In my job I seldom meet a real beginner. In fact, I can’t remember when I last met someone who wasn’t at least a strong A2. All of my students are 18 and over. The majority are adult learners who need or may at some stage need English for their jobs. Often their employers are paying for the lessons, which are taught at their place of work.

There may not be computers or a projector in the room, but many students have tablets and smartphones with them.

For these students, English is a foreign language, so they don’t automatically use what they learn in the classroom the moment they leave it. They usually share a common language, German, even if they moved here themselves from other countries. And German culture is not really that different from English-speaking countries,  ‘Small Talk’ skills aside.

These factors influence the activities I choose to use in class, and my aim here is to collect ideas and materials that may be useful to others in similar teaching environments.

Sometimes after I give a talk or at the end of a workshop, someone asks a really good question which, due to time constraints, I don’t get to answer or answer in depth. I also hope to look at those questions here.