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...

  Whilst grammar is the foundation for all of our writing and speaking in English, and quite stressful for many students to learn, it is actually far simpler to understand than most people believe.  One of the problems is that in English books, grammar is often explained in a way that makes it complex to understand therefore making it difficult for many students to fully understand. Also, many teachers teach grammar in the same manner which only goes to increasing students' level of frustration and confusion. Having a solid foundation in the basics of grammar makes it easier to achieve fluency, but, this will only happen for the majority of our students when it is explained in the most basic way. Below, in basic terms, are the structures of grammar in their simplest form. Parts of Speech In English grammar, the eight major parts of speech are noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Nouns The easy way to remember nouns is that they re...