ELT365 · Day 158 — Pre-teaching vocabulary: the decision rule
Idea — Pre-teach vocabulary only if it blocks meaning and cannot be inferred. Pre-teaching too much removes the challenge; too little leaves learners stranded mid-text. Example…
ReadEverything, by pillar.
ELT365 · Day 163 — Predicting from context
Idea — Good listeners and readers guess what is coming next from genre, topic and grammar. Teaching prediction explicitly turns understanding from reactive decoding into active…
ReadELT365 · Day 157 — Blocking vocabulary: what stops comprehension
Idea — Blocking vocabulary is a word or phrase so unfamiliar it stops comprehension of the whole text — not just a nuance, but a key…
ReadELT365 · Day 162 — Weak forms and the schwa
Idea — Many grammar words (to, of, was, for, can) are unstressed and reduce to a schwa in connected speech. Hearing the weak form, not the…
ReadELT365 · Day 156 — The detail task: the second pass
Idea — After the gist task, learners go back through the text for specific information. The detail task should be answerable only by close reading or…
ReadELT365 · Day 161 — Connected speech: why learners mishear
Idea — In natural speech, words link, blend and disappear. Learners who learned words in isolation struggle because the stream does not match the tidy forms…
ReadELT365 · Day 155 — The gist task: one question, whole text
Idea — A gist task gives learners one broad question before they read or listen. It sets a purpose, activates schema, and stops word-by-word panic. One…
ReadELT365 · Day 160 — Graded and authentic listening
Idea — Graded audio is scripted for a level; authentic audio is real-world speech. Authentic texts motivate and expose natural features, but you grade the task,…
ReadELT365 · Day 154 — Bottom-up processing: decoding the signal
Idea — Bottom-up processing means building meaning word by word, sound by sound, from the raw linguistic input. It is the slower, more effortful route —…
ReadELT365 · Day 159 — Why every listening needs a task
Idea — Set a reason to listen before playing audio. A clear task focuses attention and turns passive exposure into purposeful practice; without one, learners drift…
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