Introducing students to the idea of lexical priming and a web tool called Netspeak Photo by Tzvi Meller In my previous post from the ...

In the second installment of his thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable “Dissing Dogme” series (see here ), Hugh Dellar addresses th...

April 30th is celebrated in the USA and some other countries as Honesty Day. To mark this day, Billy Joel's classic ballad was an obviou...

This activity based on Beyonce's song is suitable for older teens and adults at pre-intermediate level and up. The lesson plan is based ...

Pre-listening activities: what to focus on? At last year's IATEFL conference in Brighton I was at a presentation on teaching listen...

Who is sloppier when it comes to grammar or should we all just get over it? A recent discussion on a teachers’forum has made me wonder a...

Blog visitors poll Leoxicon is about to clock up ten thousand visitors and I thought I should do something to celebrate this achievement. ...

This follows on my earlier post Teaching vocabulary out of context: is it worth the time? About a month ago I blogged about my mini acti...

In this activity, students play an online digital game (in pairs or alone at home) and then focus on the lexis related to money.

Activities for recycling lexis from last week's end-of-year quiz 

Round-up My blog celebrates its first birthday today. It’s been a busy year so I haven’t blogged as often as I should have – probably bel...

Those of you who have been to my workshops or read my articles on TeachingEnglish  are perhaps surprised why someone who advocates teachin...

Video dictogloss A dictogloss is an integrated skills activity in which a teacher dictates a text at normal speed and students note dow...

There is a widespread belief among teachers that collocations are only reserved for higher levels. Likewise, there is a popular misconceptio...

It is the time of year when the ELT blogosphere celebrates its heroes – dedicated teachers who, with unrelenting enthusiasm an...

Sometime in March the day after the Oscar ceremony, one of my Facebook friends posted: Mazal Tov to the King's Speech! to which I...

Students watch a few short clips and match them with different comedy genres. This video activity can be used to supplement a speaking act...

Extending students' word knowledge with Collocation forks If the previous cycle used collocations that students have come across...

Simple but effective activities for recycling lexis Photo by Ian Britton  via FreeFoto.com [ CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 ] While research...

Alliteration is used in a variety of genres: poetry and nursery rhymes (“ t inker,   t ailor,   s oldier,   s ailor”), advertising slogans a...

Summary of my talk at the MOFET  Institute on 15 February 2011 Post-intermediate EFL learners already have a command of grammar struc...

Hello and welcome to my blog! As some of you may know, I've been doing an end-of-year news round-up for quite a few years now. However...

How many encounters with a lexical item are necessary before it is committed to memory? 6? 9? 12? 15? This article discusses how much heed ...

In this activity students first listen to a conversation in the film (the technique known as Vision Off) and then check their underst...