The document discusses using the EAQUALS English Campus to teach life skills through English language lessons. It defines life skills as abilities that help people deal with daily challenges. While English skills are important, teaching broader transferable skills helps students more. The Campus is an online platform with courses, activities, and tools to support blended learning. A sample lesson plan is provided to teach the life skill of prioritizing information by having students discuss which school subjects to study using target vocabulary on opinions. Resources on the Campus are suggested before, during, and after class to support a collaborative activity and develop this useful life skill.

1. ‘Teaching life skills through
English with the EAQUALS
English Campus’
Rebecca Evans, Macmillan Education
rebecca.evans@macmillan.com
EAQUALS 2014, Budapest

3. What are life skills?
“abilities for adaptive and positive
behaviour that enable individuals
to deal effectively with the
demands and challenges of
everyday life”(World Health Organization)

4. Why is teaching language no
longer enough?
“… as English becomes more generally available,
little or no competitive advantage is gained by
adopting it. Rather, it has become a new
baseline: without English, you are not even in
the race.”
David Graddol, English Next (2006), The British
Council

5. Inspiration from an astronaut!
Interview with Col. Chris Hadfield

6. 4 areas for developing life skills
Thinking skills
Creativity and imagination
Problem solvingDecision making
Self-knowledge
Critical thinking
Accessing and
analysing

7. 4 areas for developing life skills
Communication
People
management
and leadership
Negotiation
Time
management
Organization
Collaboration
Working skills

8. 4 areas for developing life skills
Social skills
Citizenship
Cultural
awareness
Negotiation
Respecting
diversity
Social
responsibility
Networking

9. Learning skills
4 areas for developing life skills
Flexibility and
adaptability
Giving
feedbackHandling criticism
Innovation/
exploration
Learner
autonomy
Computing

10. Why should we teach life skills?
• Good grades are not enough
• Better ‘transferable skills’
• Higher student motivation
• Better goal setting and outcomes
• Students more likely to gain employment
• More than just English lessons
• No loss of teaching time
• No special equipment needed
• No extra costs

11. So, what is the
EAQUALS English Campus?
• Macmillan Education’s online platform for blended learning
• A database of over 65 ready-made courses, 30 tests and over
4,000 interactive activities
• Sophisticated progress tracking
• Includes speaking and writing practice activities
• Lots of extra exciting tools, including a dictionary, grammar
reference database, weekly news articles and file sharing
• Suitable for institutions of all sizes

12. How can we use the EAQUALS
English Campus to teach life skills?
Search for activities
matching context and
goal Use collaborative tools
to promote teamwork
and creativity
Personalize the process
with Bookmarks and
My Files
Reinforce target
language with activities
after class
Use Word Lists to
teach relevant
vocabulary

13. How to teach life skills with the
EAQUALS English Campus
Step 1. Choose a life skill
Get your inspiration from:
• Your students’ needs and requests
• Approaching life events (exams, interviews, new job)
• Coursebook units and themes
• Macmillan’s dedicated life skills website
(www.macmillanenglish.com/life-skills)

14. Step 2. Choose the target language
If you want to teach a particular piece of language with your life
skill, these types of lessons are a great way of teaching language
in a way that is:
• Memorable
• Applicable
• Contextually-relevant
How to teach life skills with the
EAQUALS English Campus

15. Step 2. Choose the target language
Some examples of sourcing language from a life skill:

16. Step 3. Choose your resources
Finding resources to teach your life skills lesson will depend on a
number of factors, including:
• Available digital facilities (can students work on the Campus in
class, or just at home?)
• Your chosen lesson model (TTT, PPP, ARC)
• The outcome of the life skill you’re teaching (is it an individual
skill, such as managing your time, or a group skill, like
working in a team?)
How to teach life skills with the
EAQUALS English Campus

17. Step 1. Choose your life skill
Our life skill is Prioritizing information
The context of this skill is Choosing which subjects to
study at school or college
Step 2. Choose the target language
Our target language is Vocabulary and language
chunks for expressing personal opinions
Our lesson

18. Step 3. Choose your resources.
The scenario:
• My students only work on the EAQUALS English Campus at
home, as we have limited computers at the school
• The lesson duration is 50 minutes
• I want to see how much students know before class
• I want to get the students working together during the lesson
so I want to focus on collaborative and productive
skills in class
Our lesson

19. Before class:
• I assign students three or four Bookmarked practice activities to:
Introduce them to some useful phrases on expressing personal opinions
and making choices
Revise basic forms of the present simple
Get them thinking about which subjects they like and dislike
• I create a Word List containing key vocabulary that I want them to
learn before our lesson
• Once students have completed the exercises, I look at their marks
and identify common problems to tackle during class
Example lesson plan

20. During class:
• Lead-in to refresh student’s knowledge of pre-set vocabulary
• Tackle problems with the target language
• Set up the collaborative activity:
• give students an information pack with a range of school subjects, with
class times, teacher profiles and assessment criteria (number of essays,
exams) to read through
Example lesson plan

21. A collaborative task for prioritizing information:
• Group students and ask them to create pro/con lists of each subject
• Groups take turns to present their lists to the class
• Groups go back and reconsider their lists, possibly making changes
• Class then decide what the most and least important factors are
when choosing subjects to study at school
More Macmillan Life Skills lesson ideas and plans available online
Example lesson plan

22. After class:
• Groups work together after class to compose a summary of the
lesson:
• Skills they learned
• Best ways of prioritizing information
• How they could use these skills in a new context
• Upload to myPad within the EAQUALS English Campus
• Groups swap myPad pages and peer-correct
• Teacher can create a document of all new vocabulary and ideas
raised during the lesson and share via My Files
• Teacher can set language or skills activities for individual
students if needed
Example lesson plan

23. For more on life skills…
Macmillan English Life Skills resources:
• A new theme every month
• Multiple lesson plans, quizzes, video interviews and
case studies released every month throughout 2014
• Special resources on pragmatics and creative writing
• Life Skills Day, a free and unique online conference,
on Wednesday 14th May 2014

24. For more on life skills…
Macmillan Life Skills website:
www.macmillanenglish.com/life-skills
Onestopenglish Life Skills resources:
http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/integrated-skills/life-skills/
Macmillan Dictionary Life Skills Pragmatics resources:
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/learn/pragmatics2014.html
Macmillan Readers Thinking Creatively series:
http://www.macmillanreaders.com/resources/self-study-english/creative-
writing

25. For more on the
EAQUALS English Campus…
Come along to a live online demo,
get free logins and ask questions!
https://campusdemo.eventbrite.co.uk

26. Thank you very much!
Rebecca Evans, Macmillan Education
rebecca.evans@macmillan.com
EAQUALS 2014, Budapest