This is an ELT Edublog which aims to serve primarily as a learning environment for primary and secondary school students. It seeks to form a learning community in which students will be able to interact with each other, develop their collaborative skills as well as their communicative competence in the foreign language by producing and publishing their works (texts, projects, crafts, etc) in a real-life way while addressing to an authentic audience. It also serves as a source of information, suggestions and materials for EFL teachers on ELT methodology and EFL learning issues in an attempt to reflect on one’s teaching practice and to improve and enrich one’s school routine by adopting a more learner-centered approach in a differentiated, autonomous and motivating way.
More specifically, its main purpose is to activate EFL students to learn through appropriate audiovisual material, tasks, worksheets and other activities in a digital context towards developing their linguistic, critical and digital literacy. At the same time, it supplies EFL teachers with alternative and innovative teaching ideas for their classroom by recommending a variety of stimulating materials, interactive tasks, worksheets, lesson plans, multimedia (e.g. youtube videos) and tech tools/applications (e.g. how to create puzzles, bubblesnaps, comics, etc) in order to motivate and activate one’s students through enjoyable, creative and interactive tasks. It also focuses on the ‘dynamic’ use of new technologies and e-learning in EFL education beyond the traditional ‘static’ learning methods based on school textbooks and the conventional classroom board so far. In this respect, EFL teachers are encouraged to take initiatives and become active course designers, developers and creators by reflecting upon, revising, improving and adjusting the existing curricula to the actual language needs, learning styles and preferences of their students.
Last but not least, it includes English articles on TEFL and Greek articles on ELT methodology, new technologies, educational research, teacher training and distance lifelong learning to offer some theoretical and research perspectives drawn from the relevant and the general educational literature which may have useful pedagogical implications and a great impact on ELT practice.
Maria D. Tzotzou (PhD), (MSc), (MEd), (MA in TESOL)
State EFL Teacher
