listening

Listening: a Cinderella story

Find out the answer to the recent concorso straordinario question: is listening the Cinderella skill of English Language Teaching? Read the research and our lesson plans.

Features of connected speech: What Went Wrong

In this blog post, I’d like to talk about something that I feel we as teachers tend to avoid: our failures. Sometimes, no matter how scrupulously you plan a class, it just won’t go well. And while there may be several different reasons for this, sharing experiences can help improve our practice. As teachers, the pressure to always succeed can be overwhelming, so acknowledging, sharing and reflecting on what went wrong and why that may be can only aid in normalising failure as a part of life, and perhaps becoming active and positive recipients of feedback in the future. By the way, don’t take my word for it: have a look at Thomas Farrell’s views on teacher reflection as a tool for development. The story ​So here I am with what I’m hoping will be only the first episode of What Went Wrong, on features of connected speech. I was teaching a one-to-one class based on this text and I thought I’d exploit it to… Read More »Features of connected speech: What Went Wrong