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How I approach the provision of ELT materials
I began this site in 1998. One of the earliest projects was the graded reader First Time in England for elementary-level learners. While telling a story, my intention here was to rehearse the very situations met by learners attending language schools in the UK and hosted by native English speaking families.
As teacher of French in a UK Middle School, I well recall abandoning The Nuffield En Avant French Course (Stage 1) in favour of Mary Glasgow's Eclair French Course (1) set in the town of Dieppe. The structurally-graded En Avant French Course, widely used in UK schools in the early 1970s, tried desperately to motivate through figurines of dolls & skipping ropes and storylines which even 9-year-olds found childish, while the Eclair Course prepared children for what they would need to say on a visit to France. This functional dimension (added to a structural syllabus) allowed a few of my learners to see some purpose to their lessons.
I have recently added some new topics relevant to people resident in the UK in the vocabulary practice section for higher intermediate and advanced level students.
Other sections of this website are intended to help with common areas of lexical and grammatical difficulty such as phrasal verbs and particles. I believe that these items are easier to learn when tied to memorable contexts, created through the use of short texts and entertaining questions.
The index to this section is a Common Mistakes page, which links to practice exercises & materials such as minimal pairs.
As my target audience is teachers as well as learners, I also provide a Language TESL/TEFL Methodology section. I received kind support in this from Robert O'Neill, who gave me permission to use a series of articles he had written on language acquisition. Robert sadly died in July 2014; I noted in tributes to him that I was not alone in experiencing his generosity.
Several pages on this site focus on the use of songs in the English language class e.g. to practise sounds or to set themes for discussion. I have long been a fan of the late Ewan MacColl and the indefatigable Peggy Seeger (sister of the late Pete Seeger). Ewan MacColl collected samples of speech from many walks of life - (railway workers, miners, the fishing community, travellers, road builders, boxers, teenagers, polio victims) - and crafted his song compositions using the words and phrases he heard in each social & occupational setting. As well as being linguistically rich, a great number of his songs reference important topics of social and political debate. These songs make clear statements, committing to Ewan's own perceptions of 'wrong' or 'right'. This leaves space for those discussing the songs to part from 'black' or 'white' and to point out 256 shades of grey. I recommend the songs for promoting interesting debate.
My local residents' association website is at http://www.roundhill.org.uk (The Round Hill Society)