Idea — Productive skills — speaking and writing — require learners to create language output. They are harder than receptive skills because errors are visible and meaning must be organised actively. Example — Reading a…
Idea — Thirty days of receptive skills: top-down and bottom-up processing, gist and detail tasks, reading sub-skills, listening challenges, connected speech, staging, and lesson mistakes. Example — Quick-fire: What is a gist task? (D157) What…
Idea — Common errors: skipping lead-in; pre-teaching too many words; asking for detail before gist; replaying audio immediately when learners struggle; using transcripts as a shortcut; no productive follow-up. Example — Playing audio three times…
Idea — After comprehension, learners should do something with the content. A productive follow-up — discussion, writing, roleplay — consolidates language and creates a genuine communication purpose. Example — After a job-interview listening, learners roleplay…
Idea — Listening lesson order: lead-in → context → pre-teach one or two words → gist listen → check → detail listen → check → transcript if needed → follow-up. Example — Teachers who skip…
Idea — Reading lesson order: lead-in → set context → pre-teach two key words → gist task → check → detail task → check → language focus or productive follow-up. Example — Skip the lead-in…
Idea — In a jigsaw task, different learners read different texts then share information. Everyone has something the others need. It creates a genuine communication purpose for speaking after reading. Example — Group A reads…
Idea — Authentic texts are written for native speakers: idiomatic, complex, dense. Graded texts trade authenticity for accessibility. Use both; do not let graded readers become the only diet. Example — A graded reader at…
Idea — Authentic texts use real-world speech: overlaps, hesitations, accent variation, natural speed. Graded texts simplify for level. Both have a place; neither should dominate a course. Example — A B1 class listening to a…
Idea — A transcript is a support tool, not a first resort. Use it after two listens. Let learners read while the audio plays, not instead of it. The comparison reveals what they missed. Example…