ELT365 · D153 — Top-down vs bottom-up processing
Idea — Top-down processing uses background knowledge and context to predict meaning. Bottom-up processing builds meaning from individual sounds or words. Example — Hearing ‘gate 7…
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ELT365 · D152 — What receptive skills are
Idea — Receptive skills — reading and listening — involve decoding meaning from input. The learner receives language; they do not need to produce it. Example…
ReadELT365 · Day 211 — Designing a Productive-Skills Lesson from Scratch
Idea — A productive-skills lesson follows: lead-in → model and analyse → prepare → task → content feedback → language feedback. Skip language focus and learners…
ReadELT365 · Day 210 — Pronunciation in Production: The Intelligibility Principle
Idea — The goal of pronunciation in production is intelligibility — being understood by the intended listener — not native-speaker accuracy. Many native-speaker features are unnecessary…
ReadELT365 · Day 209 — Collaborative Writing: Group Tasks That Work
Idea — Collaborative writing tasks require genuine interdependence — each writer has a role (planner, drafter, editor) that the group needs. When any learner can write…
ReadELT365 · Day 208 — Dictation as a Productive Task: A Reappraisal
Idea — Dictation is often dismissed as old-fashioned, but it activates listening, spelling, punctuation, and grammatical knowledge simultaneously. Dictogloss makes it genuinely productive. Example — In…
ReadELT365 · Day 207 — Summary Writing: Selection and Compression
Idea — Summary writing requires selecting main ideas and compressing them — cutting examples, repetition, and hedging. It is a separate skill from both reading comprehension…
ReadELT365 · Day 206 — Opinion Essays: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Formula
Idea — The five-paragraph essay formula produces predictable, weak writing at B2+. Teaching learners to argue — claim, evidence, concession, rebuttal — produces stronger thinking and…
ReadELT365 · Day 205 — Narrative Writing: Past Tenses in Context
Idea — Narrative writing requires coordinating past simple (sequence), past continuous (background), and past perfect (earlier events). Teaching these forms through narrative gives context isolated exercises…
ReadELT365 · Day 204 — Email Writing: The Professional Register in Practice
Idea — Professional emails follow a predictable structure: greeting → purpose → body → request or next step → close. Teaching the moves explicitly saves learners…
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