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Student-centred classes: it’s not just pair work!

What do teachers mean by student-centred classes? It seems some only see it as increasing pair work and reducing whole class teaching. The teacher should be a facilitator setting up tasks and watching, rather than doing explicit teaching. That at least was an impression I had from one teacher at a recent training, but it also comes from CELTA trainers urging to keep teacher talking time (TTT) to a minimum and others who frown on direct explicit teaching. However, I think this is a rather reductive way of thinking about learner-centred classrooms and hides important principles of...

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Do we really need needs analysis?

Teachers are often urged to conduct a needs analysis at the start of their course. But if your analysis is just choosing a coursebook, don’t feel guilty. The reality of most teachers’ contexts and the students they have is that a formal needs analysis often won’t produce anything you don’t know already or lead to changes you can implement. What is more fundamental is ensuring that you give plenty of space for students to talk in genuine ways about themselves as an ongoing process where you can support them and make use of this information in a variety of smaller ways than changing the...

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