Students need to speak to learn a language and the more students talk, the more they learn. Not according to Professor Stephen Krashen. For 40 years he has championed the concept that what students should be doing in class is reading (and listening), not speaking. In this episode, Stephen tells Ross some of the arguments against forcing students to speak, something which might not just be inefficient, but in some cases counterproductive.
In this episode, I had the privilege of speaking with Professor Lesley Painter Farrell about how we can help students retain more language lessons for the long haul. During the podcast, Lesley outlines the difference between short-term learning and long-term memory. We discuss evidence-based techniques teachers can implement to optimize retention. Lesley also shares some simple but effective techniques such as recycling content across lessons, building in reflection time, avoiding cognitive overload, and using retrieval practices. Listen now to uncover how we can help our students remember more.
Professor Kathi Bailey joins us to discuss teacher evaluation. Teacher evaluation can do so much good, but it can also end up doing even more harm. Professor Bailey tells us about what supervisors can do to earn trust, why supervision and evaluation is important, and how everyone can make the most out of the process.
Professor Michael McCarthy joins me to talk about using corpora in language teaching. Mike tells us how teachers should use corpora when planning lessons, the advantages and disadvantages of showing corpora to students. We discuss how teachers can create their own corpora and how to use corpora to create better materials.
We talk to friends and experts and ask two questions about changes they’d like to see in classrooms: what common teaching practices would you like to see less? And, which less common teaching practices would you like to see more? Guests include Penny Ur, Karin Xie, Ian McGrath, Kathleen Baily, Donald Freeman, Rod Bolitho, Anne Burns and Tessa Woodward.
Understanding what people in say from the sounds they make is all but impossible without context, even in our first language. So how can we make more use of this amazing tool which helps prediction, understanding, engagement and application? We discuss what context is, why it’s important and how to incorporate it when teaching adults, teaching kids and in teacher training.
The second of our two-part special from the 2018 IATEFL conference in Brighton. We chat with our friends, fellow teacher trainers and returning podcast guests David Weller, Simon Galloway, Fifi Pyatt and new guest and DipTESOL candidate Will Ferguson about technology in the classroom, activities for teenagers, creating positive group dynamics in classes, native and non-native English teachers and effective practices in language teaching.
Cognitive biases screw up our thinking. They make us make bad decisions, come to wrong wrong conclusions and for the most part we're completely unaware of them. This week we speak with Trinity DipTESOL course Director Simon Galloway about cognitive biases for teachers, cognitive biases for trainers and cognitive biases for managers and how to avoid them and start thinking more clearly.
What are the real differences between "native" and "non-native" English teachers? How did we end up with these distinctions in our industry? And what should we be doing about discrimination? We meet with Dave Weller to discuss the issues surrounding "native" and "non-native" English teachers such as attitudes of parents and teachers, the responsibilities of language schools and how to change opinions.
Personalization is in every aspect of our lives; the clothes we wear, the TV we watch, the podcasts we listen to. But what about in language teaching? In this episode we discuss how teachers can personalize lessons and materials for students, how trainers can personalize development for teachers and how managers can personalize work for their staff.
Why don't we teach writing more? Is writing less interesting than other skills? Or less useful? Or just harder to teach? We (Ross, Tracy and Matt Courtois) speak to published author and ESL writing specialist David Tait about how to teach writing and the students who thrive when writing that we forget about when teaching speaking.
There are more or less three constants present in every educational setting: students, teachers and classrooms. This episode we focus not on the participants, but on the spaces for English language learning. We discuss how to set up a classroom, how seating can support your students (or sabotage your lesson) and how teachers and students can benefit from moving their class outside the classroom (from time to time).
Testing is a huge part of learning, but most teachers don't know a lot about it. We ask test guru Dan Elsworth all about testing. What is a test? How is it different to an assessment? How Can you go about writing a test? How can you assess students for a learner profile? How do tests affect teaching? Yes, we asked him a lot of questions. Listen to hear the answers...
We talk with self confessed role play and ESL nerd Fifi Pyatt to look at how to take role plays from nerdiness to awesomeness and discuss how to help students get as much as possible from role plays and also go off on tangents about burning witches and dungeons and dragons…
