Tag: mediation
When we talk about planning lessons that have an outcome, teachers often misinterpret this as meaning all lessons should have a clear practical benefit. They may feel that following an action-oriented approach (as follow the CEFR calls it), means we should only design or select tasks where students role-play practical activities, resolve problems, or reach definitive conclusions. This was an ongoing debate we had when writing tasks to encourage mediation in Outcomes Third edition. As we discuss in our course on Mediation in language teaching, while complex tasks are likely to result in...
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...
Meet learners’ needs by following language desire paths
If we want to meet learners’ needs, then try following their conversations and teach the language they desire rather than just what we set out to teach.
Desire paths: a metaphor for meeting all the learners’ language needs while using a coursebook
I was out walking the other day and it being somewhat damp and muddy, I decided to stick to the paved pathway rather than take this more direct route which I have now discovered is called a ‘ desire path’. But as I did so, I started thinking that the this kind of path, which you see all over the place, could be a kind of...
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 on that journey and show you some ways translation can help, even when you don’t share your students’ L1 – i.e. their own language.
The absence of translation in training
Back in 1993, when I did my four-week CELTA course, there was certainly no mention of...



