Mar 16, 2017 Opinions, The state of our profession Teaching in troubled times: Trump, tackling tensions and resting easy! We live in troubled times. We’re living through an age in which immigrants are routinely scapegoated and blamed for all of society’s ills and the religious practices of millions of people are regularly conflated with the murderous impulses of a tiny handful, while the blood on our own hands, our occupations and human rights abuses […]
Mar 2, 2017 Grammar, Opinions Grammar nonsense: stative verbs Exceptions – it’s not you, it’s me. A lot of grammar nonsense comes from labels that we use and that we assume are sufficient explanation in themselves to generate their own correct examples. Then, when students attempt to produce examples in accordance with these labels only to find out that they sound ‘strange’ to a […]
Nov 11, 2016 Lexis, Opinions, The state of our profession It’s all in the Mind: Neurobiology and the Lexical Approach Today we’re proud to present a guest post from Bruno Leys, who works at VIVES University College, Bruges, Belgium. Bruno can be contacted on: bruno.leys@vives.be and would love to hear any comments or questions you have. Over to Bruno: When Michael Lewis published The Lexical Approach in 1993, it’s fair to say that the book […]
Apr 26, 2016 Classroom Activities, Opinions, The state of our profession The best improvisation is prepared improvisation One of the great delights of the annual IATEFL conference is seeing young teachers find their own voices and deliver confident, well thought-out presentations. One of the talks I enjoyed most in Birmingham this year was by Sebastian Lesniewski, and he’s been kind enough to provide a brief overview of his main ideas. Over to […]
Apr 18, 2016 Opinions, The state of our profession CELTA, the native-speaker bias and possible paths forward Last week at IATEFL, Silvana Richardson delivered a rousing, righteous plenary tracing the historical roots of – and critiquing – the institutionalised mechanisms and habits of mind that continue to privilege native=speaker teachers over non-natives. The talk can be viewed online and speaks for itself, so suffice it to say that it was a powerful […]
