Nick Michelioudakis

Biogram

Nick Michelioudakis (B. Econ., Dip. RSA, MSc [TEFL]) has been active in ELT for many years as a teacher, examiner, presenter and teacher trainer. He has worked for many publishers and examination boards and he has given seminars and workshops in numerous countries. He has written extensively on Methodology, though he is better known for his ‘Psychology and ELT’ articles which have appeared in numerous newsletters and magazines. His areas of interest include Psychology, Student Motivation, Learner Independence, Teaching one-to-one and Humour. For articles, videoclips or worksheets of his, you can visit his YouTube channel (tinyurl.com/k3scpams) or his blog (www.michelioudakis.org).

Happiness and ELT

"Why have you chosen this lesson / task / material?" Asked this question, most teachers will give a linguistic justification (‘I want to teach them vocabulary related to travelling’). But is this the best thing we can do? Why not focus instead on making students happier? Or, better still, on both making our students happier AND improving their English?
During the past decades, Positive Psychology has made great strides and we now have a solid basis of findings we can build on. In this very practical workshop, we are going to look at five principles we can make use of in class and we will illustrate each of them with an easy-to-use activity. The purpose of each of them is to increase the level of happiness among our students. Happy students are motivated students. Happy students think more effectively. Happy students learn better. What is even more important perhaps, happy students want to keep coming to our lessons. 😊

How to Study Effectively

Imagine you want to workout and build a nice body. Will a good gymnast ever tell you: ‘OK – walk into the gym, pick up the heaviest dumbbells you can find, and do as many reps as you can for as long as you can.’? Of course not. Yet very often this is exactly our students’ approach when studying English. Most of them simply re-read their notes – again and again.
It does not have to be like this. In the past few decades, cognitive scientists have identified some key principles which can help people learn faster, with less effort and then retain what they have learned for much longer than they otherwise would.
In this very practical workshop, we are going to look at five of these principles and illustrate each of these with easy-to-use vocabulary learning activities which you can try out with your learners tomorrow.