The English teachers voice

  What is context and why is it important? The dictionary defines context as being: T he background, environment, setting, framework, or surroundings of events or occurrences. Simply put, context means circumstances forming a background of an event, idea or statement, in such a way as to enable readers to understand the narrative or a literary piece. ... This piece of information is called context. In language learning be it either your native language, or a second language, context allows the learner to form a picture in their minds of the word in an environment that makes its meaning easier to understand. For many older native speakers, they are able to read academic papers, books etc and completely understand virtually all of the vocabulary based upon the overall context even if they have never experienced many of the words before. ADVANCED ENGLISH: Enhancing Your Vocabulary with Prefixes and Suffixes. Attaching Context to Vocabulary Attaching context to the vocabulary that you...

  The online classroom is an ideal place to teach visual learners because of the pictures, slides, and readings that occur with the computer screen interaction . Studies have shown that visual learners make up about 65% of the population and that 90% of our information is presented visually. I have found, though, that we can concentrate so much on the other learning styles , both auditory and kinesthetic , that we can easily forget to engage the visual learners during our classroom time. The most important thing we as teachers can do is to engage all three learning styles as we present information. We should always seek out new ways to appeal to our learners, no matter what their strengths are. In a previous article, I listed methods that can be used to engage the auditory learner in the online ESL classroom . I have compiled a list of creative ways to engage the visually discerning students in our virtual ESL classrooms . Teaching Strategies for Engaging Visual...

All kids love to draw and color in, and they all come home from school at least once a week with another  picture that they drew for you. Whilst their artistic creations are cute, have you ever found yourself wondering if they’re really an important part of school? Are they actually supporting the academic atmosphere? The answer is YES, coloring is important in early childhood education for a lot of reasons! 1. It Helps To Develop Hand-Strength One of the biggest reasons coloring is important for young learners is because it helps them to develop their hand strength . As adults, we have been writing, typing , and doing various activities all of our lives which means we take our hand strength for granted. Toddlers and young learners, however, are just beginning to build those muscles. Hand strength is important for all hand-related fine motor skills , especially handwriting . Writing takes strength and dexterity , and coloring helps exercise these muscles. Hand strength will al...