ELT365 · Day 174 — Reading for detail — intensive skills
Idea — Intensive reading demands close, careful attention to a short text. It builds accuracy and language awareness, not reading speed. Use it after gist work.…
ReadEverything, by pillar.
ELT365 · Day 173 — Gist reading — skimming and scanning
Idea — Skimming = read fast for the general idea. Scanning = search for one specific item. Both require learners to ignore most of the text…
ReadELT365 · Day 167 — Extensive listening — low-stress input
Idea — Extensive listening is high-volume, self-chosen, largely understood content. Comprehensible input applied to listening. Fluency grows from quantity, not from intensive drilling alone. Example —…
ReadELT365 · Day 164 — Elision and assimilation
Idea — Elision means sounds drop out (next door → /neks dɔː/). Assimilation means a sound changes to match its neighbour (ten minutes → /tem mɪnɪts/).…
ReadELT365 · Day 162 — The listen-and-repeat trap
Idea — Drilling isolated sentences builds pronunciation patterns but not real listening. Learners who only ever repeat a model cannot handle unpredictable connected speech. Example —…
ReadELT365 · Day 161 — Dictogloss — the collaborative listening task
Idea — Dictogloss is a reconstruction task: play a text at natural speed, learners note key words, then rebuild the meaning in groups. Grammar emerges from…
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 156 — Predicting before you listen
Idea — Prediction activates schema, focuses attention, and gives learners a genuine reason to listen. It is the most underused pre-listening technique. Example — Show a…
ReadELT365 · Day 155 — Listening for detail
Idea — Detail tasks ask learners to extract specific information. Set them after the gist task; front-loading detail questions causes panic and learners miss everything. Example…
ReadELT365 · 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…
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