Mar 31, 2019 Opinions, The state of our profession In Memoriam: Remembering Michael Lewis Like many of you, my first encounter with Michael Lewis came via his seminal 1993 book The Lexical Approach: The state of ELT and a Way Forward. I did my DTEFLA in 1995 and it had already made it onto the reading list – possibly for the first time. It was utterly unlike any other […]
Feb 14, 2019 Opinions Grammar nonsense: the syllabus for Beginners It’s been quite a while since we last published a post in this particular series. Writing both a Beginner-level book as part of the Outcomes series and two levels of the new Pearson series Roadmap really hasn’t left much time for writing anything else – especially given my typing speed and slowness of thought. And […]
Jan 17, 2019 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions Translation: Tackling the Taboo part 2 In the first post on tackling the taboo that surrounds using any form of translation in the language classroom, I unpacked my own slow conversion, considered the roots of the English-only dogma, and explored why such positions were unsustainable. Today I’d like to move on to more practical matters and simply share seven activities that […]
Dec 23, 2018 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions, Revision, Teaching lexically, The state of our profession Translation in language classes: tackling the taboo Translation is a fantastic tool for all language teachers to use in their classes. That might be a surprising statement from a native speaker teacher working in a multi-lingual teaching context in the UK. and to be honest it’s been a long and winding road that brought me to that view. Let me take you […]
May 8, 2018 Opinions, The state of our profession Putting our words to work: rethinking Teacher Talking Time English Language Teaching loves a good acronym. There’s ELT to begin with and then, of course, there’s EFL – English as a Foreign Language – ESL, English as a Second Language and EIL – English as an International Language. There’s OHE – Observe, Hypothesise and Experiment and there’s PPP – Present, Practise, and then Pray! […]
