ELT365 · Day 154 — Gist tasks — one question, whole text
Idea — A gist task poses one global question answered by hearing the whole text. It prevents learners from switching off once they catch a single…
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ELT365 · Day 153 — Bottom-up vs top-down listening
Idea — Bottom-up processing builds meaning from individual sounds upward; top-down uses prior knowledge and context to predict. Skilled listeners use both simultaneously. Example — Hearing…
ReadELT365 · Day 152 — Why listening is harder than it looks
Idea — Listening in a second language demands simultaneous decoding of sound, parsing of grammar, and construction of meaning — all in real time, with no…
ReadELT365 · Day 212 — Month 7 review — productive skills
Idea — This month covered: accuracy vs fluency · controlled/free practice · drilling · pairwork · role play · information gap · error correction strategies ·…
ReadELT365 · Day 211 — The productive classroom — STT over TTT
Idea — Student Talking Time (STT) and Student Writing Time should dominate a productive-skills lesson. If the teacher is talking for more than 30% of the…
ReadELT365 · Day 210 — Assessing productive skills formatively
Idea — Formative assessment in productive skills captures evidence of progress during learning, not just at the end. Observation, self-assessment, and peer feedback all serve this…
ReadELT365 · Day 209 — Integrating skills — speaking leads to writing
Idea — Skills rarely operate in isolation in the real world. Lessons that move from speaking to writing (or reading to speaking) better reflect authentic language…
ReadELT365 · Day 208 — The four-stage production model
Idea — A full productive lesson moves through four stages: exposure to model language → focus on form and meaning → controlled practice → free production.…
ReadELT365 · Day 207 — Task-Based Learning in productive skills
Idea — In Task-Based Learning (Willis), learners complete a communicative task first; language work comes second. The task creates real communicative need; the language feedback addresses…
ReadELT365 · Day 206 — Fluency activities — anecdote and storytelling
Idea — Anecdote tasks ask learners to tell a personal story in 2–3 minutes. They are highly motivating, language-rich, and generate natural spoken grammar — ellipsis,…
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