Tag: Lexical Approach

Target Language and planning

Written by Andrew Walkley on April 29, 2026. Posted in Grammar, Lesson planning, Teacher Development and CPD, Teaching lexically. No Comments on Target Language and planning

Target language will be a familiar term for anyone who has studied a course such as CELTA or Trinity Cert TESOL, but it is a core idea for many teachers practice, even if they are unfamiliar with the term. It basically refers to the language that we plan to teach. I’m not against having a goal for a class or even having language in mind that you think will be useful for your students. However, in this post I want to outline some of the problems that arise when we let the target language dominate our thinking and actions above other goals.Choosing language for learners...

The Trinity CertPT with Lexical Lab

Written by Andrew Walkley on February 4, 2026. Posted in Courses, Teacher Development and CPD, Teaching lexically. No Comments on The Trinity CertPT with Lexical Lab

This year we will be offering the Trinity CertPT as part of our teacher development provision. In this post, we’ll be looking at what the CertPT is and how it fits with our programmes.What is the Trinity CertPT?The Trinity CertPT is a way to provide assessment and accreditation for teachers’ ongoing professional development. The PT stands for practising teachers and is, therefore, aimed at teachers who have two years’ language teaching experience or an initial training certificate with a national or international provider + 6 months’ teaching experience. The...

Rereading texts to revise language at low levels

Written by Andrew Walkley on May 7, 2025. Posted in Beginners & Low levels, Chunks, Exploiting Exercises, Lexis, Revision, Teaching lexically. 4 Comments on Rereading texts to revise language at low levels

Rereading texts to revise language can be good because we access language outside the selection in exercises labelled vocabulary or grammar. Whether you have treated the listening or reading text as purely developing skills or not, there is good reason to revisit texts to focus on language – especially when we want to revise content later in the course and especially at low levels.Rereading to improve reading fluency (and revise words)In the case of lower levels, it can be good to reread a text to help with reading fluency – especially when your students are working with a new...

Collocations: using collocation dictionaries and AI

Written by Andrew Walkley on March 25, 2025. Posted in Chunks, Developing materials, Lexis, Vocabulary Choice. 7 Comments on Collocations: using collocation dictionaries and AI

When choosing collocations to teach, I often used references like Oxford Collocations . Now AI offers help, but is it any better? And are collocations actually what we should search for?My well-thumbed copy of Oxford CollocationsIn recent times I have done less of this kind of searching for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I tend to do this more when I am writing coursebooks where I am maybe a bit more considered in my choices. In terms of class, I think you get better at using your ‘intuition’ if you have regularly tested yourself and done research into collocations. And...

How should I use my coursebook? With principles!

Written by Andrew Walkley on February 14, 2025. Posted in Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Teaching lexically, Uncategorized. No Comments on How should I use my coursebook? With principles!

It seems that most teachers see the value of using a coursebook, but the bigger question is: how should I use them? That was my conclusion from reading a recent post on LinkedIn by Katherine Bilsborough. She asked for English language teachers who were anti-coursebook to explain why they were against using them. As it turned out, most of the comments weren’t really anti-coursebook at all – maybe because they were from people connected to Kath, who is … a coursebook writer! However, I think this is just how the majority of teachers view coursebooks. There are those who loudly rant about the...

GRAMMAR NONSENSE & CURIOSITIES: can

Written by Andrew Walkley on August 29, 2024. Posted in Grammar, Grammar bugbears and curiosities, Uncategorized. No Comments on GRAMMAR NONSENSE & CURIOSITIES: can

It may seem a bit strange to include can under the umbrella of grammar nonsense. I’m sure few of you have considered the rules for its usage as wrong or find the way it’s presented particularly weird – and n the whole, I’d agree with you! I include it in our ongoing series of ELT shame and missed opportunities more as an example of how change sometimes happens while we remain unable to fully accept it. It all reminds me a bit of people who accept that a variety of sexualities exist in the world, but don’t want to see any public displays of affection connected to most...

Back in class: thoughts from learning and teaching languages at low levels

Written by Andrew Walkley on January 19, 2024. Posted in Opinions. No Comments on Back in class: thoughts from learning and teaching languages at low levels

During the eighteen months of writing the new edition of Outcomes I put my teaching and language learning efforts on hold. Back in January 2022, when we started the project, I was teaching a beginner Spanish class and learning Russian, but it quickly became clear that my addled brain was not going to do multi-tasking very well, so the lessons came to an end. Now Outcomes is finished and I’m back in the classroom. I’m teaching a low-level Spanish class with a colleague at Lexical Lab and also starting again with Russian as what I guess you might describe as a false beginner. In both...