ELT365 · Day 168 — Staging a listening lesson
Idea — Three stages, always in this order: pre-listening (activate schema, remove blockers) → while-listening (task) → post-listening (exploit the text, produce something). Skipping pre is…
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ELT365 · Day 166 — Weak forms in the stream of speech
Idea — Function words — articles, prepositions, auxiliaries — reduce to a schwa or disappear in natural speech. Learners trained on strong forms are unprepared for…
ReadELT365 · Day 165 — Linking in fast speech
Idea — When a word ends in a consonant and the next begins with a vowel, the sounds link. This is the single biggest cause of…
ReadELT365 · Day 163 — Why learners miss words: connected speech
Idea — In fast speech, words link, reduce, and disappear. Learners taught vocabulary in isolation cannot recognise those words in the natural stream. Example — “Did…
ReadELT365 · Day 160 — Note-taking while listening
Idea — Note-taking is a productive sub-skill, not a shortcut. Teach learners to write key words and numbers, not full sentences — full sentences cost them…
ReadELT365 · Day 157 — Schema theory in listening
Idea — Schema are mental frameworks built from experience. Learners with relevant cultural schema comprehend far more, even at lower language levels. Example — A learner…
ReadELT365 · 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…
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,…
ReadELT365 · Day 201 — Linking words and discourse markers
Idea — Linking words (however, therefore, in addition) signal logical relationships between ideas. Discourse markers (right, anyway, so) organise speech. Both are often memorised incorrectly —…
ReadELT365 · Day 189 — Discussions and debates in the classroom
Idea — Discussions are less structured than debates but need the same scaffolding: a clear topic, opinion vocabulary pre-taught, and a task that requires interaction —…
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