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.
How can we help students improve their listening and reading? Traditionally, teachers teach skills like predicting, skimming, scanning and guessing from context. In this episode, Michael Swan presents reasons why we should avoid this approach, the reasons students find comprehension difficult and what alternative approach teachers should take to improving listening and reading skills.
Thom Kiddle from NILE joins me to talk about what assessments should measure. Should we separate skills or integrate them? Should language tests measure how complex learners can make their speech, or how well they can adapt their speech to the listener? And when is it useful to test grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation?
Letterland teacher trainer Lesley White tells Ross about phonics. We touch on the history, the advantages of phonics over other approaches, different options to teachers within the phonics system and some of the differences between learning to read in your first language and in your second language.
Jake Whiddon joins me to talk about using storybooks in class. So many schools have graded readers, but so few teachers use these in class. Graded readers can be used with students of any age group and any level. They’re a great alternative to the coursebook and a contextualized way of presenting new language. In this episode, you’ll hear a simple five step approach that you can use to use graded readers with your students.
We break our record for the most guests on one show ever! Hear experts from the TEFL industry with over 200 years of collective experience share their favorite language learning activities. We speak with Edmund Dudley, John Hughes, Matt Courtois, Brian Tomlinson, Ben Beaumont, Dave Weller, Wendy Arnold, Debbie Hepplewhite, Ray Davila and Diederik Van Gorp and ask them all the same question: “What’s your favorite language teaching activity?”
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?
Thom Kiddle from NILE joins me to talk about physical learning environments and the impact they can have on learning. As teachers, we spend so much time thinking about learning activities, materials and methods, but what if our students aren’t learning because they aren’t getting enough light or oxygen?
To celebrate the launch of my book about online teaching, George Pickering, Annamaria Pinter and Amol Padwad join me to discuss how going online has changed language teaching.
Author and positive discipline trainer, Dina Esmer, joins me to talk about tools for managing young learners’ behavior. What can teachers do to encourage long term positive behavior in class? How can teachers train learners to solve their own behavior problems? And what can teachers do when conflicts happen in their classes?
