Nicola Prentis

Nicola Prentis has a BA in Philosophy, a lifelong pedantry over the English language, an MA in ELT and a CV that spans about ten different countries. She writes Graded Readers for Language Learners ('The Tomorrow Mirror', 2013 & 'As Others See Us' coming in 2014). She has written texts for course books but has her own Self Study book – 'Speaking Skills' with Harper Collins out in 2014. She will appear at ELT conferences in 2014 to talk about materials writing in general and Graded Readers in particular.

Brainly: Can ELT learn from social learning?

January 30, 2020October 29, 2014 by Nicola Prentis

I wasn’t brilliant at physics at secondary school. I managed in class, though, with the help of my peers which you could call social learning. Pre-internet, that social network was confined to the real world – and occasional phone calls. Homework wasn’t generally a topic of conversation but I don’t think I had anything like the 2-3 hours school children can have today. On one occasion, my homework included a question about light refraction and where a fish would appear to be to an observer from the surface as opposed to where it actually was. I couldn’t answer, so I just wrote “Don’t know” and handed it in.

#elthack: 10 Microsoft Word hacks all ELT writers and editors need

January 31, 2020October 21, 2014 by Nicola Prentis

You need more time to commission or write the next ELT blockbuster. Or just to share pictures of your lunch on Facebook. But where to carve out time from a hectic day? Microsoft Word. Documents start off in Word for most writers, editors and, sometimes, tech-forward start up founders. Here are some efficiency tips even … Read more

Exploring the British Council MOOC

January 30, 2020October 15, 2014 by Nicola Prentis

Either ELTjam and its community of commenters can see the future, or the British Council closely followed this post from January 2013 when they created their 6-week course Exploring English Language and Culture in partnership with FutureLearn.

There’s one critical difference, though. ELTjam thought an ELT MOOC probably wouldn’t work. The British Council made sure that it did. Although, as we’ll see, that does depend on your definition of ‘work’.