lauranic.languages

I can't believe it's been nearly a year since I updated the blog. Most of you know that I love reading and I believe it really helps to improve your languages. So her e's a website recommendation: https://english-e-reader.net to practise your reading skills. There's a variety of graded readers levels. You can search a book by author, title, or level, and start reading one you find interesting. You have the option of reading it online or downloading i t  📚 ,  as well as listening to it. 🎧  Graded readers are a great way to read at a level you can understand, and practise vocabulary and structures you should be practising. ✔️ Please remember to choose a book at your level, don't aim to read higher ones, you might get frustrated, spend more time looking for words in the dictionary, and not really focus on the basics you need to know first. 🤔 To test yourself: would you be able to summarise the story using your own words? Would you remember specific vocabulary that w...

Hi everyone, Here's a website recommendation. If you click on the top right hand menu, you can read a bit about me, my teaching experience, studies, etc. If you continue scrolling down, at the very end there's a list of different useful websites you can use to practise different skills and languages. So here's one of the first sites I recommend my students:  https://lyricstraining.com/   There's also an app you can download. When you go to the website, they give you the option of creating an account, but there's no need to do it if you don't want to. The good thing about this website is that you can practise your listening while you listen to music. They use music videos and you can read the lyrics as they are sung. The number of missing words depend on the level you choose. The song will stop until you write the correct missing word. You can always replay the last line of the song if you didn't get the missing word. The dots show you the nu...

Here is what some of my students learning Italian have said:

Here is what some of my English as a foreign language students have said about the lessons:

This advertisement (The Reader, Bells. Directed by Greg Gray), is excellent to help us reflect on learners' autonomy. As you watch the video, it gives you some ideas that can help improve some of your language skills. You can then think of some of your own ideas to improve the language you are learning. In the video we can see the man slowly making progress playing vocabulary games, taking every opportunity to read, write and remember the spelling of words, as well as sharing his progress with friends. What techniques do you use to remember new vocabulary? What do you do to try and include the new words you learn in your everyday language? Do you read things based on your level? Do you practise your writing regularly? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you listen to music and try to guess the lyrics of the songs? Do you watch series in the original language with subtitles in the same language? Do you use learning websites that provide materials at your level? Set your own real...

Language that is used is remembered better than language that is heard or read, without the need of using it. I point the mistakes and errors during the activity, at the end of it, or at the end of the lesson, depending on the aim (accuracy or fluency). I ask students to do self-correction and guide them to become more aware of their own mistakes and errors, so they can correct them themselves. We use vocabulary and structures that we have studied and we develop confidence and fluency. We take in what we study using the language in different ways. We practise and repeat because practice  is necessary for the correct use of language. Practise makes perfect, doesn't it? Repetition makes us be  more aware of the correct use of vocabulary and structures, as well as realising if we have actually taken in what we are studying. Pair work and group work help us use the language to communicate and connect with others. A picture, a story, the first letter of a word, an an...