Teaching English in Large Classes – forthcoming webinar

On Saturday 19th November at 13:30pm (UK time), I led a webinar on Teaching English in Large Classes for British Council English Agenda. The webinar focused on English language teaching, adopting a sociocultural perspective that aims to situate the English language teacher in her/his local teaching community. This is in contrast to what often happens in …

Speaking Games shortlisted for ESU Duke of Edinburgh award

I'm proud to announce that my book Speaking Games (2014, Delta Publishing) has been shortlisted for the English Speaking Union Duke of Edinburgh Award for Resources for Teachers, one of four titles in its category. This prestigious award celebrates innovation and good practice in English language teaching. This year the judges were looking in particular for …

A fundamental dichotomy in ELT methodology: A response to Pang (forthcoming)

Now available in Advance Access in ELT Journal. May Pang recently wrote an interesting critique of my 2015 ELT Journal article ‘Affordance, learning opportunities and the lesson plan pro forma’. Pang’s piece in the current ELT Journal (‘Companion guides for lesson planning: a planning template and the lesson plan pro forma’) follows her earlier article …

The most important animal in the world

Regular readers of my blog (both of them) will probably know a little about my interest in nature. Occasionally I find opportunities to bring this together with my passion for creating teaching materials. My Delta Download for this month, produced for Delta Publishing is an interesting jigsaw reading activity on what might just be the …

1-minute survey: CPD support on using the mother tongue to teach English

In preparation for a plenary talk I am giving at the Pharos University International ELT Symposium in Alexandria, Egypt on 3rd September, I'm doing a very quick (4-question) survey on support that teachers receive on the issue of L1 / mother tongue use in the classroom. It should only take 1 minute to complete. To …

The PPP saga ends

Having become known as 'Mr PPP' to some of my acquaintances, it is with mixed emotions that I finally conclude my work on this paradigm. I was never the world's biggest fan, but given the shared mythology that has been disseminated within the TEFL community on PPP, I felt the research warranted, and it was. Just over …

Why practice makes perfect sense

For those interested in the PPP research I've been doing, my more academic paper on this topic has just come out, in the journal: English Language Teaching Education and Development (ELTED). See here for a link to the open access article. The full title is 'Why practice makes perfect sense: The past, present and future …

Teaching English in Africa wins ELTON award

On 2 June 2016, Teaching English in Africa (TEIA) won the British Council Elton award for Local Innovation, after being shortlisted earlier in the year along five other resources in the category including video and online resources, learner libraries, and large publishing companies such as Oxford University Press and Macmillan Education. It was up against …

Why PPP won’t (and shouldn’t) go away

In this talk, delivered at IATEFL Birmingham 2016 (slides available here) I investigate the origins, durability and validity of the PPP paradigm[1] in language teaching. Since the 1990s, when PPP was rejected by a large number of leading writers on (English) language teaching pedagogy (see, e.g., Willis & Willis 1996), a shared mythology about its …

British Council Eltons 2016 – Nomination for Teaching English in Africa

I have just heard that my fourth book, Teaching English in Africa, (East African Educational Publishers, 2015) has made the final shortlist for the Elton 2016 awards in the category of Local Innovation. Great news for the book, and for everyone who worked so hard to help produce it. Many thanks to the content editor Dr …