a lesson on English idioms to help students learn and memorize the new phrases and their meanings. Or you might build a word list of verbs or nouns, using the native language of English and your students. Students may either move at their own pace or operate according to what you delegate to them. This tool is compatible with the Android and IOS system and it cost-free.

Quizizz is a quiz free tool that works in any device such as web browser, IOS, Android, and Chrome app. Although teachers can create brand new quizzes, there is also a handy database that contains hundreds of existing quizzes and questions that can be registered and edited as needed. Quizizz is very easy to use, as a teacher you can pick a quiz and share the code with the students. When students complete assignments, you will receive updates, and their responses and grades reveal. Teachers can settle up for a public or private quiz. Attach photos with questions you have.

Teachers will see how students responded on each question and use that information to assess what needs to be restored or re-addressed, as well as what students may need some individual or small group strengthening. Since the production of quiz with Quizizz is made relatively simple, teachers can invite different students each week to create a quiz to review the material of the week.

Find results featured on web snippet Quizizz lets you conduct student-paced formative evaluations in a fun and engaging way for students of all ages. The key features include: Student-paced: Questions appear on the screen of each student, so they can answer questions at their own rate, and eventually evaluate their responses.

Edmodo is an interactive resource that links teachers and students to a social network. In this one, teachers can create community groups online, manage and provide instructional materials, assess student success, and, among other functions, interact with parents.

Edmodo set its goal to interact with all learners with the people and resources they need to achieve their full potential. Over the last ten years as the classroom it has become so much more than a physical space, Edmodo has developed some amazing technology that teachers love and depend on. But this platform always looking ahead to improve the learning outcomes of entire communities.

Edmodo bring the big impact for their platform and also the user since its launch in 2008, Edmodo has helped more than 100 million users learn better together in hundreds of thousands of schools worldwide. And with more than 700 million shared resources, teachers, students, and parents can find whatever they need to help inspire the next generation of doers, makers, and leaders.

Kahoot! is a game- and questions-based educational platform. Teachers may use this method to create questionnaires, conversations, or surveys that supplement instructional lessons. The content is projected in the classroom and the students answer questions while simultaneously playing and studying. Kahoot! promotes game-based learning, which enhances student participation and provides an educational atmosphere that is interactive, social, and enjoyable.

The questions are projected on a shared screen, while with your smartphone, tablet or computer, and unlimited number of players answer the questions; creating a social, fun and game-like environment. Questions are projected on a virtual screen, while an infinite number of players answer the questions with your smartphone, tablet or computer; creating an interactive, fun, and game-like atmosphere.

As a teacher sometimes we have difficulties to find various activities or media that will support your learning process. Here I recommend several websites that will help you develop your learning process.

1. Teachingenglish is a blog which provide a wide range of practical resources to teach in the classroom, whether you are teaching primary, secondary, or adult and business students. This blog provide more than 400 full lesson plans are available to choose from, covering different topics and themes, all arranged according to the levels of the Standard European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

This website also shortens all the lessons, as well as ideas to use songs, poems and stories to help your learners develop their English in engaging, inspiring and enjoyable ways. All the practical materials provided in this blog are written by English Language Teaching experts and can be downloaded for free.

2. Cambridgeenglish is designed to help teacher develop their own skills and to make learning activity become enjoyable and motivating for the students at every stage of their learning journey. Besides give the free resources for the teacher Cambridgeenglish also help you to prepare become students for Cambridge English Qualification and also they have mothly Webinars covering all aspects of teaching English.

This resource will very helpful for the teacher because in this web you can download free lesson plans, handbooks, vocabulary list and sample of the paper for the example of Cambridge English Qualification. They also have speaking test example video that will help the students to familiarize with the test.

3. Onestopenglish is one of the best resource blog for teacher if they want to find the material, activity, teaching method and others. With over 9000 resources including lesson plans, worksheets, audio, video, and flashcards, this blog become the world’s number one resource site for English Language Teacher. Onestopenglish is a teacher resource site part of Macmillan Education and become one of the leading publisher of english language teaching materials.

Onestopenglish is packed with resources for English teachers. All materials are written and edited by our professional team of teachers and writers, and grouped into core subject areas such as Business, ESP, Grammar, Skills, Teenagers and Methodology, so you can always find what you are looking for.

A blog is an online journal or information website that presents content in reverse chronological order, with the latest articles appearing first. It is a platform where a writer or even a group of writers shares their views on a particular topic. A blog features a commentary-type diary and links to posts on other websites usually viewed as a list of reverse chronological entries. Many blogs, reflect on a specific topic such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology.  Others are more varied, featuring links to all types of other websites. And others are more like personal journals, describing the everyday life and thoughts of the author.

Then how to make people interesting to read visit your blog? here some of the tips if you want to make your worth referencing content. 

• Is your article truly unique?
• Have you put together ideas, opinions, or viewpoints that no one else has talked about?
• Will readers quote or link to your article?
• Will people talk about it, and share it?

If a definite yes is the answer then good! If not, go back to your article and work it over again. Finding information, running surveys, or gaining experience can often add a unique perspective.

Speaking skills are one of the four abilities in language activities. It is important to convey in the communication. Speaking is the active use of language to express meaning in order to make sense of it for other people. It means that speaking consists of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey the meaning which makes other people know what we are talking about clearly.

As a human, we communicate with other people through speaking. That’s why the developing speaking skill is very important. There are many ways to develop speaking skills, but here we will talking about developing speaking skills through podcasts. There are many people using podcasts to develop their speaking skills and using podcasts for developing speaking skills is not that hard. If you are still afraid to talk about what in your mind directly you can start to write it down first and then record your voice. After that, you can listen it again and find which part that you want to change or you think is not suitable for you. If you want you also can share your podcast in Spotify or Soundcloud. It’s fun to share the information right.

Here is my podcast about my experience facing culture shock.

By reading comic will help students to get visual comparisons as well as the feeling of comfort by reading comics, and thus make the reading experience more enjoyable. Therefore the teacher should provide an interesting comic. How do we know the comic is interesting for the students? The first this it is should be colorful because students will more interesting to read something which has color. The other thing is the picture and story on the comic, it’s better when the picture and the story are related to the students.

If you want to start to make your own comic I recommend you to use Pixton, because it’s easy to navigate. But if you want some character you have to change your account into premium and pay the price. Here is my comic that I made in Pixton, hope you will get inspired.

 Click Here to Download the Comic

A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog, is a blog form in which video is the medium. Vlog entries also combine embedded video (or a video link) with text, images, and other metadata that support it. Entries can be recorded in multiple parts in one take, or cut. Category Vlog is popular on the YouTube video-sharing platform. In recent years Vlogging has grown into a massive community on social media where people can release any information that they want. Vlogs are a great way for people to support others in so many aspects of their lives. Written Blogs cannot provide a graphic interface in the manner in which Vlogs can provide a deeper meaning through imagery.

When you're vlogging it is important to sound confident and natural. It can take a lot of practice, but don't worry – as you do it more often, it will become easier. Instead of trying to memorize what you're going to say, using a list of things you can look forward to stimulating your mind. Know your facts and opinions, then speak to the camera as though it were a friend. Note, the Speaking portion of your exams will allow you to speak alone for a minute. At first, a minute might feel like a really long time. This form of practice is a perfect way to boost your fluidity and really develop your confidence.

Here an example of a vlog about The Development of Curriculum in Indonesia. Enjoyy!!

Click Here to Watch The Vlog

Hot potatoes provide six different features that will help you to make 6 different styles of language exercise, but I want to explain about 5 features that I use for making some exercise.

1. JCloze: this feature will help you to make a fill in the blank exercise.

2. JMatch: You can use JMatch to make an exercise that requires students to matching the words or something, or It’s kind like matching pairs game.

3. JQuiz: this feature will help us to make a multiple-choice, short answer and some quiz exercise.

4. JCross: Using JCross you can make a crossword game easily.

 5. JMix: this feature helps you to make an unarranged sentence exercise but there will be several alternative answers.

Before you make an exercise if you are a teacher make sure that you have a lesson plan four your teaching guide. Here I have the example of a lesson plan if you want to teach English using hot potatoes. I also give the example of an exercise that made using all the five features in Hot Potatoes.

Download Lesson Plan

Download the Example of Hot Potatoes

Writing is one of the language skills that need students' motivation significantly. If they are not interested in the writing process, that is, if they have no reason to write, then the process that you set would not be a successful learning experience. The other thing is when teaching writing skills, the teacher should give feedback to make students understand. Sometimes the feedback is given manually, when students are done with their writing the teaching will give the feedback one by one on their paper.

In this era, we have some technology to help English teaching especially for developing writing skills such as Google doc. Google doc has a function the same as Microsoft Word, but this application has several features that not available in Microsoft word. The first is to share the document with your friends at one time, so you can work on one document together with your friends. You can invite your friend through email and share a link from Google doc. The next is comment features that will help you to communicate with your partner when working on the document. The comment features also can be used for giving feedback directly. Actually, there are other features that I’ve not mentioned but you can explore yourself. 

Take a look at the article that my friends and I already made in Google Doc.

Download PDF File Here

A timeline is a presentation, along a drawn line, of a chronological sequence of events that allows a viewer to quickly understand temporal relations. The concept is also often used to represent paragraphs in a table format, year-by-year, or simply logical chronology.

Timeline helps us to construct a graphical representation of an event or procedure by sequentially presenting objects along a line. Timelines can be grouped by daytime, date, or case and the tool allows users to construct a brief or long descriptive text mark. Including a picture for each mark increases the visual appeal of a timeline.

If you want to start to make your timeline I recommend Tikitoki for you. This online application is very easy to navigate and it can help us to make a simple timeline. In this application, we also can insert a photo or link to make it detail about the information. So start making your timeline in Tikitoki.

Download the example of timeline made in Tikitoki

A mind map, or spidergram, is a technique to make notes on a topic, before writing. It is an organized strategy that illustrates the (hierarchical) relationship between ideas as opposed to an unstructured approach, such as brainstorming, in which students generate notes on paper at random. There some online applications that can help us to make simple mind maps such as Coggle and Popplet.

Using mind maps for English teaching gives many advantages one of them is mind map can become a pre-writing activity task. It makes students brainstorm spontaneously about one topic, developing and relating ideas to connected by their mind. The other thing is mind maps work well as their graphic design helps students to see the connection between ideas, which enables them to group together those ideas as they proceed. Mind maps perform especially well when generated in groups, as this engenders dialogue that helps to generate ideas and makes the activity more fun and lively.

If you want to make a simple mind map I will recommend using Coogle it helps a lot. Even Though if you want to make mind map which more interesting using a picture or something you have to pay to make your account premium, but for the simple mind map, it is totally enough. 

Klik here for the example of the Mind map.

The development of technology is very fast in various sectors of human life. In this era human life is greatly influenced by technology, including education. Besides that globalization become a reason why technology is important for education, we can easily find computer-based tests for students. Therefore the teacher must familiarize students with understanding and learning to use technology. On this occasion I will explain the use of animation as the English teaching media.

The animation is a technique where pictures are controlled to show up as moving pictures. If we make animation as the media for teaching we must find suitable material such as, descriptive text, report text, and others. Here I want to recommend an animation maker called Animaker. This application provides some features to help you make an animation in a simple way. You can start to make your own animation in Animaker 

Create Your Own Animation. ENJOYY

Here is the example of animation for teaching English

Click Here to Watch the Example

Nowadays online learning seems like very popular due to Covid-19, almost in every educational institution using online learning methods. Actually there are some pros and contra about online learning, but now we will focus on the benefits of online learning. Here are some benefits of online learning for students.

1. Flexible

Online learning gives us the opportunity to set your learning time whether you want to study in the mornings, afternoons, evenings or nights — whatever works best for you, rather than adhering to a schedule.

2. You have a learning atmosphere of your own

One of the main advantages of online learning is being able to research in your own environment.   One of the advantages of online learning is that while you become an online learner, you can build an atmosphere that suits to you.

3. Online degrees are more affordable

When you run an online system, you can save a lot of money. Your housing and commute expenses are not only eliminated but online programs are generally more affordable.

4. Developing soft skills

Online study requires some skills, such as self-discipline, self-motivation, and communication. If you're an online learner, you'll find that you'll quickly hone the skills that are important to the workplace and grow.[1]

Besides that online learning also gives benefits to the students. Here is a video that tells about the benefits of online learning for teachers.