British Council TeachingEnglish featured blog of the month award

Posted on August 13th, 2014 by Adam

I’m delighted to say that a blog post of mine has won the award for the British Council TeachingEnglish ‘Featured blog of the month’ for July, 2014. Many thanks to all those who voted for me on the TeachingEnglish Facebook page!

My  infographic on prepositions of place was voted for by visitors to the Facebook page. I designed the infographic to help students understand how the prepositions in, on and at are used in English. I used a combination of Piktochart and Bitstrips to create an engaging and helpful resource for language learners.

I’ve won the TEFL.net website of the month award

Posted on May 3rd, 2014 by Adam

In all the excitement leading up to and during the IATEFL conference last month, one thing that almost passed me by was the fact that my teaching blog was chosen as the TEFL.net websites of the month for March, 2014. For those of you who don’t know, TEFL.net is one of the longest running and best sites in our profession. Despite the fact that they’ve been running a ‘best of’ monthly section since 2008, they don’t give away the award lightly. As a consequence, it’s something of an honor to have been chosen.

Tags: TEFL.net website of the month award Adam Simpson

Nominated for the Teaching English blog post of the month

Posted on January 8th, 2013 by Adam

I’m happy to announce that my December blog post, ‘6 great techniques for getting students to write down their homework‘ has been nominated for the British Council’s Teaching English blog post of the month award. I’m quite pleased about this, mainly because this is a resource I greatly enjoy and visit on a regular basis.

While I would of course like you to peruse all of the nominations, it would make me happy if you’d take the time to vote (for me or one of the other excellent nominees). Click here for further details.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to praise the hard work of Ann Foreman (@Ann_F), who I happily got the opportunity to meet at IATEFL in March last year, for her work on the Teaching English webpage. It has grown exponentially since its launch and currently boasts in excess of 118,000 followers.

The TPaCK model: Integrating technology into language teaching

Posted on September 27th, 2012 by Adam

One of the big things I want to look at in terms of how I teach this year is the integration of technology into my classroom practices. Those of you who visit the blog regularly will know that I?m a big advocate of technology, but I still feel that I need to look in depth at how ? and why ? I?m using it in my teaching. A good way to do this is through the TPaCK model. Rather than write about this in detail now, I?ve prepared a video explaining what this model represents (click here to watch the video). Please take a look if, like me, you like to use tech in your teaching and want to make sure that you are doing it in a beneficial way.

Tags: The TPaCK model for Integrating technology into language teaching

A summary of my recent blog posts

Posted on August 14th, 2012 by Adam

I?ve mostly been blogging about the main experiences of the last year on my Year in the Life of an English Teacher blog in the last couple of months. Here are a few selected highlights.

The IATEFL SIG Conference at Yeditepe University

I was lucky enough to be on the organizing committee for this excellent IATEFL Special Interest Group event back in May. It made a really nice change to not be presenting a conference after a busy year in which I made eight presentations at conferences in Turkey and abroad. I did a lot of blogging for the official website, so I mainly used my blog posts (one post for day one, another for day two) as a collection of photos of the event.

A day in the life of an ELT conference presenter (version 2.0)

As I mentioned above, this was a hectic year of conference going for me. A couple of events were flying visits to Ankara: a bus from Istanbul in the morning, a return bus in the evening. I decided to record my journey on the second of these flying visits, which was for the METU ELT convention at the end of May.

A Year in the Life of an English Teacher: A photo essay of my academic year

I attended so many events, met so many great people and had such great classes this year that the only way I could really summarize it all was by choosing photo highlights. I did this in three separate posts; here are the links to part one, part two and part three.

Why are some teachers always late?

I sometimes like to examine issues in the workplace that are not directly connected to teaching. This post examined the psychology of people who are habitually late.

The five most important trends in ELT

I love my job and am passionate about my profession in general. In two posts (the original suggestions and a follow-up based on the ideas of others) I examined where language teaching is heading and the important trends that are influencing its direction.

Book Review: Cambridge Academic English – Upper Intermediate

I have recently joined the reviews panel for TEFL.net and my second book review has just been posted to the website. You can read my review here.

Reflections on the Bilgi University ELT conference

Posted on June 1st, 2012 by Adam

The Bilgi University ELT conference took place on May 12th, 2012 and revolved around the theme of ?Using Resources Efficiently?. Sabancı University?s School of Languages was well represented at the event, featuring a plenary talk from Deniz Kurtoğlu Eken, a keynote speech from Zeynep Urkun, as well as my  concurrent session.

I’ve written a comprehensive write-up on the School of Languages website.

Here are selected images from the event:

[Show as slideshow]

Creating your Sabancı University online resume

Posted on May 27th, 2012 by Adam

Having set up this website for myself, I decided to give a workshop to my colleagues in the School of Languages, explaining how to go about making such an online resume. For those who couldn’t attend the workshop, I also prepared a video summary of the session.

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You can access this video by clicking here.

Reflections on the 18th TESOL Arabia Conference

Posted on May 3rd, 2012 by Adam

Back in March I was lucky enough to attend the 18th TESOL Arabia Conference at Dubia Women’s College in the United Arab Emirates. I delivered a paper on the effectiveness of group work in the language classroom.

I have written about this experience on the School of Languages blog.

The Third International ELT Students Conference

Posted on April 12th, 2012 by Adam

This weekend I have been invited to present at the Third International ELT Students Conference at Boğaziçi University.

Organized by five students from Boğaziçi University and Istanbul Bilgi University, this event aims to building on the success of the First National Conference held by Hacettepe and Gazi Universities, and The Second International Students Conference held by Başkent University.

The theme is “The Power of Collaboration: Turning from Theory to Practice in ELT?. I will be giving a presentation on how to make group activities work in the classroom.

A summary of my recent blog posts

Posted on April 5th, 2012 by Adam

I’ve mostly been blogging about my conference experiences on my Year in the Life of an English Teacher blog in the last month or so.

TESOL Arabia

In a Tale of Two Conferences (Part 1) I discuss the TESOL Arabia event in Dubai at the start of March. During this conference I delivered a presentation based on classroom research I had conducted in the first semester of the 2011-12 academic year.

You can download details of my presentation here: (Have you ever wondered why your group activities fail to inspire students).

IATEFL Glasgow

Later in the month I attended the International IATEFL conference in Glasgow, Scotland. I wrote about my experiences in a Tale of Two Conferences (Part 2).

The Power of the Poster

My most recent blog post has finally given me the chance to talk about teaching again. In ‘The Power of the Poster‘ I describe how I use posters to motivate learners whilst looking at how these can be used in a meaningful way to recycle content.

Book Review: English for Psychology

I have recently joined the reviews panel for TEFL.net and my first book review has been posted to the website. You can read my review here.

Tags: book reviews, classroom research, conferences