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All learners make mistakes, and the teacher really needs to provide opportunities for learners to try out what they learnt and to make mistakes so they can learn from them. The key thing is what the teachers do about the mistakes that learners make, how to create learning opportunities from those mistakes.I think that making mistakes is an inevitable part of learning, how can you learn something new and not make mistakes? The fact that the learners are making mistakes can also be a sign that they are trying to “stretch” themselves and are actually trying to communicate. If they were over cautious about what they do and restricted themselves to doing things they knew were correct, this would be a problem. Learners need to try out real ideas and thoughts, and they will make mistakes as they try things out and experiment with what they learnt. This is all part of the learning process.What do you think?

There are many different ways teachers can organize seating in classroom to suite their teaching and make their students comfortable and at ease with the activities.Some seating arrangements are good for dynamic interactive activities and others are good for individual work.Imagine that you are a student. Which arrangement would you be more comfortable with as a student?Or you are a teacher teaching a group o say 18 adult students.Which arrangement would you be more comfortable with as a teacher?I'm interested to know your opinion on that matter.

As a language teacher I find myself in different teaching situations depending on the nationalities of my students. Sometimes I teach a group of students who all have the same native language which is different from teaching a multilingual group. I’ll compare the two situations from different angles. Linguistic difficulties Monolingual Group: You can predict and focus on specific linguistic difficulties, e.g. grammar, vocabulary, individual sound problems. Multilingual Group: You have to meet a variety of very different linguistic needs. For example, pronunciation problems are often specific to different nationalities. Language of Instructions Monolingual Group: It might be the case that the teacher has the same native language as the students, or at least knows a bit of it. Here the teacher will be able to use translation as an option. Most modern language teaching methods don’t encourage the use of translation in class. Multilingual Group: Even if teachers are familiar with the native language of some of the learners, they need to be able to convey information to the whole class and can use the language that they teach, the foreign language from a stand point of students. Cultural exchange Monolingual Group: If the teachers are not from the same culture as the learners -then they can exploit this as a source of cultural exchange Multilingual Group: Often the learners come form a wide range of countries and cultures, and there is a high level of interest in this which opens up good opportunities for cultural exchange. Motivation Monolingual Group: Within the classroom the motivation to use the foreign language may be lower. Multilingual Group: The learners need to cope using the foreign language in the classroom and, if in the target language community, to manage outside the classroom using the language that they learn

Just imagine that you hear these comments in the staff room from some language teachers. What might have been the cause of these problems? Sometimes when students leave the classroom I find myself wondering?I wonder what they actually learned in the last 50 minutes. I never seem to finish on time, I either run out of material or I can't fit everything in. I was going to do a really good reading but they got so involved with all the words they didn't know the whole thing broke down and took ages. When none of them could answer me I suddenly realised they should discuss it in groups of three before giving their answers. I gave that really good lesson on the past perfect this time last year. I wish I could remember how it went. It's only half way through the third term and I'm about to finish the book! What can I do now? I wish I didn't have to share this group with another teacher. I wonder what she did with them last Tuesday. Some students complained that I don't seem to plan my lessons? What a cheek. How do they know what I do or don't do! That lesson was a load of rubbish. I wonder what went wrong?