ELT365 · Day 197 — Monitoring a speaking task
Idea — While learners speak, monitor: check they are on task, gather errors and good language for feedback, and offer help discreetly. Hovering silences learners; vanishing…
ReadEverything, by pillar.
The Ship With a Broken Compass
I sailed for twenty years without knowing my compass was broken. Not metaphorically. Literally: I built a career in luxury hospitality across Sydney’s finest venues. I…
ReadELT365 · Day 193 — Talking time: theirs, not yours
Idea — Learners improve speaking by speaking, yet teachers often fill the air. Cutting teacher talking time and raising student talking time — through pair and…
ReadELT365 · Day 192 — When learners won’t speak
Idea — Silence usually signals anxiety, unclear task, no thinking time, or nothing to say — rarely laziness. Diagnose the cause: rehearsal time, pair work and…
ReadELT365 · Day 191 — Building fluency through repetition
Idea — Repeating the same task under mild time pressure can boost fluency: the second and third tellings come faster and smoother. The 4/3/2 technique —…
ReadOn Starting Over: What Complex PTSD Taught Me About Resilience
Complex PTSD is not the same as PTSD. The single-event model — one traumatic experience, one cluster of symptoms — does not describe the condition adequately.…
ReadBipolar I at Work: A Practical Account of Professional Stability
Bipolar I disorder is not primarily about mood swings in the colloquial sense. It is about magnitude. A manic episode — full mania, not hypomania —…
ReadTeaching with ADHD: What My Neurodivergent Brain Taught Me About Learning
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late thirties. By then I had already taught hundreds of hours of English, managed teams in high-pressure hospitality environments,…
ReadBad Faith and the Language Learner: Why We Resist Speaking
“I’m just not a languages person.” I hear this in almost every intake session. It is said apologetically, as though the student is warning me that…
ReadThe Stoic Teacher: Managing Outcomes You Cannot Control
Marcus Aurelius did not teach English as a foreign language. But he had students, he had days that did not go as planned, and he had…
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