Many English teachers would probably agree that teenagers are the most difficult age group to teach. Sometimes our teenage students do not want to be in class in the first place and often their minds can be on otherthings when we are giving an English lesson.

"Motivation is as much an effect as a cause of learning." Ausubel

In this article I will discuss how teachers can aim to improve the motivation levels of teenage students.

Although the behaviourist view of language learning has been largely discredited for some time now, a lot of teachers set great store by the stimulus / response way of inducing students to produce 'correct' language.

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) has been around in language teaching longer than we may realise. Those teachers who incorporate elements of suggestopedia, community language learning, music, drama and body language into their lessons are already drawing on NLP as it stood twenty years ago.

In recent years content based instruction has become increasingly popular as a means of developing linguistic ability. It has strong connections to project work, task based learning and a holistic approach to language instruction

For me, one of the most under exploited and neglected areas within language learning is humour. How many course books have a section on humour?

Tests for people of any age can seem a threat or, at the very least, an obstacle that needs to be overcome. Testing children is even more fraught with sensitivities.

Every teacher – actually everybody – uses NLP. They use it knowingly or unknowingly! Maybe some would think that NLP is not useful and others would say it creates miracles.