George Pickering joins me to talk about managers. What do they do? How do they do it? What are the most important skills? And how easy is it for teachers to become managers?
Podcast: What is Phonics and Why Should You Care? (With Debbie Hepplewhite)
Ross interviews phonics expert, Debbie Hepplewhite MBE about what phonics is and why it’s so important. Debbie tells us about vocabulary enrichment, the importance of recycling, why English is so difficult to read, and much more. Debbie has worked as an adviser to the British Government for the parliamentary inquiry ‘Teaching Children to Read’ (March 2005) and she helped to inform Sir Jim Rose’s ‘Independent review of the teaching of early reading’ (Final Report, Jim Rose, March 2006) and in 2012 was awarded an MBE from the Queen for services to education.
Is It Useful To Teach Grammar? (with Nina Spada)
Motivation vs. Progress (with Matt Courtois)
Doing Task Based Teaching with Children (with Jane Willis)
Tasks and task-based learning are often associated with adults and higher level learners. But can we use tasks and task-based teaching with young learners? Jane Willis, author of Doing Task Based Teaching and A Framework for Task-based Learning joins us to talk about using TBL with beginners and very young learners.
What Should Be In a Language Learning App? (with Jake Whiddon)
Why Do We Teach The Way That We Teach? (with Karin Xie)
What shapes the ways we teach? What influences teachers' views and beliefs about language learning?
Trinity College London teacher trainer Karin Xie and I discuss what factors we see influencing teachers' ideas about teaching and talk about how our own experiences have informed our views of language teaching and learning.
Does Professional Development Make a Difference? (With Thomas Guskey)
Stages and Stories in Second Language Acquisition (with Stephen Krashen)
What stages do students pass through in learning a language? Stephen Krashen, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, tells us about the conduit hypothesis. We discuss the role of reading, the growing importance of listening and how to encourage students to read and acquire more through comprehensible input.
Teaching English as a Lingua Franca (With Marek Kiczkowiak)
We know that the majority of the world's English speakers are not native speakers, so what does this mean for how we teach English? Marek Kiczkowiak talks to us about teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF). Is ELF a variety of English? How can teachers approach teaching it? In what situations is it helpful to students (and when might it not be)?
Managing Behavior with Pre-school and Primary Children (with Carol Read)
How to Plan Lesson Aims and Why (With Dave Weller)
Gender Fairness in English Language Teaching (with Tessa Woodward)
Xmas Special: What Kind of English Should Be in Our Coursebooks? (with Jack Richards)
Since it’s Christmas, we bring you a double length episode with Professor Jack Richards. We discuss a range of issues related to English and coursebooks: how has curriculum design changed? What influence has the CEFR had on coursebooks? How does English as a Lingua Franca affect what we should teach? What effect does all the English available outside the classroom on the internet have on students and teachers inside the classroom?
