Kirsten Campbell from Busuu joins me to discuss how to keep learners engaged learning using an app.
Independent Play in English with Very Young Learners (with Sandie Mourão)
Quality Teacher Talk with Young Learners (with Matt Courtois)
How to Promote Your Writing (with Dave Weller)
Dave Weller joins me to talk about how to promote your writing. Dave tells us why you shouldn’t start a blog, where you can write instead, how to promote your writing across different platforms, how to find out what people search for online, how to choose a title for your writing and the key to writing a best selling book.
Researching Your Own Teaching (with Anne Burns)
Myths, Wisdom and Science - What Do We Know about Teaching? (with Russ Mayne)
Online Forum-based Teacher Training (with Simon Galloway)
Simon Galloway (author of Teaching Teachers Online) joins me to discuss using forums in online teacher training. We talk about how to encourage interaction between trainees, how to encourage trainees to post critical and reflective comments, and how to incorporate variety into forum tasks.
Learning to Learn with Children (with Gail Ellis)
6th Anniversary Episode: Our Teachers' Teachers
No man is an island, and no teacher is either. We’ve all been influenced by someone in our own teaching, be it colleagues, trainers, authors or our own teachers. But who influenced them? In our longest ever episode, we ask English language teaching legends Diedrick Van Gorp, Debbie Hepplewhite, Stephen Krashen, Vivian Cook, David Crystal, Jack Richards, Hugh Dellar, Alan Maley, Penny Ur and David Weller about their influences and what they learned from them.
Choice, Challenge & Routine with Young Learners (with Jake Whiddon)
Challenging the Limits of Technology (With Mark Pemberton)
Creating Creativity in Language Teaching (with Alan Maley)
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” Maya Angelou. But how to get started? We speak with Professor Alan Maley, author of Creativity and English Language Teaching, about how constraints can prompt creativity in teachers and what teachers can do to bring in their lives, interests and personalities to make the classrooms more creative.
Do Coursebooks Stop Teachers Developing? (With Dave Weller)
Do coursebooks de-skill teachers? What happens if the important decisions about planning get left to coursebook writers rather than teachers? How much of the coursebook should schools tell teachers to use? And what can you do if your school doesn’t let you deviate from the prescribed materials? Dave Weller, author of “Lesson Planning for Language Teachers” and friend of the podcast discuss.
Replacing Texts With Pictures (with Mark Hancock)
Texts are a starting point for many lessons. But what about using a text with no words? Mark Hancock (author of Pronunciation Games, English Pronunciation in Use, Pron Pack and Pen Pictures) tells us about basing lessons around pictures and using these to generate stories, descriptions, language needs and much more.
Positive Behavior Management with Young Learners (with Matt Courtois)
Running Effective Webinars to Train Teachers (with Simon Galloway)
Simon Galloway (author of Teaching Teachers Online) joins me to discuss how to run webinars. We discuss how to make the most of breakout rooms, polls and chatboxes, why webinars should be part of distance learning courses and when to avoid using webinars.
Building the Perfect Coursebook (with Professor Brian Tomlinson)
What makes Teacher Training Successful? (with Diederik Van Gorp)
Using Corpora with Learners (with Paul Thompson)
Dr. Paul Thompson from the University of Birmingham talks to me about how teachers can use corpora and corpus data with students. We discuss the benefits of using corpora with students. What teachers and students need to know about corpora like COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English) to be able to use these effectively. Paul also tells us about his favorite corpus-based activities which teachers can use with students.
