‘The future of training’ or The elephant that swallowed the room

This is a copy of the guest blog I wrote for the International House Teacher Training Blog here. The IH ‘Future of Training’ Conference (23-24 November 2018) will mark 65 years of teacher training at IH London, the ancestral home of the initial ELT certification course that later became the Cambridge CELTA. It promises both …

If only… The dangers of positivist bias at the Education Endowment Foundation

Never heard of the EEF? You’ve just proven my point. Two weeks ago I went to see an invited speaker at the University of Warwick. It was a member of the Educational Endowment Foundation (EEF) team, which is the single biggest funder of research on education in the UK, and was given a £125 million …

‘Buying in’ to communicative language teaching: the impact of ‘initial’ certification courses on the classroom practices of experienced teachers of English

In this paper, published this month in the journal ‘Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching’, I report on my study into the impact of a CELTA course on the self-reported classroom practices of 29 experienced teachers of English working mainly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. As my previous blog documents, these teachers are part of …

What impact does CELTA have on the classroom practices of experienced teachers?

As part of the IATEFL 2018 Forum on CELTA, I presented on research that I carried out with 29 experienced Egyptian teachers of English who took CELTA courses in 2016. I was interested in finding out what impact it had had on their classroom practices, and how much they had needed to adapt what they …

Recent past and possible future trends in applied linguistics

Lei & Liu’s recent article: “Research trends in applied linguistics from 2005 to 2016: A bibliometric analysis and its implications” (2018) is possibly one of the most revealing accounts of recent changes in the popularity of research topics, authors and publications in applied linguistics since the turn of the (albeit rather short) current century. Based …

Amazing AINET 2018

I had an amazing time at the AINET 2018 Conference in Mumbai this weekend, where I got to meet some of the superstars of India’s classrooms! The talk topics were original and inspiring, including prizewinning talks on ‘Empowering the Weaker Learners by Developing Basic Language Skills’ by Nurjahan Naik and ‘My Home Bird Sanctuary’ by …

Peer needs analysis

For the November 2017 edition of English Teaching Professional I wrote an article on a classroom rapport building practice that I’ve called peer needs analysis (PNA). Here I provide a brief introduction to PNA, and some free resources that you can try out in your own classroom. See the article itself for more ideas and …

Drill tables

When we introduce new grammar, many of us like to use spoken drills to provide learners with controlled practice of the new language. For the last few years I've been using what I call ‘drill tables’ to do this. I’m not sure if other teachers do something similar, but I’ve found them a simple, engaging …

The rarest verb tense in English

Ever wondered what the rarest 'tense' in English is, and how rare it is? No? Hmm... Just me then. Anyway, just in case you’re still interested in finding out (and my students always are), the rarest verb tense in English (we should properly call it an aspect) is the future perfect continuous in the passive …

I, she, you

Here’s an idea for making speaking activities last 3 TIMES as long! I call it ‘I, she, you’ because it practices 1st, 3rd and 2nd person singular verb forms, in that order. It works especially well in secondary classrooms with teenage students who are a little reluctant to speak. There are 5 stages to the …