ELT365 · Day 184 — Controlled practice — the grammar drill, done right
Idea — Controlled practice limits what learners can say, forcing attention to form. Drills build automaticity. The key is keeping them meaningful, not mechanical. Example —…
ReadEverything, by pillar.
ELT365 · Day 183 — Accuracy vs fluency — knowing which to target
Idea — Accuracy focuses on correct forms; fluency focuses on communicating meaning without stopping. Both matter. The error is mixing correction into fluency tasks — it…
ReadELT365 · Day 182 — What ‘productive skills’ means
Idea — Productive skills — speaking and writing — require learners to create language output. They are harder than receptive skills because errors are visible and…
ReadELT365 · Day 181 — Month 6 review — receptive skills quiz
Idea — Thirty days of receptive skills: top-down and bottom-up processing, gist and detail tasks, reading sub-skills, listening challenges, connected speech, staging, and lesson mistakes. Example…
ReadELT365 · Day 180 — Six common receptive-skills lesson mistakes
Idea — Common errors: skipping lead-in; pre-teaching too many words; asking for detail before gist; replaying audio immediately when learners struggle; using transcripts as a shortcut;…
ReadELT365 · Day 179 — Post-reading and listening tasks — into production
Idea — After comprehension, learners should do something with the content. A productive follow-up — discussion, writing, roleplay — consolidates language and creates a genuine communication…
ReadELT365 · Day 178 — Staging a listening lesson — the full sequence
Idea — Listening lesson order: lead-in → context → pre-teach one or two words → gist listen → check → detail listen → check → transcript…
ReadELT365 · Day 177 — Staging a reading lesson — the full sequence
Idea — Reading lesson order: lead-in → set context → pre-teach two key words → gist task → check → detail task → check → language…
ReadELT365 · Day 176 — The jigsaw reading task
Idea — In a jigsaw task, different learners read different texts then share information. Everyone has something the others need. It creates a genuine communication purpose…
ReadELT365 · Day 175 — Authentic vs graded reading texts
Idea — Authentic texts are written for native speakers: idiomatic, complex, dense. Graded texts trade authenticity for accessibility. Use both; do not let graded readers become…
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