Idea — Receptive skills — reading and listening — are how learners take in language. They receive meaning without producing it. Both require active processing, not passive absorption. Example — A learner reads a news…
Idea — Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical links between sentences — pronouns, connectors, reference chains. Coherence is the logical progression of ideas. Both matter. Example — ‘She arrived late. Therefore, the meeting started without…
Idea — Silence in a speaking task is not always a problem. It may signal thinking or genuine engagement. Diagnose before intervening. Example — A three-second pause before a complex question is processing time, not…
Idea — Pronunciation matters for intelligibility — can the listener understand? Not native-likeness, but enough accuracy to prevent communication breakdown. Example — A mispronounced vowel (‘ship’/’sheep’) may cause confusion; a non-native accent rarely does. Teach…
Idea — Feedback on speaking is either immediate (on-the-spot correction) or delayed (after the task). In freer tasks, delay is usually preferable — it protects fluency. Example — During a role-play, collect errors without interrupting.…
Idea — Role-play gives learners a persona and a situation, separating their language performance from their social identity. It reduces inhibition and produces target register. Example — ‘You are returning a faulty phone. Your partner…
Idea — A good discussion task has a genuine information or opinion gap — learners must talk because they don’t all hold the same answer. Example — ‘Is social media good or bad?’ has no…
Idea — Freer tasks give learners a communicative goal with minimal language constraint. Success means achieving the goal, not producing a specific target form. Example — ‘Plan a weekend trip with your partner. Budget: £50.’…
Idea — Controlled practice keeps language use tightly constrained — learners produce target forms with minimal creative choice. It builds form confidence before fluency work. Example — Substitution drills, prompt-and-response, and dialogue repetition with one…
Idea — Fluency means communicating smoothly without excessive pausing or breakdown. Accuracy means using correct forms. Neither is superior — different tasks prioritise one. Example — A role-play values fluency: finishing the task matters. A…