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Tag: teacher development

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...

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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...

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