ÃÛÌÒapp

How much of your valuable time is spent on planning and administrative tasks instead of teaching? While 93% of educators start their careers to positively impact students' lives, over 75% end up overwhelmed by these non-teaching duties. But we have a tool to help lighten the load.

Introducing ÃÛÌÒapp Smart Lesson GeneratorÌý– a fast, integrated and efficient solution to streamline lesson planning, allowing you to focus on teaching. Let’s explore the Smart Lesson Generator:

Meet the new ÃÛÌÒapp Smart Lesson Generator

The ÃÛÌÒapp Smart Lesson Generator allows you to create engaging and appropriate lesson plans in seconds. It is connected with ÃÛÌÒapp courses designed by experts and aligned with the Global Scale of English (GSE) to ensure effectiveness.

2025 is here. As we step into the new year, it's the perfect time to reflect on our recent challenges andÌýachievements. It’s also a good moment to think about the future with optimism andÌýplan our goals. Our students, too, are thinking about their New Year's resolutions.Ìý

As a teacher, you can help them consider how learning English will help them now and in the future. On top of this, you can guide them as they plan their goals and give them useful advice on how to achieve them.Ìý

Sue Kay has been an ELT materials writer for over 25 years. She is the co-author of ÃÛÌÒapp's Focus Second Edition and is one of the co-founders of . In this article, Sue takes us through her experience of using video in the classroom and shows us how to motivate and engage students with authentic video.

Videos are no longer a novelty

When I started teaching in the early 80s, video was a novelty in the classroom. We only had one video player for the whole school and had to book it a week in advance. There was very little published material available, but thanks to the rarity factor, the students lapped it up.Ìý

There was no problem with getting them motivated, even if the lessons accompanying the videos were not particularly exciting and consisted mainly of comprehension questions. Lucky for me, our school had a very dynamic Director of Studies who gave great teacher training sessions and I was very taken with a presentation he did on active viewing tasks.Ìý

I was, and still am, a big fan of the Communicative Approach and I embraced the more interactive video tasks enthusiastically: freeze frame and predict, watch with the sound down and guess what people are saying, listen with the screen hidden to guess the action, etc.Ìý

When I’m preparing a video lesson, I still try to include at least one of these activities because the information gap provides an ideal motivation for students to watch the video and check their ideas.Ìý