Sep 21, 2021 Opinions Twenty things in twenty years part eleven: we’ve been in thrall to the cults of Learning Styles, NLP and Multiple Intelligences for way too long. It never ceases to both depress and astound me when I see quite how many conference talks, articles, books and courses on Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences are still out there in mainstream ELT. Philip Kerr recently alerted me to an activity in a new book on learning styles that was supposedly aimed […]
Sep 2, 2021 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions Back to school Part Five: challenges and homework As if to prove the point about procrastination and failing to do stuff outside class that I made in my last post reflecting on my own language learning experiences, I’m almost ashamed to begin by admitting it has been over a year since I wrote these words: ‘I”ll talk a bit more about my approach […]
Mar 1, 2021 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Opinions, Pronunciation, Twenty things in twenty years Twenty things in twenty years part ten: the main point of focusing on pronunciation in class isn’t to improve pronunciation! Pronunciation is quite possibly the most neglected area of language teaching that there is. In many of the classes I’ve observed over the years, I’ve seen little or no attempt to work on pronunciation and where it IS focused on, it’s often instinctive attempts at correcting mispronounced discrete phonemes of the kind we’re all so […]
Jan 22, 2021 Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions Twenty Things in Twenty Years Part Nine: the vast majority of mistakes really aren’t to do with grammar! The world used to be so tidy. Back in the misty morning of my youth, I seriously did naively believe that the root cause of student error was essentially grammatical. If only students could somehow have the ‘rules’ for the use of specific grammatical structures drilled into their heads through repeated mini-lectures, homeworks, pages of […]
Nov 26, 2020 Grammar, Opinions, The state of our profession Five more things I’ve learned from running the ENGLISH QUESTIONS ANSWERED group Two years ago now, I set up a Facebook group called ENGLISH QUESTIONS ANSWERED. In a sense, it was a purely selfish move as I wanted to be able to shepherd into one place all the questions about language that I regularly got asked across a wide range of platforms. Looking around at the many […]
