We speak with friends and experts about teacher training and what needs to change. Our guests are David Nunan, Kathleen Bailey, Thomas Guskey, Steve Walsh, Mark Hancock, Marek Kiczkowiak, and Chris Rolland.
Jane Willis joins us to discuss the drawbacks of PPP and the benefits and challenges of using task cycles for language lessons.
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.
This week we look at coaching. Coaching is a common management and educational tool, but what exactly is coaching? Niamh Ryan joins me to talk about what coaches do and don’t do, the benefits of coaching, what questions can you ask during a coaching session, and in what situations should we avoid coaching?
Have you ever thought about starting your own school, start-up or just going freelance? As the educational landscape changes due to Covid, branching out on your own is becoming a necessity for many teachers. This week I speak with three people who have gone from being teachers to becoming their own bosses. Peter Liu tells us how he got the inspiration for his online education company, Jake Whiddon tells us why he founded his own school after fifteen years of working for other people and Ed Dudley tells us what kind of people should avoid going freelance.
"By lying, we deny others a view of the world as it is. Our dishonesty not only influences the choices they make, it often determines the choices they can make—and in ways we cannot always predict. Every lie is a direct assault upon the autonomy of those we lie to" (Sam Harris). So what of lying in language teaching? How honest are we with our students? How honest are schools with their teachers? And how can we be more honest with ourselves? We discuss with ESL recruitment guru, Jessica Keller.
