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Articles

Read articles written by expert teachers and English language professionals about a wide range of current English language teaching topics and issues. All of our articles feature ideas and suggestions about how you can develop your teaching and bring new ideas into your English language classroom.

A teacher sitting with a learner pointing to a text

Topic sentence

The topic sentence is a sentence in a paragraph which shows what the paragraph is about and works as a summary of it.

Young learners responding to a question with gestures

TPR

TPR means Total Physical Response.

A group of students sitting together in a cafe

Transactional language

Transactional language is language which is used to make a transaction and which has a result.

Learner in Egypt doing a language exercise at a desk

Transformation exercise

A transformation exercise is an exercise where learners are given one sentence and need to complete a second sentence so that it means the same.

Student in Portugal speaking with her teacher

Turn-taking

A turn is the time when a speaker is talking and turn-taking is the skill of knowing when to start and finish a turn in a conversation.

A student speaking in a library

Unvoiced consonants

Unvoiced consonants are consonant sounds that are made without vibrating the vocal chords.

Students sitting at desks taking a test in classroom in India

Validity

A test’s validity refers to how good it is.

Male teacher in South Korea showing a picture book to learners

Visual aid

Visual aids can be defined in two ways: as a picture or a diagram you show learners to help their understanding, or in a broader sense as anything you show learners in a classroom to do this.