The Art of Teaching for Exams (1/2) | More Than English Podcast S02E07

If you teach EFL, especially in Europe, you're probably preparing at least one of your classes for an English exam, and probably a Cambridge exam. These exams are a necessary evil in TEFL, and usually students and teachers don't find exam prep useful nor fun.

It doesn't have to be that way

In this episode of the More Than English Podcast, we talk with Terry Lodge, an expert teacher, teacher-trainer, Cambridge exam coordinator and examiner, and he shares his insights from the other side of the exams. He also shares some of his most effective lesson ideas for you to prepare your students in exam-taking skills and psychology.

Jesse and Terry share language teaching and learning philosophy, and you can watch tutorials on how to give engaging English lessons for speaking, listening, reading, and writing. This will serve you especially well in the classroom because these activities will prepare them for the exams, but more importantly, they have a real-life English focus on them.

Watch the video version:

​Pro Tips:

Modify and Adapt - Use these ideas as a guideline and adapt how you use them to your style and your individual classes. (For example, I have a smaller class of 6 students, and I brought in 3 tennis balls to have the students pass pack and forth.)

Routine - Do these activities on a regular or semi-regular basis so the skills will become automatic for what the students need them whether for an exam or real life.

Real Life English - Remember, the purpose of exams is to get the candidates to prepare to use English in real life. Train them for this in your lessons.

Easter Egg Lessons

Pressure - Get your students used to pressure (eventually) by stepping them out of their comfort zone with some of these ideas.

Learning without Learning - For many of these, the students don't feel like they're "studying", but they are improving  these skills.

What else can you find?

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