ELT365 · Day 178 — Learner strategies for unknown words
Idea — Learners who encounter an unknown word have four options: guess from context, infer from word form, ignore it, or look it up. Teaching the…
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ELT365 · Day 177 — Reading speed and fluency
Idea — Slow reading is often caused by word-by-word processing. Fluent readers chunk language: they process phrases, not individual words. Speed improves with volume and with…
ReadELT365 · Day 167 — Gist tasks for reading
Idea — A reading gist task asks one broad question the whole text answers. Its purpose is to give direction and prevent word-by-word decoding on a…
ReadELT365 · Day 166 — Pre-teaching vocabulary for reading
Idea — Pre-teach only vocabulary that blocks meaning and cannot be guessed from context. Teaching too many words steals time; teaching too few risks comprehension breakdown.…
ReadELT365 · Day 163 — Extensive reading — volume and fluency
Idea — Extensive reading means reading large amounts of easy, enjoyable material at the learner’s independent level. Quantity builds fluency, vocabulary breadth, and reading speed. The…
ReadELT365 · Day 162 — Intensive reading — close study of a text
Idea — Intensive reading involves reading a short text closely, attending to grammar, vocabulary, discourse, and meaning. It builds language awareness. It is slow, deliberate, and…
ReadELT365 · Day 159 — Graded vs authentic texts — choosing wisely
Idea — Graded texts are written to match a CEFR level: controlled vocabulary, short sentences. Authentic texts are real-world material at natural complexity. Neither is better;…
ReadELT365 · Day 157 — Pre-listening activities
Idea — Pre-listening sets context, activates schema, and pre-teaches any vocabulary that would block comprehension. Done well, it means learners arrive at the audio ready to…
ReadELT365 · Day 154 — Gist listening — the first question
Idea — A gist task asks one broad question answered by listening once through. It gives listening a purpose and stops learners trying to catch every…
ReadELT365 · Day 202 — Cohesion — linking words without overloading
Idea — Cohesion is how a text holds together. Linking words help, but learners overuse them. ‘Furthermore’ and ‘moreover’ in every sentence signals weakness, not sophistication.…
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