ELT Teacher Talk "When one teaches, two learn."

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ELT Buzz

I’ve been around English language teaching (ELT) for 30 years now.  From day 1 in teacher’s college I was known as a “resource” and a “go to” guy for X or Y or Z. Back then it was VHS educational tapes or coursebooks, blackline master...

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A Return To and A Defense of Freire

I just returned from visiting Nicaragua and some schools, universities there. In the more “prosperous” north but the poverty was still very evident everywhere. Even in the schools themselves. This is saying something for I’ve been living in Guatemala the last 6 years – and...

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Teaching As An Invisible Act

[Finally renewing my blogging. Don’t worry, been blogging A LOT but just not here on my personal blog. You’ll hear about it soon and meet my team, see my posts and musings – starting a TEFL News Magazine. More on that in the coming weeks...

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Coming Soon.

After this post, the cat will be half out of the bag. I’ve been thinking a lot about my future, the next deep dive.  The last year I’ve been consulting and helping companies build great products. Also wrote a cool “Teaching English In English” course...

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Supporting EFL Classroom

It is now 12 years old – EFL Classroom 2.0.  Daily, without missing a day, wherever I am in the world, I check in. I check in and upload content, vet content, edit content, work on site design, attend to member messages, send emails and...

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Voice Typing For Student Story Retelling

Last week I reviewed and talked about a really cool tool where students can record their voice and see their speech as text – Synth. This week, I’m taking it two steps further. Showing teachers the new Google Slides functionality – Voice Typing and how...

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Language Learning and Teaching Beliefs (or myths)

I’ve always been a big advocate of continued reflection by teachers, especially regarding their own beliefs vis a vis teaching and learning. Especially the continued development of one’s philosophy of education. I don’t think we pay or give much attention to this in teacher training...

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The Emperor Has No Clothes

Preface: I wrote this in the year 2001 while living in Kyiv, Ukraine and participating in the Ukraine without Kuchma movement. I lived just off of Maydan Nezalezhnosti on Lutheranskya and demonstrated, threw my stones and wandered the tents on Khreschatyk. It was a heady...

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Reading & Remembering – Two Tools. Synth and Sans Forgetica

Reading. It’s been something I’ve been passionate about as an educator. Probably ever since I picked up a copy of Frank Smith’s “Understanding Reading” in anticipation of Teacher’s College some 30+ years ago. In the interm, I’ve read, studied and become convinced that technology can...

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Video & Language Teaching

I’ve written many times previously on what I call – The Video Teaching Revolution. Video is becoming the new, dynamic textbook. It won’t replace print but it will have its own place, time and attention as a learning material and medium of instruction. This recent...

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The Death Of “Native Speakerism”

I just finished speaking in Brazil on the topic of a level playing field for all English language teachers – regardless of their passport, their L1, their color or accent.  A look both into the wide spread and institutional “neo-racism” (as Adrian Holiday calls it)...

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Give Me 5 – Vocabulary game

Give Me 5 is a simple vocabulary prompt game that makes for a light lesson and review of main English vocabulary. Download the Give Me 5 cards. Students can be dealt the cards and challenge each other (or other groups). Set a time limit in...

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A Language Thought Experiment

Recently, I’ve chanced upon a number of articles and blog posts championing the seemingly well established idea that children are much better language learners than adults and that adults will never be able to approach native like fluency except for a few exceptions. These ideas...

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100 Top Youtube Videos For Teaching English

I have decades of experience using video in the classroom. From this experience ’twas born this list of the top 100 Youtube videos to use to teach English. Not a definitive list in the sense of being “scientific” but I rank these videos based on...

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So You Want To Be A Teacher?

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been a teacher for 30 years. Ups and downs but always felt proud to be a teacher and part of this profession. Lately, reflecting a lot on my journey, pecking away at my always unfinished book about education “School’s...

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World Cup Resources

I’m a huge soccer fan, especially when it’s the World Cup. Over the years, I’ve created some amazing resources to share with teachers.  The World Cup makes a great lesson, even just playing whiteboard soccer for review gets students motivated and excited about learning English....

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5 lessons for educators from “McFarlane”

A number of years ago I wrote a post titled, “5 lessons for educators from “The King’s Speech”.  It was well received and today I thought I’d write a few similar thoughts after watching the movie, “McFarlane“. I totally expected the movie to be a...

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Gifs as Universal Language Ideographs

Isaiah Berlin related that there are only two types of people, foxes or hedgehogs.  I’m a hedgehog.  A generalist. A slow plodder that sees the bigger, wider picture. When it comes to language learning, this has been very handy.  It’s valuable to cut through the...

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Master Slave ELT

I’ve had some free time these days to rethink my role in education and in particular ELT.  So think of this post as the start of my St. Augustinian “Confessions”. English language teaching is great! It’s given me so much and I’ve traveled the world,...