Why do I Blog?

I am a teacher educator from Athens, Greece. I train English language teachers and help them become better teachers in the classroom. I started blogging in late 2009 my first blog,  Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters (in English), was followed by this blog which was originally intended to include topic areas more focused on the Greek teaching and […]

The Cambridge DELTA Module 2 Assignments – an overview

The Cambridge DELTA has become a qualification which many seek to consolidate their career in English Language Teaching and to be promoted into positions of responsibility as senior teachers, heads of ELT departments, and much more. It is a course that really does produce reflective teacher practitioners who can also understand the background theory and […]

Too Many Books

Concerned and worried about the huge drop in registrations in a failing/failed Greek economy, reducing the number of compulsory coursebooks, workbooks and the like, is beginning to be a consideration for some foreign language school owners locally. The parents of younger pupils can no longer afford the high cost of books – many are hard […]

The SEETA Reading Course – A free online course – 27 February – 5 March, 2011

Since Sunday the 27th of February, I have been ‘teaching’ this online course focusing on reading skills development on the SEETA Moodle platform. I was extremely happy to have been asked to run this course for SEETA (South Eastern Europe Teachers’ Associations) as this is the first time I am running an asynchronous course on […]

#ELTchat – 31,226 Tweets and counting!

The original posting appeared on my TEFL Matters blog but I though it was worth reposting here as well! This is not the image a heartbeat. It’s the burst of energy of hundreds of tweets which are sent by the many ELT professionals participating in an online discussion called #ELTchat every Wednesday at two different […]

My Hidden Gems

Dear Blog Readers, This a post in response to  a challenge set by Jason Renshaw (English Raven) to all  fellow bloggers, to bring out and highlight our blog’s hidden gems, in other words, posts  we really enjoyed writing or which engaged us and our readers in conversations that we thought were important. Even though this […]

How not to teach English

Here are some of the things that still happen in many classrooms in Greece – do they also happen in other parts of the world? The teacher and the students talk to each other mainly using the students’ mother tongue. The teacher asks the students to read a text aloud. Then the teacher asks the […]

The Usual Suspects

This blogpost is addressed to my own locale, teachers in Greece.  If it looks like an attempt to influence people, you are right, it is!  Some of the comments may be true of other places on the globe – wherever you are, I would love to read your comments! Who they are The “Usual Suspects” […]

The Power of Words

Every day we transmit and receive thousands of messages in many ways – language is just one of those ways. Words are the means we use in order to communicate with others and process incoming information.  But how do words affect the quality of our communication, and more importantly, how do our lexical choices impact […]

Engaging Students through Critical Reading

I am very pleased to be introducing Alexander Makarios’ first blog post on our school blog. Alexander’s first contribution is on ways of engaging students with texts at a deeper level of interpretation and discussion of their content, rather than staying just at the level of discovering facts and exploring language. Marisa Constantinides Critical Reading […]