ELT365 · Day 186 — Free practice: opening the gate
Free practice sets a communicative task where learners choose their own language. The teacher monitors but does not intervene. The aim is fluency and consolidation.
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ELT365 · Day 185 — Controlled practice: keeping the focus tight
Controlled practice gives learners little freedom — they produce a specific form in a predictable context. It belongs right after presentation: build accuracy before you open the task.
ELT365 · Day 184 — The information gap: why learners actually talk
An information gap means Learner A holds information Learner B needs, and vice versa. It creates a genuine communicative purpose — they must speak to complete the task.
ELT365 · Day 183 — Fluency vs accuracy: the tension at the heart of production
Fluency means communicating meaning without interruption; accuracy means using form correctly. Every speaking and writing task sits somewhere on the scale — and you design where.
ELT365 · Day 182 — What ‘productive’ means: speaking and writing
Productive skills are speaking and writing — skills where learners generate language rather than receive it. They require learners to retrieve, organise, and produce form and meaning simultaneously.
ELT365 · Day 178 — The follow-up task: text to learner life
The follow-up task connects what learners read or heard to their own experience. It ensures the lesson ends with the learner as subject, not the text — and gives speaking or writing practice.
ELT365 · Day 177 — Using images as a pre-listening scaffold
Images activate schema and emotion before learners hear a word. A photo of the speaker, the setting, or the topic gives context that reduces the cognitive load of the first listen.
ELT365 · Day 175 — Stress and weak forms in real listening
In natural speech, content words carry stress and are clear; function words — articles, auxiliaries, prepositions — are reduced to weak forms. Learners who do not know this miss them completely.
ELT365 · Day 164 — Intensive reading: close attention on short text
Intensive reading focuses on a short passage — one paragraph, one exchange — with close attention to language. It is the opposite of skimming: slow, forensic, deliberate.
ELT365 · Day 163 — Scanning: reading to find one thing
Scanning is fast reading to locate specific information — a name, a date, a figure — without reading everything. The key is knowing exactly what to look for before you start.