Teaching English through Text

Learning language from language

A self-study e-course

for language teachers

VersaText

Many English teachers create text-based lessons for their students. Sometimes the students want to study current affairs, professional topics and topics that coursebook publishers consider taboo. Teachers also want to provide students with something inclusive or fresh or local.

This course trains English teachers how to use VersaText, a free online program used for creating texts-based lessons. VersaText is very simple to use simply, but to really make the most of it, learn from the experts.

This course takes English teachers through all of VersaText’s tools and describes how they can be used for creating language learning tasks for good students.

Word cloud: text prediction, word matching, new vocabulary
Concordance: key words, collocation, grammar patterns
Profiler: text statistics, CEFR level, categorised wordlists

Course activities include notes, videos, quizzes and demos in the e-course and in the free 50-page colour workbook.

The course teaches various approaches to helping students develop their vocabulary and grammar through higher order thinking skills and creative tasks. This is not vocabulary study for dummies.

Check out the curriculum below to see the range of topics and tasks you get to explore.

Your teacher

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Full price

£30

Course curriculum

1

Unit 1: Getting started with VersaText
- The VersaText Workbook (Download)
- Getting started questions 1
- 1. About this course Free Preview
- 2. First things first (Tasks 1.1, 1.2) Free Preview
- 3. What is VersaText and why? (PPT 1)
- 4. Using the VersaText program – first clicks Free Preview
- 5. Vocabulary notebooks Free Preview
- 6. You made it this far!
- Bonus
- Feedback 1
2

Unit 2: Texts in VersaText
- Getting started questions 2
- Introduction (Tasks 2.1, 2.2)
- Choosing and preparing texts (PPT 2)
- Your project Stage 1 Free Preview
- Mining texts for language teaching and learning (Tasks 2.3, 2.4)
- Comprehension questions vs. the rest (Task 2.5)
- What do you know now?
- Text quiz
3

Unit 3: Word clouds
- Getting started questions 3
- Part 1: A word about words (Tasks 3.1 to 3.4)
- Part 2: Creating and customising word clouds (PPT 3)
- Part 3: Pre-teaching with word clouds (PPT 4)
- Part 4: DIY questions for a word cloud (Task 3.5)
- Part 5: Topic trails (Task 3.6)
- Your project Stage 2
- What are you now able to do?
4

Unit 4: Concordances
- Getting started questions 4
- About concordances (Tasks 4.1 to 4.3)
- Creating and customising concordances (PPT#5)
- Patterns of Normal Usage (PPT #6) (Task 4.4)
- Learning from concordances (Task 4.5, 4.6)
- Inferring meaning (Tasks 4.7, 4.8)
- Conversion, Colligation, Collocation (Tasks 4.9 – 4.13)
- Language learning experiences from exploring language (Task 4.14)
- What are you now able to do?
- Your project Stage 3
5

Unit 5: Working with the profiler
- Getting started questions 5
- What is the profiler? (Task 5.1)
- Bands of words and the pie chart (Tasks 5.2)
- Readability and CEFR (Task 5.3)
- Word lists (Tasks 5.4, 5.5)
- Exploring grammar (Tasks 5.6, 5.7)
- What are you now able to do?
- Your project Stage 4
- Profiler Quiz
6

Unit 6: And in conclusion ...
- Getting started questions
- Studying the language of a text (Task 6.1)
- Text-based language study - Chunking (PPT #7)
- Applying what you learn: from input to output (Task 6.2)
- Your project Stage 5
- Where to from here?