ELT365 · Day 166 — What reading really is
Idea — Reading, like listening, combines bottom-up decoding with top-down prediction. Fluent readers do not process every letter; they sample the text and confirm guesses, which…
ReadEverything, by pillar.
ELT365 · Day 160 — Authentic vs graded recordings: the trade-off
Idea — Authentic recordings expose learners to real spoken English — speed, overlaps, ellipsis. Graded recordings are clear but artificial. Neither is always right; choose by…
ReadELT365 · Day 165 — Listening problems: a checklist
Idea — Common listening difficulties cluster around speed, connected speech, unknown vocabulary, and unfamiliar topic. Diagnosing which one is biting lets you target help instead of…
ReadELT365 · Day 159 — Predicting before you listen or read
Idea — Prediction activates schema and creates a reason to engage. A two-minute lead-in — images, a title, one question — makes the whole listening or…
ReadELT365 · Day 164 — Gist first, then detail
Idea — Stage listening from easy to hard: first play for gist, then replay for specific information or detail. Each pass has a different, narrower task,…
ReadELT365 · Day 158 — Pre-teaching vocabulary: the decision rule
Idea — Pre-teach vocabulary only if it blocks meaning and cannot be inferred. Pre-teaching too much removes the challenge; too little leaves learners stranded mid-text. Example…
ReadELT365 · Day 163 — Predicting from context
Idea — Good listeners and readers guess what is coming next from genre, topic and grammar. Teaching prediction explicitly turns understanding from reactive decoding into active…
ReadELT365 · Day 157 — Blocking vocabulary: what stops comprehension
Idea — Blocking vocabulary is a word or phrase so unfamiliar it stops comprehension of the whole text — not just a nuance, but a key…
ReadELT365 · Day 162 — Weak forms and the schwa
Idea — Many grammar words (to, of, was, for, can) are unstressed and reduce to a schwa in connected speech. Hearing the weak form, not the…
ReadELT365 · Day 156 — The detail task: the second pass
Idea — After the gist task, learners go back through the text for specific information. The detail task should be answerable only by close reading or…
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