ELT365 · Day 154 — Bottom-Up Processing
Idea — Bottom-up processing builds meaning word by word, sound by sound — decoding the signal before constructing sense. It dominates when language is unfamiliar. Example…
ReadEverything, by pillar.
ELT365 · Day 153 — Top-Down Processing
Idea — Top-down processing means using existing knowledge — of topics, genres, and the world — to predict and interpret incoming language. Schemata drive it. Example…
ReadELT365 · Day 152 — What Are Receptive Skills?
Idea — Reading and listening are receptive skills — learners receive meaning without producing language. That doesn’t make them passive; comprehension requires active mental work. Example…
ReadELT365 · Day 212 — Month 7 review — productive skills
Idea — This month covered the productive skills toolkit: fluency vs accuracy, information gaps, controlled and free practice, error correction strategies, speaking tasks, writing stages, and…
ReadELT365 · Day 211 — Staging a productive skills lesson end-to-end
Idea — A complete productive skills lesson has four stages: lead-in, model and analyse, prepare, produce, feedback. Rushing the prepare stage collapses the quality of production.…
ReadELT365 · Day 210 — Integrating skills: the natural approach
Idea — Real communication always integrates skills. Reading sparks speaking; listening generates writing; speaking leads to reading. Design tasks that mirror this rather than isolating skills…
ReadELT365 · Day 209 — The dictogloss: where listening meets writing
Idea — A dictogloss is a listening-writing task: the teacher reads a short text at natural speed twice; learners reconstruct it from notes. The reconstruction reveals…
ReadELT365 · Day 208 — The 4-3-2 technique for speaking fluency
Idea — In the 4-3-2 technique, learners tell the same story three times: four minutes, then three, then two. Repetition forces fluency — they stop translating…
ReadELT365 · Day 207 — Writing to a real reader: the motivation fix
Idea — Writing for a teacher-examiner is motivationally thin. Writing for a real or imagined audience gives learners a reason to make the text work. Example…
ReadELT365 · Day 206 — Editing vs proofreading: a distinction that matters
Idea — Editing is improving content and structure — does the paragraph make sense, is the argument clear? Proofreading is checking form — spelling, punctuation, grammar.…
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