Second language acquisition researcher, Patsy Lightbown, joins us to discuss how languages are learned, and also, how they aren’t. We hear about problems of training teachers, how learners overcome challenges and aspects of language teaching which still lag years behind research.
If you regularly listen to this podcast, the chances are you listen because you want to be a better teacher. But what is the best way to become a better teacher? Is it attending training? Is it being observed by your boss? Is it watching your peers teach? In a special end of year double length episode, Professor Thomas Guskey, author of Evaluating Professional Development talks to us about the best way to help teachers learn and the evidence for workshops, peer observations and what the best teachers do that the rest of us don’t.
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.
Professor David Carless from the University of Hong Kong joins me to talk about feedback. David tells us why our students should spend more time reading and acting on feedback than teachers spend writing it, how we can use examples from outstanding students to help students give feedback to themselves and how much should the content of feedback be based on teachers’ ideas as opposed to students.
I speak with Rhonda Oliver, SLA expert with young learners about tasks and interactions with young learners. Does speaking with other students help students learn language? How can teachers design tasks which students will find interesting? And which students should teachers pair their students with to get the most out of group work tasks?
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 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?
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.
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 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.
Donald Freeman, professor at the University of Michigan, joins me to talk about the how teachers become teachers. Do teachers teach as they were taught? What role does our experience as students play in forming our attitudes about teaching? And how does our experience as language learners and users influence our behavior in the classroom?
