Volume 31 | Issue 4 | July/August 2022

www.modernenglishteacher.com

Online Resource Centre

Digital Library Tracker

Bringing the latest research and

practical ideas to your classroom

Hybrid learning
l Online observation l Using model answers Jason Anderson Holly Morgan
l Self-assessment l Reflection Patricia Barzotti Irina Nosova
l Lesson objectives l Online communities Maria Vrabelova Joanna Szoke
l Young learners l Challenging learners Christopher Walker Ethan Mansur
l Teacher development l Pre-sessional courses Emily Bray Andrew Barker
 Teac h i n g E n g l i sh

TITLE
Best Practices
for Blended
SUB TITLE

Learning Pete Sharma and

Barney Barrett

By Pete Sharma and Barney Barret

T his comprehensive handbook supports
language teachers and school
managers in developing and running
Blended Learning courses. The authors
bring their years of experience to this
ever-evolving and highly-complex field of
ELT to offer systematic guidance on the
various technologies available to language
teachers, as well as offer a framework
to help you choose which of the many
learning platforms available is suitable for
your context and goals. The handbook also
contains practical teaching ideas which
blend traditional classroom input with
online activities.
Whether you are a language teacher or
teacher trainer looking to start blending
your classes or an academic manager
looking to improve learning outcomes in
your institution, Best Practices for Blended
Learning offers the information and support
that you need.

To order online visit: www.pavpub.com/best-practices-for-blended-learning

Price: £34.95
ISBN: 9781911028840
Order online or contact us at:
Email: info@pavpub.com or Telephone: 01273 434 943

Editorial
A note from the editor
W
elcome to another issue of our magazine and,
for the first time in nearly five years, I am
writing this editorial in England. The return
from New Zealand has not been without
problems, one of our suitcases went missing
for a week, our goods being shipped are still not through
the Suez Canal and our garden here had not been cut back
for a few years. More than that has been the difficulty
reintegrating into a country where I was born, educated
and worked for many years. Things have changed here so,
rather like someone arriving in a new country, I have had to
be patient and relearn certain habits. I am sure it is only a
matter of time but it is a good reminder of all those socio-
cultural aspects of life we sometimes take for granted.
About twenty-five years ago I remember testing someone at
a French pharmaceutical company which was being taken
over by an American firm. He was understandably nervous
about his level of English and when I asked him which
particular area he was most concerned about, he mentioned
reading and writing. When pushed for more information
he explained that he wouldn’t be using the telephone much
because the Americans used something called Electronic
Mail. This was the first time I had heard of this and I vaguely
remember reassuring him that it probably wouldn’t catch on!
How wrong I was! Yesterday I got emails from all over the
world, had a Zoom meeting with a colleague in New Zealand,
chatted with family on WhatsApp and handed over most of
this magazine to the designer via Dropbox. Everything we
do is now made easier by the internet, if we even use that
name any more. So a year ago, when I decided to dedicate
this issue to Hybrid Learning, I was confident that it was an
important part of most teachers’ lives. Most of the articles I
have received over the last few months confirm this. People
teach live online, face-to-face, from home, from school,
via laptops and phones and in any way the institution,
the government, the class or even the teacher want.
What a change from less than twenty years ago when I was
asked at an interview what I felt about Blended Learning.
That, again, was a new term, but one we have all now
embraced although some maintain that the blend does not
have to be digital. Classwork and homework has been the
standard blend since time immemorial. The pandemic has
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Modern English Teacher title and all editorial contents
© 2022 Pavilion Publishing and Media
Published: January, March, May, July, September, November
ISSN: 0308-0587
Printed in Great Britain by Micropress
Editor: Robert McLarty
Email: Robert.McLarty@pavpub.com
Design: Phil Morash, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
Editor-in-Chief: Kirsten Holt, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
Email: Kirsten.Holt@pavpub.com
[ Editorial ]
certainly made us think long and hard about teaching and
how to do it in as engaging a way as possible whatever the
circumstances. How efficient some of the online teaching
has been will become apparent as various students get to
higher levels and gaps in their learning reveal themselves or
not, but whatever the criticisms, teachers all over the world
have done a fabulous job.
Talking of the world, our feature Global Voices is really
starting to take off, helped, as ever, by social media
where we have managed to spread the word, leading to
contributions from Angola, Azerbaijan and Argentina just
this week. The point of the feature is to show how huge our
teaching community is and how different our circumstances
are, but how we all share a commitment and an interest
in teaching and learning. It is also a great way of getting
teachers to write short pieces for us, possibly as a stepping-
stone to a longer article. The whole magazine is driven by
contributions from people like you and we are always keen
to hear from you. Just as an example, over one third of the
articles in this issue are written by first-time authors and
that is exactly what we need.
Keep an eye out online for the videos we make where authors
talk about their articles, they are a perfect complement to the
magazine and can be found on the usual media channels.
In the curent batch a writer describes why he writes articles
and he basically says how much he likes writing, how he
loves sharing ideas and how he wants the English language
teaching community to work together to get better – a
wonderful reason for writing for and reading our magazine.
As ever, you will find new ideas, new opinions and new
approaches – enjoy reading and take a look at the CPD
Essentials page, a great way to share ideas with colleagues.
Wherever you are, keep enjoying the teaching and make
sure your learners have fun (in a serious way!).
Robert McLarty
@ModernEnglishTeacherMagazine
@ModEngTeacher
Advertising Sales Manager: Charlotte Baseley
Email: Charlotte.Baseley@pavpub.com
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Pages 10–13 and 26-29 include resources online which are designed to
photocopy. All other rights are reserved and no part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
 Volume 31  |  Issue 4

10
July/August 2022

Editorial 39 Student-focused assessment

Joanna Szoke looks at self-evaluation

01 A note from the editor as a way to increase motivation and

engagement.

Young learners Global voices

06 In need of rebranding
Jason Anderson suggests changing our
‘young learners’ terminology.
42 Teachers from around the world talk
about their teaching situations

It works in practice
Hybrid learning
46 Some ideas for you to take straight
Contents

10 Building bridges between class

and online students
Patricia Barzotti describes how she
into the classroom

Teacher education
deals with hybrid teaching in the post-
pandemic world.
48 Reflections from online observations
Emily Bray offers some sound advice for

14 Delivery, reflection and development

Andrew Barker looks at these three
those of us teaching online.

aspects of the pre-sessional cycle.

50 O
 n reflection 2:
the importance of reflection in
16 Genial.ly: using multisensory
interactive content
Elisenda Gozalo Salellas describes
teacher training.
Matthew Gordon continues his thoughts
on reflective skills in teacher training.
activities which help adults with recall.

20 From Russia, in the mood for change

Maria Vrabelova shares her experience of
online learning and a personal discovery.
22 One year with Duolingo
Christopher Walker reveals what a year
on a popular app has taught him.
54 Delta Module 1: tips and pitfalls
Katarzyna Ke˛pińska offers some useful
advice to candidates.
In my opinion
57 The ABC of being a teacher in the
‘new normal’

26 Building an international learning Natalia Wright argues for a change of

attitude towards teachers.
community – and a village school
Erzebet Bekes describes an amazing
community project with added results.
Management

30 Blended learning in a digital age

Kat Robb describes a recent hybrid
60 Coping strategies for the residential
teacher 2
In his second article, Matthew Hallett
teaching situation.
looks at the testing and teaching side

32 Teaching in London during lockdowns

– all of them
of things.

Sheridan Orr describes the ups and

downs of online and hybrid learning.
63 Student-facing lesson objectives
Holly Morgan describes the why, when
and how.

36 Mobile microlearning for professional

development
Lucas Krohnke and Benjamin
Moorhouse describe high-interest and
high-energy PD.

2 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com

 A warm
welcome!
W
elcome to the latest issue of the

50
new-look Modern English Teacher! In
each issue, we are delighted to bring
you content from teachers across the
world. Many have written for us
before, whereas others are just starting out in their
publishing journey. This ensures that in each issue
of MET, our contributors represent a
Teaching vocabulary
60
wide range of teachers, teaching
contexts and experiences.

66 Keep your eye on the ball and avoid an

early bath
Stuart Benson offers a guide to understanding
To find out more about who is writing
for us, we’ve conducted a series of
video interviews with a selection of
rugby vocabulary. contributors from each issue. In these

70
interviews, our contributors introduce
An online world of offline words
themselves, tell us about their latest
Daniel Costa explores the potential of the
article, and explain why they write for
popular word game for language learners.
MET. You can watch all the interviews
Exam preparation on our website at https://www.
modernenglishteacher.com/

72 Exam writing activities with model answers

Ethan Mansur explores ways to help students
develop important writing sub-skills.
met-contributor-videos.

Teaching advanced learners

75 Challenging learners
Irina Nosova describes why practice makes
perfect at proficiency level.

In my opinion
77 Teacher self-talk: friend or foe?
Dino Dumančić considers why we talk to
ourselves.
If you are feeling inspired to see your
own article in an upcoming issue of

63
Modern English Teacher, we are
79 Ownership and project work
Nick Michelioudakis argues for a sense of
ownership
always keen to hear from teachers
with fresh ideas about teaching, an
interesting project, a lesson or course,
Coaching your views on or the research itself
that will appeal to our readers.

81 Contextualising learner development with

language coaching
Gabriella Kovács begins a two-part series with
Articles should be based on practice,
reflection, experience or research.
If you want to start small, then why
a look at the theory of coaching. not get involved with our Global
Voices feature, which Robert has
CPD Essentials mentioned in his Editorial. To find
out more about writing for us, visit
85 Bite-sized professional development using
this issue of MET
Some prompts to help you reflect on your
www.modernenglishteacher.com/
write-for-us. We would love to hear
from you!
learning from reading this issue and track your
professional development. Best wishes,
The Pavilion ELT Team
Reviews
86 The Stoic Teacher
Laura Gurney

87
72
Improve your Grammar – the essential guide
to accurate writing, 3rd edition
Clare Henderson

www.modernenglishteacher.com Volume 31 Issue 4 3

[ Resources Online ]

Resources
online
Go to modernenglishteacher.com/
resources for your extra printable
resources, ready for use in class.

[ Resources online
Online ]] [ Resources online
Online ]] [ Resources online
Online ]] [ Resources online ]

My Inspirational
Psychology classA+
Jamboard
Educator A framework
Mental for blended
disorders learning
group work design
discussion Evaluating
Sci ed quiz Information
questions Sources Spotlight on
Authentic activities with Canguro English

past resources
The creative dictation activity can be used to see how blended learning can be planned with a specific teaching/learning
aim in mind. This exercise might be chosen if the content aim is to work on physical descriptions and narrative skills, and Evaluating Information – Applying the RADAR Checklist
Name of educator: __________________________________________________________
Working in groups,
the pedagogical aim is tochoose one oftothe
enable learners six questions
practise the language and write
required your
to do this answers below.
by providing them an integrated skills PLEASE WRITE: Grammar- or form-focused activities
activity the
Write number
that will of the
encourage question
them to expressand
theirthe
ownname of the group rep.
meanings. Don’t
Teaching and Learning Context: Primary school/Secondary school/University/Professional training/Colleague/Mentor/Other Evaluation
■ WRITE THE NAME questions
OF THE GROUP REP Yes No Content or task Methodology / Tools Example
know
1.What comes
The ‘what’ thentowould
mind be
when you hear the
‘descriptions andterm ‘mental
narrative health’?
skills’; the ‘who’ the particular learners. The learners are given Exploring and practising conditional Deductive exploration What would you do if you got lost in the
■ THE TOPIC YOU HAVE CHOSEN
choices in an activity like this both of where or when they do the activity and of which skills they want to practise or which Relevancy Does the source relate to the topic? sentences jungle?
Attributes Details Significance 2. Are there many people with mental
language they choose to use. The storyhealth problems
itself may not beinsuitable
your country?
for all groups and this is where specialized knowledge ■ YOUR QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS USING YOUR WORDS
Phonetics and pronunciation Deductive exploration and Present, Produce, Presenting and practising the phonetic
plays a key role. Teaching for young learners is not the same as teaching a Business English course. It could however be

In this issue, our English

1) Attitude and approach Practise transcription
3. How can
adapted society help
by created peopleframe
a suitable with for
mental health problems
the particular contextoryoustop people
work in. from developing them? Serena – Play: how child development and learning happen
Write your answers here plus your name. You can use the sticky notes too.

Authority Is the author or organisation who produced the information clearly shown?
New approaches to teaching and learning Exploring grammar related to the human Human Grammar Zoom with Christian
1. Is playing for the child fun ? Yes, it is. Play is fun for the child.
4.
TheWhat
‘how’mental health
and the disorders
‘where’ involveand problems
choosing do you know
an activity that isof?
suitable for those specific learners, for the digital context grammar experience
2. What doesAre
play
theygive to your
qualified child ? Playenough
/ experienced gives to
children
write onopportunities
this topic? to explore, observe and solve problems
Which branch of psychology interests you the most and why?

(independent study or f2f interaction) and that is a valid choice to teach what is required. This simple framework, which
5. 3. Did the child need support ? Yes, he needs the adults’ support Skills-related activities
weOne ofcalled
the most
the common mentaltohealth problems is Wh-
depression. How is can we help people who suffer linear
from this?

Teaching professional
have W-Framework, reflect the use of questions, not designed to be completely but it does
provide a starting point for planning blended digital resources. In the table below this can be seen with key considerations 4. Which type of skills does play include? Play includes skills like communicating, thinking, solving problems, moving Content or task Methodology / Tools Example
2) Activities and assessments 6. How
that werehas the Covid-19
considered pandemic
when affected
considering mental disorders?
the timetable fit for this activity. Date
and beingDoes
withthe
other people
source show and children
the date when it was first published? Improving listening and speaking skills Presentation of audio material for PPs to Speaking Challenge (involving regular
make audio recordings based on the feedback pinpointing common mistakes)
ANSWERS Can you see if the information has been revised or updated? questions related to the audio clip

throwback resource is:

Maria – British Education
1) When I hear the term ‘mental health’ I think of a concept that includes several factors in human life. The mental health Listening and speaking Listening to songs, exploring lyrics, practising Singing Club
Question
of the humanAnswer Notesit is highly recommended to practise any
being is also closely related to physical health. For this reason 1. What is the meaning
Does of compulsory
your topic education
require only current in the UK?
information? singing
3) ‘Aha’ moment physical activity from childhood. Human well-being includes a good social context in which people can receive stimuli, 2. When was the national curriculum introduced in UK and what does it mean?
What? Description (adjectives) and narrative (past tenses). Specific Level (Intermediate). The level is related rather to All four skills Exploring films Film Club
for example in the family environment, in social, cultural and economical contexts. It is very important to maintain this
language or skills work determined by learner choices. Exam expectations of the type of language that may be 3. How many types of schools are there in the UK? Exploring books Reading Club
well-being and mental health, so that people can live and relate in the best way both with others, and especially with
practice for the oral component: one minute monologue.
themselves. Great comment, I really think keeping fit and having good
produced and can be altered according to specific
social relationships help prevent problems 4.Accuracy
Is a state Is the information
school free? supported by trustworthy evidence (references, statistics, data etc.)?
Speaking skills Exploring participants’personal experiences Get-to-know sessions, e.g., talking about
groups.
concerning your mental well-being. 5. What kind of school is fee paying? and sharing them childhood photos, describing pieces of art
Are there spelling or grammar errors, or questionable evidence? owned or created by participants
Who? Young adult university students (aged 19-21) In the North of Italy with good internet access. The 6. Do they follow the national curriculum strictly in private school or independent school? ONLINE RESOURCES
4) Application: Current teaching 6) The covid pandemic had a terrible impact on mental disorders. During the lockdown,
choices may beloneliness
different incaused
contextsdepression
with 7. Do you know some of the most expensive schools in the UK? Content-related activities
for many people that were healthy before. Beyond depression, it broughtproblematic internet
out the phobia access.other people and
towards
8.Reason
What is the name of themake
school Viral marketing videos
sometimes the dislike for people who have been less fortunate. Mental disorders have also increased due to the lack of Does the writer theyou’ll
reasongooftothe
in article
five years?
clear? Content or task Methodology / Tools Example
How? Blended:
work, the fear flipped
of leaving creative
their home dictation
for fearactivity online
of getting then
sick and Breakout
f2fother factors. Thework
Covidneeds to be monitored
pandemic unobtrusively
is a serious problem 9. What do Americans call secondary school? Part 4: Our viral marketing video: Ideas
discussion in in breakout rooms with we
finalhave
openallclass feedback foron
language points and key observations to be Gathering
Work with arelevant
partner. Theinformation related
two of you are going toand
to create the Interactive
direct a viral Zoom
marketing video. Yoursessions
video must get viewers to Unbelievable Laos
for mental disorders, fact in my opinion suffered its impact a mental level. (Alessandra) 10. What is the name
Does of an exam
the opinion of theafter
writeryou havefair
appear finished primary school?
and unbiased? school building
think critically aboutproject
a social issue or issues.
Yes I agree,and language
it has madepoints to extend.
people Further exercises
more anxious provided
and worried on thecollected
about future. for feedback in the final stage. Errors were Take 15 minutes to brainstorm your ideas. You will discuss your viral video plan with your classmates during a mini-
adjective use and collocations for followup study work. related to the ‘target language’ description adjectives Meeting people
presentation with
mingling experience
session. onwill
Afterwards, you Laos
take and Guest
your ideas from Speaker session
this brainstorming eventsand put them onto Guests
5) Application: Future teaching and past tenses. Can you find any clear political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases? a ten-slide storyboard plan. You will be given a separate handout to organise your storyboard.
5) I think there are several ways to help people affected by depression. First of all, we should make them feel loved and educational fundraising Zoom sessions run by hosts and Q&A sections Dutch couple who cycled across Laos
1. That means that every child from the ages of five to sixteen have to go to school Teacher Jenny from Madagascar
free to talk with us about anything, as they need to know they are not alone in this ‘struggle’. We can also ask them to
Where? Flipped creative dictation activity available online for free In our context we were working in a hybrid delivery 2. The national curriculum was introduced in 1988 and it means that all students learn the same things in the country Businesswoman Anežka from Slovakia
go out, maybe for aaccess
learner walk bothin the openand
before air after
on athe
sunny day, which
f2f session. can havesystem
The f2f a positive
whicheffect on their
provides more mood.
learner We can Some
agency. help
people withsession
depression in finding
timetabled by thea university
hobby, such withasthegoing
choicetotothe gym, reading,
attend who may writing,
not havepainting or simply
been able whatever
to attend physicallythat 3. There are two main types of schools.Private and state schools. There are also the public schools which take a part of
Fully-authentic activities a) social issue(s)
allows themvia toZoom
distract and pleasantly occupy their time. It is also very important
or onsite. could attendto online.
encourage the person in question private schools and these are for the elite because they are most expensive j) Promoting your viral
b) product or service
to get help, which can be difficult because depression makes you feel hopeless, so he or she may consider the treatment 4. Yes,the state schools are free and are open to everybody Content or task
marketing video
(How will you ‘get the
Methodology / Tools Example
6) Apply: Steps to take to incorporate into word out’? What SNSs
pointless – even if it is necessary.
future teaching 5. The fee paying schools are private and public Setting up the
will project and establishing
you use? Why?) links Zoom, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, All admin and logistical tasks related to the
with Pencils of Promise email c) setting / locations
startup phase carried out by the teachers and
Also, in our everyday lives we should always be gentle with every person we meet because we can never know what 6. No, they don’t to have to follow the national curriculum strictly like in a state school (Where, when, places)
In this way a traditional activity which was revolutionary in its heyday has been adapted to take advantage of the advances coordinators
they are going through: sometimes a smile or a nice word can make the difference. (Nicole) fantastic suggestions 7. Yes, I do. For example Eton, Harrow and Cheltenham Ladies College
in technological resources. This has ultimately led to greater choice and agency for learners within the framework of the Managing
Nicole, well done. A smile really does make a huge difference. 8. The name is Primary school i) estimatedthe
costproject
to Zoom, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, All admin and logistical tasks related to
teaching aims. In turn, by planning in this way we are moving away from the simple focus on what the technology can do make the video email membership, data protection and fundraising;
(Consider the location,
and integrating digital resources into a more principled learning design that puts the focus firmly back on the learner, their 9. They call it a High school while in the UK is Secondary school d) music liaising with Pencils of Promise
3) I think the first and most pragmatic step that should be taken to help people with mental health problems is boosting number of people,
(Type of music,
competence and their needs. 10. The name is Eleven plus famous actors, etc.
the public psychological healthcare system. The social stigma of therapy being ‘for crazy people’ is mostly gone Live activities
Make a guess.) and follow-up Zoom, Telegram popular or unknown
Cooking Fun (synchronous live activity)
song? Famous
among newer generations (although more educational work could be done in this direction), but psychotherapy is still musician? Why?)

inaccessible or unaffordable for many people. I also think that we, as a society, should be willing to reconsider the core Fundraising Zoom, Telegram, Facebook, email Pencils of Promise
Water charity
beliefs of our culture and lifestyle, because competition, productivity and consumerism are probably unsustainable for
El Gordo
our mental health as they are for the environment. Yes it’s true that the stigma has almost gone but not totally and h) most surprising or
interesting part of
Jenny’s school fundraiser
schools can do much to help. Well written. the video e) major & minor Birthday fundraisers
character roles
(Famous people? Charity Cookery Book (work in progress)
Unknown actors? Local Fundraising for Ukraine (work in progress)
people? Animals?)

g) visual images
used & meanings
(What does each
Visualising
Building bridges
ourselves
between
into class
stronger
andeducators
online students
by Laura
by Hadwin
Patricia Barzotti www.modernenglishteacher.com Lessons we
Building bridges
can learn
between
fromclass
Emergency
and online
Remote
students
Teaching
by Patricia
by Sharon
Barzotti
Hartle www.modernenglishteacher.com Check the
Building bridges
RADAR:between
Evaluating
class
Sources
and online
for Academic
studentsEnglish
by Patricia
by Thomas
BarzottiEntwistle www.modernenglishteacher.com Building an international learning community
image represent?) f) main – and a village school! by Erzébet Békés
message www.modernenglishteacher.com

‘Viral marketing videos’

by Sean H Toland
www.etprofessional.com

Psychology
My inspirational
classA+ Mental
A framework
disorders
for group Sci ed quiz information
Evaluating questions Authentic activities with
Educator
jamboard blended
work discussion
learning design sources Our viralEnglish
Canguro marketing
Accompanies ‘Building bridges video: Ideas
Accompanies ‘Visualising Accompanies ‘Lessons we can Accompanies ‘Check the
Accompanies ‘Building bridges Accompanies ‘Building bridges between class and online Accompanies
Accompanies‘Building
‘Viral
ourselves into stronger learn about Emergency Remote RADAR: Evaluating Sources for
between class and online between class and online students’ an international
marketing learning
videos: cultivating
educators’ Teaching’ Academic English’
students’ students’ by Patricia Barzotti, page 10 community – and a village
21st-century skills’, by Sean
by Laura Hadwin, page 12 by Sharon Hartle, page 24 by Thomas Entwistle, page 47
by Patricia Barzotti, page 10 by Patricia Barzotti, page 10 https://www. school!’
H. Toland, ETp 126. https://
https://www. https://www. https://www.
https://www. https://www. modernenglishteacher.com/ bywww.etprofessional.com/
Erzébet Békés, page 26
modernenglishteacher.com/ modernenglishteacher.com/ modernenglishteacher.com/
modernenglishteacher.com/ modernenglishteacher.com/ media/40839/met_314_ https://www.
viral-marketing-videos
media/39690/met_311_online_ media/39692/met_311_ media/39691/met_311_online_
media/40840/met_314_online_ media/40841/met_314_online_ online_resources_sci_ed_quiz_ modernenglishteacher.com/
my_inspirational_a_educator. online_a_framework_for_ evaluating_information_ You can find other past
resources_psychology_class_ resources_mental_disorders_ questions.pdf media/40842/met_314_online_
pdf blended_learning_design.pdf sources.pdf resources from ETp in this
jamboard.pdf group_work_discussion.pdf resources_authentic_activities_
section too.
with_canguro_english.pdf

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[ Young learners ]
In need of
rebranding
Jason Anderson Introduction
suggests changing our ‘young It is a curious fact of history that the term
‘young learners’ is used almost exclusively
learners’ terminology. in the field of English language teaching;
it is much more of a concern that it is
both ambiguous and decontextualised.
This article will argue not only that this is
problematic, but that we, as a practitioner
community, can benefit from shifting from
this rather outdated term, to adopting
the age group denominations that are
almost universally used outside of ELT
to differentiate learners at the three key
stages of childhood education around
the world; pre-primary, primary, and
secondary learners (Ellis, 2014).
6 Volume 31 Issue 4
A search for the term ‘young learners’
on any internet search engine returns
numerous websites, not on education
in general, but almost exclusively on
teaching English to children, and it is
probably no surprise to the reader that the
vast majority of these are commercially-
oriented websites, selling us products and
services relating to this rapidly growing,
multibillion-dollar industry. This finding
prompts a number of interesting questions
that this article will explore:
1. What are the origins of the term
‘young learners’?
2. Why is the term primarily used in
English language teaching?
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Figure 1: Google N-Gram result for ‘young learners’.
3. What alternatives are used in
mainstream education, and why?
4. Why might it be important to change
our terminology, and why now?
I will also address the counterargument;
why it might be useful to retain the term
‘young learners’, and weigh this up against
the argument for change.
The origins of the term
‘young learners’
A quick search on Google N-gram
Viewer (see Figure 1) tells us something
interesting and important about
the collocation ‘young learners’; its
usage increased dramatically with the
commercial spread of English around
the world during the 1990s, when the
term ‘swept into fashion’, as Read (2011)
puts it.
At this time, the term was adopted
within the private English language
teaching ‘industry’ (rather than the
service provision of mainstream
education), initially in the UK, and later
worldwide, to refer to child learners,
rather than adults. In this sense, such
learners were ‘younger’ than the norm,
and typically organised into classes of
approximate homogeneity, depending
on age, proficiency, or a combination of
these. In this sense, ‘young learner’ was
essentially a convenience descriptor,
and those of us in the private sector
www.modernenglishteacher.com
  such learners were ‘younger’ than the
norm, and typically organised into classes
of approximate homogeneity, depending
on age, proficiency, or a combination of
these. 
who were asked to teach such learners
often had no appropriate qualifications
to teach children. I remember well my
first young learner class, which I taught
in Ukraine in a private language school
in the 1990s; it included children
ranging from 8 to 15 years old. It was
one of two young learner classes in
the school at that time, the other had a
similar age range, but lower proficiency
in English. Needless to say, I found it
difficult to cater for their wide range of
developmental needs!
As a result of this origin, as Ellis (2014)
notes, ambiguity has plagued the use
of the term, with it being used initially
to refer to learners under 18, and more
recently contrasted with teenage learners
or ‘teens’, when it tends to refer to
learners under 13, although there are
plenty of exceptions, and little broad
agreement.
[ Young learners ]
Why does ‘young learners’
remain dominant in ELT?
Given that standard alternative terms
exist for learner developmental stages,
and these typically correspond with the
educational systems extant worldwide
(discussed below), it is interesting to
examine why the term ‘young learners’
continues to predominate in ELT.
I would like to argue that this dominance
results essentially from a specific type of
hegemony that exists in our profession
as teachers of English worldwide. This
hegemony originates in, and relates to,
the Centre—Periphery distinction that
Phillipson made in his seminal work
Linguistic Imperialism (1992). For
Phillipson, the ‘Centre’ constituted the
high-income Anglophone countries, such
as the UK, the USA and Australia, and
the ‘Periphery’ was countries to which
Volume 31 Issue 4 7
[ Young learners ]
ELT was exported, largely to the benefit
of Centre interests. While Phillipson’s
primary concern was with how English
played an important role as a tool of
coercion in the continued dominance of
Anglo-western influences in developing
countries, many other types of Centre
dominance accompanied the spread of
English, such as the erroneous perception
that ‘native-speaker’ teachers of English
were better than ‘non-native-speaker’
teachers, and the less often critically
examined yet also erroneous assumption
that came packaged with the language
– that the most advanced methodology
for teaching English also disseminated
from the Centre (see Holliday, 1994).
This methodology was communicative
language teaching in its varied (weak and
strong) manifestations, both for adults and
children (Howatt, 1984).
At this time, a large number of
publications appeared adopting the
term ‘young learners’, written mainly
by native-speaker authors (e.g., Phillips,
1993; Reilly & Ward, 1997; Seely, 1988).
It is revealing that these authors were,
in the main, working in – and directing
their publications towards – the relatively
constraints-free private sector common
both in the centre (e.g., EFL summer
schools in the UK) and its satellites.
The most obvious of the latter were
the private supplementary institutions
around the world that typically benefitted
from their employment of native-speaker
teachers whom they often advertised
prominently. Such teachers and
writers often had little exposure to, nor
awareness of, the multiple curricular
and institutional constraints that most
primary and secondary teachers faced,
meaning that age became the principle
marker of such learners. Thus, this term
isn’t simply a label of convenience, it’s
also a relic of linguistic imperialism, and
we should carefully evaluate whether
it serves our best interests if we aim
to move towards more multilingual,
inclusive approaches in additional
language learning.
Alternatives to ‘young
learners’
In almost all education systems in the
world, education is divided into four
stages, typically termed pre-primary (or
8 Volume 31 Issue 4
  …this term
isn’t simply a label
of convenience,
it’s also a relic
of linguistic
imperialism...  they should teach additional languages,
early childhood), primary (elementary
in US English), secondary and tertiary,
and while there are small but important
differences between when learners
move between these stages in different
countries, these rarely exceed one year,
and as such, are less ambiguous. It is these
terms that I, like Ellis (2014), propose that
we adopt.
Further, as Ellis notes, they also
correspond to broad, if varying and subtle,
developmental age groups as learners
grow. It’s notable that, more recently, the
increasing use of the three terms ‘very
young learners’, ‘young learners’, and
‘teens’ typically corresponds to these three
childhood age groups. So, you might argue
that this is an improvement and no further
change is required.
A compelling reason to
change our terminology
However, there is an even more
compelling reason to change these
terms. It isn’t just about throwing off the
yoke of linguistic imperialism, which is,
arguably, reason enough. The reality is
that the vast majority of English language
teachers around the world today work
in compulsory education systems, both
state-sponsored and private, and this
system has an important, undeniable
influence (rightly or wrongly) on how we,
as teachers, can, and have to, teach. Below
are two examples of how these systemic
constraints influence diverse aspects
of pedagogy, teacher education and
curriculum development.
Firstly, in most education systems
around the world (China is a notable
exception here), primary teachers
are generalists; they teach a range
of subjects, and have to develop an
extensive pedagogical repertoire as a
result. When they teach English as an
additional language, they typically do
so in ways that reflect their general
pedagogical training and often mirrors
how they teach other (content) subjects.
And while this may not always be in line
with the recommendations of research
in second language acquisition as to how
it is an inevitable and important reality of
primary education worldwide; primary
teachers are not subject-specialists,
and those of us who offer materials,
training and developmental support to
such teachers must remain cognisant of
this fact. However, at secondary levels,
the majority of teachers are subject
specialists, and as such, are more likely
to have a stronger affinity with their
subject (they often self-identify as English
teachers), as well as more extensive
subject-specific knowledge, and a much
higher likelihood of working proficiency
in English. This fundamental distinction
in teacher expertise and identity
constitutes a critical, systemically-
dictated difference between the
interpersonal and practical experiences
of primary and secondary learners of
English that we need to acknowledge in
our terminology.
Secondly, because in mainstream
education learners are nearly always
grouped by age, certain realities prevail
that may not exist (or, at least, are less
marked) in contexts where proficiency
level is an equal, or stronger influence
on groupings, as often happens in
supplementary private language
education. The most obvious example of
this, a key issue in pedagogy worldwide,
is the topic of differentiation; how
we support learners at varied ability
levels within the same class. This is
a key concern of many primary and
secondary teachers of English, who
frequently experience ability ranges
spanning two, three or even four CEFR
bands. In contrast to this, in private
language school contexts, teachers
experience comparatively homogenous
classes of ‘Pre-intermediate’ or ‘Upper
intermediate’ learners, and find less
need for differentiation. Given that the
majority of early ‘experts’ on teaching
younger learners had taught primarily in
www.modernenglishteacher.com

such private school contexts (due to the
Centre—Periphery inequity discussed
above), it is not surprising that the
topic of differentiation rarely appears in
the early literature on teaching young
learners (e.g., Cameron, 2001; Phillips,
1993; Reilly & Ward, 1997), and has only
appeared more recently (e.g., Garton
& Copland, 2018; Pinter, 2017) as the
demand from the increasing number of
mainstream teachers seeking guidance in
ELT has increased.
Other key differences between
mainstream curricular and private
supplementary contexts are equally
compelling, including issues of
assessment and exam washback, national
curricular frameworks, the wider
pastoral roles of teachers, and issues of
accountability. By adopting the terms
that recognise the systemic challenges
and affordances of the vast majority of
teachers of English around the world,
we recognise and align ourselves to their
challenges, empathise with them, and
bring their contexts centre-stage, where,
I would argue, they should be.
Addressing the
counterargument
There is a counterargument for why we
may, at times, find terms such as ‘young/
younger learners’ useful, and even
contrast these with ‘older [child] learners’,
as Pinter (2017) frequently does. This
argument relates to the fact that a child’s
developmental needs exist independently
of, and arguably a priori to, any formal
learning environment. Focusing on these
needs, and the learner’s related cognitive,
affective and psychomotor development,
helps us to understand them and thereby
to provide support that is better tailored
to these needs. It is not difficult to argue
that these should (ideally) dictate the
nature of the child’s formal learning
environments, and not the other way
around. Certainly, if the focus of a text
or piece of research is on these needs,
then the use of the terms (providing
they are defined clearly) is justified.
However, the moment we begin to discuss
‘teaching young learners’ our attention
turns inevitably towards the formal
contexts available. And while a small
proportion of us, as English language
teachers, work in contexts (i.e., private,
www.modernenglishteacher.com
  By adopting the terms that recognise the
systemic challenges and affordances of the
vast majority of teachers of English around
the world, we recognise and align ourselves
to their challenges… 
supplementary language schools) where
we can be flexible with what, how, and
how quickly we teach and assess learning,
these decisions (concerning curriculum,
syllabus, scheme of work and assessment)
are formalised in ways that make them
much less amenable for the vast majority
of teachers of children.
Importantly, while the proposed terms
– pre-primary, primary and secondary
learners – make these all-important
curricular contexts clear, our adoption of
them does not mean we have to side-line
our learners’ developmental needs; these
are also central to mainstream educational
theory, where the proposed terms are
widely used.
Conclusion
I am, of course, very much aware of the
economic realities of a field (ELT) that
typically identifies more as an industry
than a profession, and these realities
will likely dictate that little will change
in the near future as a result of attempts
like mine and Ellis’s (2014) to influence
terminology, but I believe we can and
should reflect critically on the labels that
we adopt, because these can be more or
less inclusive of practitioners and their
realities. And given that it is the vast
majority of teachers of children whose
often challenging contextual realities the
current terminology ignores, I believe the
argument for change is compelling: pre-
primary learners, primary learners and
secondary learners of English will be the
ultimate beneficiaries.
References
Cameron L (2001) Teaching languages to young
learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ellis G (2014) ‘Young learners’: clarifying our
terms. ELT Journal 68 (1) 75–78.
[ Young learners ]
Garton S & Copland F (Eds) (2018) The Routledge
handbook of teaching English to young learners.
London: Routledge.
Holliday A (1994) Appropriate methodology and
social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Howatt (1984)
Phillips S (1993) Young learners. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Phillipson R (1992) Linguistic imperialism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Pinter A (2017) Teaching younger language
learners (Second edition). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Read C (2011, July 25) Y is for young learners.
Carol Read’s ABC of teaching children. Available at:
https://carolread.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/y-is-
for-young-learners/
Reilly V & Ward SM (1997). Very young learners.
Oxford University Press.
Seely J (1988) Teaching English to young learners:
A handbook for teachers and teacher trainees.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jason Anderson is
a teacher educator,
educational
consultant, award-
winning author,
and researcher,
who works in both
language teaching and
mainstream education.
He has supported
teachers in over 30 countries for organisations
including UNICEF, the British Council and the
University of Warwick, particularly across
the Global South, and published widely on
areas including multilingualism, teaching
methodology, curriculum design, teacher
expertise, teacher reflection and lesson
planning. Numerous free resources for
teachers are available through his website:
www.jasonanderson.org.uk
Volume 31 Issue 4 9
[ Hybrid learning ]

Building bridges Patricia Barzotti

describes how she deals with

between class
hybrid teaching in the post-
pandemic world.

and online students

S
ince the start of the pandemic, teachers of interactively despite distances. I would like to illustrate
English as a foreign language have been how I have tackled this in two of my university
coming to terms with teaching online and classes, first year psychology and education students
subsequently both online and face-to-face at both B1 and A2 levels respectively.
after lockdown easing, as a certain number
of students have been allowed to attend lessons in Advantages and disadvantages for
students learning in this mixed,
person, particularly in the Italian university context
where I work. This mixed form of teaching has been
proving difficult for most of us as it is not easy to hybrid environment
juggle two completely different classroom modes
Firstly, for students in the real classroom, it is a better
and allow for smooth interaction among students.
way of following the instructor and interacting with
In the university context in particular, this has not
fellow students in engaging activities which are easier
been facilitated by the larger number of students
to set up such as group discussions and presentations.
online as opposed to fewer students in class, as well
The instructor can easily monitor group activities
as problems that may arise with technology and
and understand if students are following by using
connectivity, hence hindering a complete interactive
visual clues such as interested or confused faces, and
experience.
consequently offer more immediate feedback on the
basis of what is seen and heard. As a result of group
My objective in this short article is to briefly discuss
work, students can build better relationships than
the advantages and disadvantages of a mixed mode
online, where people often work in isolation or simply
of delivery which is now inevitably part of our normal
listen without responding or interacting, especially
daily working practice, and ways in which students
if a larger number discourages the instructor from
in the classroom and online can be brought together

10 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com


Which branch of psychology interests you the most and why?
Write your answers here plus your name. You can use the sticky notes too.
Figure 1 Illustration of a Jamboard
using the break out group facility. On the other hand,
students in class might lack the confidence to speak
in front of peers whereas online students can resort
to the chat box option if they feel reluctant to use
their microphones and can at least make a written
contribution. They may have more time to edit their
comments and enrich content by looking up words
in dictionaries or checking information from several
internet resources. Another advantage for online
students is the ability to limit exposure to Covid-19
and gain other practical benefits such as saving
money on parking and accommodation.
What kind of strategies can be used
to bring the two groups together?
Given the complexity of such a situation, a great deal
of planning is required and consideration given to
strategies we can use to facilitate a fusion of the two
real and virtual platforms.
For instance, we need to engage the online students
as much as possible rather than to ignore them. This
can be done by making the most of the chat options,
and encouraging students to use their microphones
and webcams to be more present in the real room.
Chat comments can also be read aloud by the teacher,
although that does not encourage the writer to
actually use their voice. Furthermore, we can make
the most of breakout groups. Although these may be
harder to monitor than groups in class, it is important
to give clear objectives which could be the same as for
the other groups, and make sure the online groups
produce a document which can then be shared with
the other students. Ideally, all contributions could be
written on a shared Google Docs document so that
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
students in both classrooms can then look at other
people’s ideas and react to the content.
Additionally, interactive quizzes such as Kahoot can
be an effective tool for encouraging both online and
in class participation to review content in both a fun
and engaging way. Students can also be encouraged
to work together through tools such as Padlet where
content can be shared and collaboration fostered.
Touchscreens are also a good device for allowing
students to see each other, share content with the
students, and do videoconferencing by using an
external camera following the teacher and class and
capturing the teacher using the interactive whiteboard.
Now, I’d like to illustrate some ways I have tried
getting both groups of students to collaborate.
1. Using Jamboard to brainstorm across classes
a. First year psychology class: discussing
branches of psychology
After having read and analysed a text entitled ‘What
is psychology?’ adapted from English for Psychology
in Higher Education Studies (Short, 2010), which
deals with the different branches of psychology,
students are asked to answer the question ‘Which
branch of psychology interests you the most and
why?’, and write their answers and names on a
Jamboard, using sticky notes (see Figure 1). The link
to the board is provided on the Moodle platform of
their course so that both in class and online students
can access it at the same time. In class, students are
always asked to come to class with devices to access
activities on Moodle. Students are given a time limit
to write their answers. When the time limit is up,
the Jamboard is shared on the screen to allow all
Volume 31 Issue 4 11
[ Hybrid learning ]
students to see it. At this point, the instructor can use
the answers in different ways:
■ Select names at random and ask students to give
extra information to justify their choices. For
instance, a student has written ‘I’m interested in
the psychology of work because I’m a partner in
a company’. The instructor could ask a follow up
question such as ‘How could psychology help you to
better understand your employees?’.
■ Ask students to select one of the answers they find
interesting and ask questions to the writer to find
out more information.
■ Consolidate language by working for instance on
prepositions, such as dependent prepositions:
interested in (not interested about).
It is essential to encourage students to respond to
what they have written in order to generate interest
and promote some discussion about choices. Students
online can be asked to turn on microphones and
webcams so that students in class can hear their
answers and see the person, in order to create a
sense of community despite the constraints of the real
situation. If students online are unable to hear students
in class, the latter can be asked to come closer to the
touchscreen/computer to ask their question.
b. First year education students: students
sharing how they learn English
At the beginning of the course, the instructor holds a
lesson about the best ways of studying English outside
the classroom, and to start the lesson wants to find
out how students learn, with them writing sticky notes
on Jamboard. Once again, students are given a time
limit, at the end of which the instructor can proceed in
some of the following ways to use the information:
■ Ask students to give more information about the
films or songs they have watched/heard to practise
their English.
■ Get students to talk about their travel/Erasmus
experiences.
■ Ask students to explain how they go about talking
to native speakers.
■ Ask students to explain how they record new
vocabulary.
Students are therefore encouraged to extend their
written answers and talk to the class as a way
of creating a community across classrooms and
breaking the ice.
2. Using Google Docs to work in groups by debating
different aspects of a topic or reviewing content.
a. First year psychology students: discussing
a topic
After working on a text about mental disorders,
students are organised into groups both in class and
12 Volume 31 Issue 4
online in the Zoom classroom and given a link to a
Google Doc containing the following questions related
to mental disorders:
■ What comes to mind when you hear the term
‘mental health’?
■ Are there many people with mental health
problems in your country?
■ How can society help people with mental health
problems or stop people from developing them?
■ What mental health disorders and problems do you
know of?
■ One of the most common mental health problems
is depression. How can we help people who suffer
from this?
■ How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected mental
disorders?
Students are asked to choose one of the topics and
collaborate on producing a written answer, within
a given time limit. During this time, the instructor
first monitors the students in class by checking they
are discussing the questions in English and working
together, as well as noting language errors which
may be addressed later, or any problems with the
task. The monitoring with the online class is then
carried out in the same way, although may take
longer as the instructor needs to enter each single
breakout room. Clearly, this will be easier and
quicker to carry out if the number of students online
is smaller, or if a specific time limit and instructions
have been given. Once the time limit has ended,
groups are brought back together.
Students are then given some extra time to read
all the comments. Once this is done, a group rep is
asked to briefly comment on the group’s response
to the chosen question, and students in the group
are asked to comment on another group’s answers.
This is repeated until all the groups have had the
opportunity to comment. During the feedback stage,
the instructor will open the feedback to a more
general discussion in order to prompt students to
express their opinions more freely. This can work
quite well if the groups are smaller, whereas with
larger classes a more structured feedback requiring
shorter responses could be more appropriate.
In a subsequent feedback session, students could be
asked to read the texts to notice the corrections made
by the instructor and the general comments on overall
performance. In this way, errors are identified and
corrected, but at the same time students are given
constructive feedback on their overall performance.
b. First year education students: reviewing
topics and practising question formation
During the course students have been working
frequently on question formation and other
www.modernenglishteacher.com

A2 language areas, in addition to shorter texts
concerning education. In order to review content
and practise question formation as we reach the end
of the course, students are put into groups in class
and online and given instructions to choose a topic
from the Moodle page of their education course in
English, write five questions about it on the Google
Doc which is accessible as a link in the Moodle page,
with the name of the group rep and title of topic. For
example, they choose a text on the Finnish education
system, identify together the key points they wish
themselves and others to review and prepare
the questions:
The Finnish education system. The Finnish
education has received its fair share of publicity
around the world for being the ‘best’. Finnish
students have a healthy balance between school
life and free time, allowing them to engage
more in various extra-curricular activities. The
central objective of Finland’s education system
is to provide good quality universal education.
This means that the same free, inclusive, and
comprehensive educational opportunities are
provided for all citizens. The keywords in Finnish
education policy are quality, efficiency, equity and
internationalisation. All activities are planned
around the holistic wellbeing of the child, supporting
their overall learning journey. This lets kids explore
their natural creativity! Finnish children only start
their schooling at age 7 and schools are not ranked
based on exam scores as there are no national
standardised exams. During first years of school,
homework is minimal, and the school days are short,
leaving more time for after-school, playing and
doing hobbies and developing soft skills outside of
the classroom.
On the basis of the information selected in red, the
questions could be:
■ Why is the Finnish education system the best?
■ What is the central objective of the system?
■ What are some of the keywords in Finnish
education?
■ What do children explore in Finnish early
education?
■ Do they get a lot of homework in primary school?
■ What do children usually do after school?
Students are given a time limit in which to choose
the text and prepare the questions. They should
note the answers as well but not next to the
questions. When the time is up, the document is
displayed on the screen so both class and online
students can see it, and the instructor can invite
groups to read out their questions and ask other
groups to provide the answers. For instance, it is
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
decided that Group 2 will answer the questions
prepared by Group 1. A student from Group 1 reads
the questions and students from Group 2 answer.
If the answers are not correct, the student from
Group 1 gives clues to correct the answer. This then
is repeated three or more times depending on how
many students are present. If there are too many
groups and not enough time, students are asked to
choose one of the topics and complete the answers
before the next lesson directly on the Google
document. Subsequent feedback sessions could
focus on error correction, in particular question
formation and appropriate answers.
Conclusion
Obviously there are numerous technologies and tools
available to promote interaction in both class and
online modes of teaching. However, I have found
Jamboard and Google Docs to be particularly useful
as a way of gathering longer pieces of information
from students on a variety of topics, which can then
be followed by spoken feedback. The act of talking
and writing on the document allows them to reflect
on the task at hand and exchange opinions and by
committing the ideas to writing they have a record
of the discussion which has taken place. I realise
that there are still many difficulties to overcome in
teaching both audiences at the same time and getting
them to interact, and time constraints and connectivity
issues do make the process more complicated. But
giving students some tools which they can share
and then comment on has allowed for moments of
community and interaction.
References
College of DuPage (n.d.) An Introduction to Hybrid Teaching.
Available at : https://www.codlearningtech.org/PDF/
hybridteachingworkbook.pdf (Creative Commons)
Crook AE & Crook TW (2020) 6 tips for teaching online and in
person simultaneously. Inside Higher Ed. Available at: https://
www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/08/26/strategies-
teaching-online-and-person-simultaneously-opinion
Short T (2010) English for Psychology in Higher Education
Studies. Reading: Garnet Education.
Patricia Barzotti is currently
working at the University of Urbino
in the Marches, Central Italy as an
English language teacher in the
psychology, infant and primary
school education departments,
in addition to running courses in
language and methodology for
primary school teachers. She has
a Masters in Applied Linguistics
from the University of Portsmouth. Her teaching interests
mainly concern communicative methodologies applied to
large university classes and the psychology of non-language
students in their approach to learning English.
Volume 31 Issue 4 13
[ Hybrid learning ]
Delivery,
reflection and
development
T
wo years ago the teaching profession
in all forms changed dramatically. The
classrooms gathered dust, the corridors fell
silent, the endless opening and closing of
books ceased.
The sudden transition to online learning, referred
to as emergency remote teaching (ERT), and all of
its challenges were thrust upon us. We persevered
completing the academic year and wondered if, and
how, we could make into the next. The initial struggles
were largely met with optimism, and a ‘we can do it!’
approach. At that time the positivity of how we can
work through this was shining brightly into the dark
abyss of online-only delivery. As the pandemic
has continued, and time has steadily
marched on, is the same optimism still
possible for those institutions trapped
in an online model? Has the peak of
‘Zoom fatigue’ washed over us?
As we contemplate these many
factors, I will consider three key
elements of course design: delivery,
reflection, and development. How
these can interplay and function
within our new dynamics of face-to-face,
online, hybrid and blended delivery?
Delivery
An initial cornerstone in the delivery of any
programme lies, of course, with the tutors. When
considering the combination of possibilities that
teaching might take (face-to-face, online, etc.),
we should also reflect, incorporate, and assign
tutors according to their strengths. To enable this
opportunity for teachers to reflect upon their own
learnings and how best they can be maximised
14 Volume 31 Issue 4
Andrew Barker
looks at these three aspects of
the pre-sessional cycle.
ensures the continued growth of a strong department.
Providing time and space for this to happen in a
supportive manner helps to create bonds between the
teaching staff and the department.
A further factor to consider is that many tutors will
be hired with sessional contracts. The very nature
of this work requires tutors to be employed during
the course of the year with different institutions at
different stages. We need to ensure that they are
welcomed and that they understand the values of our
institution. To assist with this I have utilised ‘buddy’
schemes to provide tutors with peer support that
can allow a more relaxed way of seeking answers.
Additionally, within the timetable of all pre-sessional
courses, be that 5 weeks, 10 weeks, etc., making
scheduled time for professional development is vital.
Professional development permits time for sharing,
team building and creating a clearly understood vision
for the institution. As Biggs and Tang (2011) state, it is
important to recognise that ‘good teaching is as much
a function of institution-wide infrastructure as it is a
gift with which some lucky academics are born’ (pg. 9).
Importantly, with delivery we need to understand the
method. Is the course online, face-to-face, hybrid or
blended? I think over this last year we have all engaged
with synchronous and asynchronous teaching and
learning opportunities in ways we had not imagined
before. There is still some debate in relation to how to
measure and understand success with these various
modes. Lewis (2002) argued that ‘successful teaching
is measured in terms of successful learning’ (p. 188).
Learning itself is often required to be quantifiable
with set marks being the prerequisite for progression.
However, this viewpoint can be quite narrow, as
teaching arguably encompasses a wide range of social
outcomes not just academic goals, and more often
these are active ingredients in the curriculum.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

In my experience a combination of interactive online
tools that can be used independently by the learner to
supplement face-to-face or online synchronous delivery
has brought about the highest levels of attainment
and satisfaction. It can help to build communities
of learners outside of class time whilst also driving
classroom discourse and providing materials to reflect
upon at later stages in the learning journey.
Reflection
Reflection at programme level can be driven by many
factors, from accreditation boards, tutors, student
needs and key stakeholders to name just some.
Successful reflection aims to juggle these components
into a manageable and achievable mass. How we
provide feedback in the first place is a key factor in
how we then learn to unpack the relevant data. I have
used feedback forms with a varied success over the
years, the inevitable Likert scale providing numbers
to be crunched to a meaningful outcome. A recurring
issue I have experienced with this method is that it
appears to always lead to far more questions. The
very process of generating some data creates far more
data needing to be generated in an almost Escherian
stairwell of never-ending possibility.
To further support the feedback process the use of
focus groups, interviews, surveys, and discussion
within the wider tertiary community through
conferences, special interest groups and workshops all
help to inform our practice. As Punch (2009) confirms,
‘the fundamental rationale behind mixed methods
research is that we can learn more about our research
topic’ (pg. 290).
A requirement to establish whether the teaching is
still connected to the needs of the learner and indeed
how linked this outcome was to the initial intention
exists. Through this process of immersing ourselves in
understanding it really helps to build quality courses
that are reflective in nature. By opening up and
engaging with relevant parties we can really begin
to learn and enhance our course offerings. I have
scheduled group discussions into course frameworks
from the beginning to highlight the importance of
these meetings and allow time to plan them. I have
participated in peer discussions to share knowledge
and insight. Whilst this sounds simple and logical, the
practice can be more daunting until the realisation
that frequently the majority in attendance are all also
seeking the same solutions.
Development
Following on from a process of delivery and reflection
and also preceding these aspects comes course
development: the initial thoughts about what type
of course this is, combined with mode of delivery,
learning intentions and possible measures to ensure
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[ Hybrid learning ]
success. Moving past these we should look further
into what will be included along the way. Will there
be student committees, student ambassadors, awards,
and informal components that assist with developing
a learning community? How can we engage with
teachers to ensure they increase their own learner
awareness? As Santoro claims, ‘teachers need to
move beyond their own worldviews in order to
develop and understand their students’ perspectives’
(Santoro, 2009: 39).
To assist with this I have arranged informal events
allowing learners to showcase other skills, culture and
knowledge. These have proved beneficial to building
relations and raising the learner profile. As well as
this, scheduling student committees with elected
representatives helps to ensure the student voice is
heard and respected. It also allows for alternative
interaction between students and staff which can
serve as a great way to build rapport, not dissimilar
to those moments that can be achieved in a school
setting between teacher and pupil during lunchtime
clubs and playground activities.
In addition, course materials need to be designed,
reflected upon, and reviewed. We need to carefully
consider the relevance of our materials in addition
to their accessibility, particularly given the current
changing dynamic of the classroom. Will these
materials work both online and face-to-face? How
will students receive feedback? How will tutors
track progress? How will learners be assessed and
moderated?
Conclusion
Whether we find ourselves working online, on campus
or a combination of these, many factors considered
remain constant. It is significant that we reflect on
successful ways to implement quality in our work
and that we learn to create ways to continue with our
best practice in whichever working model we find
ourselves.
References
Biggs J & Tang C (2011) Teaching Andy Barker has
for quality learning at University. over 12 years teaching
Maidenhead: Open University Press. experience in the
Lewis M (2002) The Lexical secondary and tertiary
Approach: The State of ELT and sectors and over 20
a Way Forward. Boston, USA: years of management
Thomson Heinle. experience across both
Punch K (2009) Introduction to public and private
sector organisations,
Research Methods in Education.
London: Sage. educational and
Santoro N (2009) Teaching commercial institutions. He has experience in
in culturally diverse contexts: education in Vietnam, Malaysia (Sabah and
what knowledge about ‘Self’ Penang), New Zealand and the UK, where he
and ‘Others’ do teachers need? is currently employed as the Deputy Head
Journal of Education for Teaching: of International College for the University of
International Research and Lincoln.
Pedagogy 35 (1) 33–45.
Volume 31 Issue 4 15
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Genial.ly: using
multisensory
interactive content
A
dult online learners studying in fully
online learning environments face unique
challenges compared to learners in a
face-to-face classroom. A major obstacle
they have to overcome is disengagement:
learners who don’t connect cognitively and
emotionally with the course tend to lack deep focus
and are likely to perform poorly or drop out.
I teach and design online content for general English
courses taught at the Institut Obert de Catalunya (IOC),
an online public school funded by the Department
of Education of Catalonia, Spain. We deliver the
curriculum of the Escoles Oficials d’Idiomes (EOI)
(English: Official School of Languages), which is a
nation-wide network of publicly-funded language
schools in Spain, at CEFR levels ranging from A1
to B2.
At EOI IOC, we facilitate access to foreign language
education to adult students through asynchronous
online learning. In this context, motivating online
learners is key to retention.
As educators we can build engagement by creating
an emotional response in the learner, which in
turn increases cognitive engagement and improves
recall (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012). The
purpose of this article is to highlight interactivity and
multisensory input as powerful educational tools
to promote attentional processing. Some strategies
will be presented to make learning materials more
engaging with the use of Genial.ly, an incredibly
versatile online digital platform.
16 Volume 31 Issue 4
Elisenda Gozalo Salellas
describes activities which help
adults with recall.
Interactivity and multisensory input
Interactive activities direct learners’ attention to the
content and create opportunities for user input. This
makes learners more actively involved with the course
content instead of just being passive observers.
On the other hand, certain attentional mechanisms
that regulate the way our brains process information
should be taken into account. Perceptual salience, a
cognitive bias that explains attention, predisposes us
to focus attention on information that is prominent
or emotionally striking, especially if received
through more than one sensory stimulus. In terms
of our teaching practice, we can therefore also
influence the affective aspects of learners’ human-
computer interaction by incorporating input from
multiple senses.
Seeing is believing: visual learning
Our brain is wired for visual stories. Vision is our
dominant sense and visual (or iconic) memory has
been shown to be clearly superior to other types
of sensory memory (Stokes & Biggs, 2014). When
we design our online courses, we can exploit this
potential by adding interactive visual content to
actively engage students and increase knowledge
retention.
To those working in the plain interface of a learning
management system such as Moodle, Genial.ly
provides an opportunity to turn an act of one-way
information transfer into an active learning experience
within a visual environment.
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 [ Hybrid learning ]

In the example below (Figure 1) we chose an initial Figure 3), we draw learners’ attention to potentially
image which was relevant to our context of learning, difficult or interesting language items, thereby
i.e. an A2 lesson based on shopping. Then we achieving a balance between focus and intrigue.
created an interactive image on Genial.ly with several
interactive elements that students activate to access
words and pronunciation videos.

Figure 3 Interactive hotspots

All eyes and ears: multi-modal

learning and integration in Moodle
Figure 1 Interactive image on Genial.ly
https://view.genial.ly/5ef0547f3c040a0d133ed7d3 Neuroscience research claims that our brain best
absorbs information when a number of our senses are
being engaged during learning (Fadel, 2008). When
Another interesting dimension of Genial.ly is the
we use multiple senses, more cognitive connections
potential for language contextualisation through
take place and information is more easily retrieved
digital storytelling.
from our cognitive learning centre.
An important research-based principle that applies
There is an opportunity to use a multi-modal
across the board is that a contextualised approach to
approach by integrating visual and auditory input in
language instruction facilitates learning (Eun & Lim
our Moodle-based interactive lessons. For instance,
2009). Genial.ly interactive templates allow us to give
we’ve previously seen how in Figure 1 students
our language activities a symbolic framework in a
explore an interactive image featuring two shopping
given learning scenario.
scenes. When they click on the interactive elements,
they will be exposed to written words. Because with
For instance, drawing from Genial.ly’s extensive
Genial.ly we can embed video content in emerging
template bank, we quickly set up an interactive
windows, we can also show the pronunciation
learning activity where our A2 students are prompted
of typically mispronounced words at A2 level, i.e.
to explore and choose from six different holidays
‘receipt’, ‘customer’, ‘cashier’.
(Figure 2).

To fully integrate this into our Moodle course, we

have embedded Genial.ly content in a Moodle quiz
and used Moodle cloze features to test students’
understanding and recall of the language they’ve just
encountered in the Genial.ly interactive image (see
Figure 4).

In the same lesson students will then record

themselves using the language they’ve just learned
(Figure 5).
Figure 2 Interactive learning activity on selecting holidays
https://view.genial.ly/5ed74c77a49f050d73c31ad7/guide-
2ab3top-tourist-destinations

In this example we are using a call to action, a

technique much used in marketing, to encourage
learners to click through to the different pages to
explore several holiday possibilities. We are making
students excited about clicking the images and buttons
and therefore building an emotional connection and
ultimately some cognitive engagement.

On the other hand, we are also guiding our students

through the content. With interactive hotspots (see Figure 4 Genial.ly content embedded in a Moodle quiz

www.modernenglishteacher.com Volume 31 Issue 4 17

[ Hybrid learning ]

Avoiding the ‘scroll of around with word order and to explore the lesson

death’ topic from a personal perspective.

Neuroscientists claim that 80 to 90

percent of information processed by
the brain is visual (Jensen, 2008).
What’s more, our brain absorbs
and synthesises graphic information
faster than any other stimuli.

With Genial.ly, we can make text-

heavy content more engaging and
memorable using infographics.
Figure 5 Embedded Figure 6 shows a visually dense
Genial.ly interactive lengthy explanation of comparatives and superlatives
image in Moodle quiz in the grammar reference section of an online B1
with H5P recording course. In Figure 7, we have used a hierarchic
task
infographic template to represent the same detailed
information in a visual way, helping learners visualise
the content from headings to details through several
layers of content.
Figure 8 Using draggable elements
https://view.genial.ly/60431a086c0c850d6be6fb6a/
horizontal-infographic-lists-4bb4news
We have also made extensive use of draggable
content to activate prior knowledge before a reading
or listening activity. In Figure 9 students agree or
disagree with some statements before they watch a
video discussing prison versus community work.

Magic touch: embodied learning and

draggable elements
Researchers in embodied cognition claim that
knowledge is grounded in the body ‘with meaning
emerging through collaborative, situated sensorimotor
processes’ (Skulmowski & Rey, 2018). This has
implications for learning in general and for virtual
learning in particular, as we can facilitate deeper
Figure 9 Using draggable content to activate prior knowledge
experiential learning by providing https://view.genial.ly/​6164056dc930bb0dd6b9e64d/
opportunities for our students to horizontal-infographic-lists-4bb3prisonopinion
manipulate content.
In order to help learners commit vocabulary to
In a virtual learning environment long-term memory we can provide opportunities for
such as Moodle, we can easily create them to interact with language in several ways. With
a third level of sensory engagement draggable elements in Genial.ly, learners can be asked
in the form of a tactile experience by to rank, match, choose, list and sort out vocabulary
using Genial.ly draggable elements. items. Let’s look at some examples:

In Figure 8, for example, learners ■ Ranking: vocabulary consolidation. Students drag

are invited to drag words around around and rank crimes from the most to the least
to form sentences that answer the serious crime (Figure 10).
question ‘How do you follow the
news?’. In this activity, we have
created an opportunity to play

Figure 6 and Figure 7

Representing Figure 10 Ranking
information in a https://view.genial.ly/​61b5b84faa​2c840dd53168ce/
visual way interactive-content-types-of-crime

18 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com


■ Matching: structured input based on the
vocabulary learners have been exposed to
throughout the lesson. Students match collocates
(Figure 11).
Figure 11 Matching
https://view.genial.ly/5f9c1aba8519011e966a299b
■ Choosing: vocabulary activation. Students sort out
items according to their preference (Figure 12).
Figure 12 Vocabulary activation
https://view.genial.ly/61589e4775267b0e312bda5b/
horizontal-infographic-lists-2ab32travelcollocations2-copia
■ Listing: lead-in to activate prior knowledge before
a listening activity where two people discuss their
bucket lists. Students drag items onto the list to
make their own (Figure 13).
Figure 13 Listing
https://view.genial.ly/5fbe79942d60f90d07535b3d/
horizontal-infographic-lists-2ab5bucket-list
■ Sorting: reading comprehension and vocabulary
noticing. After reading a text on the symptoms
of colds and the flu, students sort the symptoms
(Figure 14).
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
Figure 14 Sorting
https://view.genial.ly/61b5bf72aa2c840dd531697f/
horizontal-infographic-lists-4a-b2-have-a-cold-or-have-
the-flu
Getting started with Genial.ly
With Genial.ly we can give students the opportunity
to interact with visually engaging content in an
embodied way for deeper experiential learning and
improved recall.
Genial.ly is a freemium digital authoring tool that can
easily be embedded in several learning management
systems like Moodle. Check out https://genial.ly. to
create a free account and find their training pills to
make your first interactive image, infographic or
draggable content.
References
Eun B & Lim H (2009) A sociocultural view of language learning:
The importance of meaning-based instruction. TESL Canada
Journal 27 (1)
Fadel C (2008) Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the
Research Says. Cisco Systems Inc.
Jensen E (2008) Brain Based Learning: The New Science Of
Teaching and Training. San Diego, The Brain Store.
Pekrun R & Linnenbrink-Garcia L (2012) Academic emotions
and student engagement. In: SL Christenson, AL Reschly &
C Wylie (Eds) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement
(pp259–282). New York, NY: Springer.
Skulmowski A & Rey GD (2018) Embodied learning: introducing
a taxonomy based on bodily engagement and task integration.
Cognition Research 3 6
Stokes D & Biggs S (2014) The dominance of the visual. In:
D Stokes, M Matthen & S Biggs (Eds) Perception and its
Modalities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at:
https://philarchive.org/archive/STOTDO-4
Elisenda Gozalo Salellas has 20
years of experience in teaching
English to adult learners in EOI,
Barcelona’s state-funded language
schools. In the last seven years,
she has been teaching and creating
online materials for general English
courses at IOC (Institut Obert de
Catalunya). She holds a degree in
Classics and a degree in English and
is interested in communication and interaction in e-learning.
Volume 31 Issue 4 19
[ Hybrid learning ]
From Russia,
in the mood
for change
Creativity master class was planned
as a refreshment
The idea of joining a creativity master class
organised by Irina Khakamada, a former politician
and candidate for president in Russia, occurred
to me by accident. At first it was an idea of a
retirement gift for a colleague. However, she wanted
something more tangible, while I was already
enthusiastic about the idea and eager to discover
more about the experience of this extraordinary
business lady. After her unsuccessful attempt to
become the president of Russia, she had left politics
and started a career as a very successful business
coach. Now, using her own example, she was
teaching Russian people, especially women, how
to combine their successful careers with personal
happiness. It was in May 2021, the end of the
online school year, I felt exhausted, in need of some
refreshment. I really didn’t expect that this online
master class, which even wasn’t meant for teachers,
would have changed completely my approach to
online teaching. In this article I would like to share
some of my experiences.
I was a student again
This master class lasted two weeks. Every day we got
a new task and 24 hours to complete it. Sometimes
it was a song to sing, or a short dance to perform,
20 Volume 31 Issue 4
Maria Vrabelova
shares her experience of
online learning and a personal
discovery.
or a story to write or just to tell. All tasks had to be
written or recorded on video and sent to the curator
for checking. Each task wanted me to make a choice
– to pick out just one song, or a poem, or a story.
Sometimes I was lost in contemplation as it was not
interesting to introduce myself with just a random
choice. My peers were allowed to see it, and our
curator was supposed to leave her comment. It was
important to choose something meaningful, something
special, something that somehow would single me out,
help me find my inner self, open me a new door in the
world of creativity.
As most of the tasks had to be video recorded,
I learned how to improve my look, voice, speech pace,
and video background at least to the level of personal
satisfaction. It was unbelievable how easily one
can make progress in all of the above even without
professional help, just relying on personal judgement.
So I was a student again, and a very diligent one.
Now, the first thing I did in the morning was switch
on my computer to see a new video where Irina
Khakamada was introducing her new task along
with her exuberant and careful explanation of how
to accomplish it. I was developing a new habit, even
in addition to these tasks, as they served as food for
thought for the whole day. Looking at myself from a
different, not so obvious angle, was a new territory
for the mind.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Reflection on learning
1. Involving students in their education process
Giving students more autonomy e.g. to choose 10
facts about an item not from their textbooks but from
any source of information makes the task much more
challenging and self-rewarding and pushes students to
take responsibility for their education.
Our curator was supposed to always leave her
comments for our written or recorded assignments,
and these comments taught me a lot: I learned, for
example, that they should always be positive and
encouraging, as this becomes a motivating factor to
let your imagination run wild. Sometimes I felt that
the curator didn’t understand my point quite well,
but I still was interested in her opinions. All of our
tasks were always accepted, which I liked so much as
there was always a choice to do it for five minutes or
to take pleasure in contemplating the subject for the
whole day, searching the internet as well as my own
memory, since there are always unlimited possibilities
of learning something new, especially when you
can share it with your schoolmates and expect their
comments and questions, which makes the whole
process much more stimulating and encourages
students to take the roles of educators themselves.
2. Video recording proved to be a helpful tool for
teaching and for learning
Using your own short videos to give students clear,
brief and specific instruction will help to make
achieving learning outcomes more likely. I personally
loved recording my own videos. It was something
new for me and it helped to build up my video image,
which I find quite important in this new online
life. I was happy to learn that most of my students
shared this approach, and also enhanced their video
images trying to achieve the level they are themselves
satisfied with. What is more, recording their own
videos helped them to gain confidence at speaking
English. I was so surprised to learn that most of my
students had never recorded themselves performing
something meaningful before. Anyway, when after
some practice with recording their tasks, I asked
them to write or record a video evaluation of our
course, most of them chose the video recording, I also
could see on these videos that they enjoyed their
own performance.
3. Poetry in a technical English course
One of our first tasks was recording ourselves on video
reciting a poem which we had to choose ourselves
and which somehow represented our mood. All of us
loved the task and I immediately decided to try it on
my students at the Technical university in Bratislava.
Following Irina Khakamada, I recorded my own
video that was supposed to inspire my students to
do so. I was reciting the poem of Rudyard Kipling
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
If: ‘If you can keep your head when all about you,
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can
trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make
allowance for their doubting too’ (Kipling, c. 1895).
You can see my performance of it at https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=0W4hVLr6zQo
It was the end of that Covid-19 online semester,
and even though some of my students had already
passed their English exams, all of them recorded
their poems. It was a remarkable triumph of
poetry. It opened us and our souls and despite this
new virtual reality we learned so much personal
information about each other, for example that one of
my students was a professional folk dancer, another
had just separated with his girlfriend and now was
reciting his own poem, and someone else wanted to
become a professional speaker and therefore loved
that task so much.
Poetry is something that reflects our life, it is a little
theatre where we can demonstrate our feelings in
a disguised way, which often helps to overcome
insecurity, embarrassment and shyness and also
helps us to find like-minded people and to create an
atmosphere where everybody will feel relaxed and
motivated. And we all experienced that to the full.
As I said, it was the end of the school year, and all of
a sudden I, as well as my students, felt charged with
the energy coming from the amusing sounds of poetry,
but also from communing with these literary giants,
who once felt the same as we did now.
Therefore, this year, instead of asking What, Where,
and Why questions to break the ice with my new
students, I am planning to start our acquaintance
with poetry. I think that nowadays young people are
especially unsure about their future pathways, but
poetry opens the ways to ourselves, lending a helping
hand to those who are not sure about their position in
society or which career path to follow.
References
Kipling R (c.1895) If. Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.
org/peomes/46473/if
Maria Vrabelova is a freelance
teacher of English and Russian
languages, and until recently the
teacher of Technical English at the
Slovak University of Technology in
Bratislava. Her current interests
include the role of improvisation in
teaching online, and exploring the
role of poetry as an icebreaker tool.
Volume 31 Issue 4 21
[ Hybrid learning ]
One year with
Duolingo
I
have written, often with fondness, about the
gamified language learning app Duolingo. I have
been using the service since around 2015, when
it was introduced to me by a student, and in the
last few years I have worked steadily to collect
all of the badges (or ‘achievements’, if you’re of the
Xbox generation) that Duolingo can offer. All but one,
that is. The most difficult for me to achieve involved
maintaining a streak (an unbroken series of daily
visits to the site) of one whole year. And then the
pandemic happened, and I decided it was time to
tick this last box, and see what I might learn along
the way.
Over the course of the last year I used Duolingo at
least once a day. Sometimes that might only have
been for a few minutes, just long enough to complete
a lesson or a review exercise, and to maintain my
unbroken streak. But on other occasions I might
spend a few hours blitzing through lessons, securing
my streak but also improving my standing in the
Duolingo league table. If gamification means addiction
to a service, then Duolingo is definitely a standout
example of the gamification of language learning. By
feeding that apparent addiction, I was able to finish
the year in the top 1% of all Duolingo users, amassing
a total of over sixty hours of language learning on this
one platform alone.
22 Volume 31 Issue 4
Christopher Walker
reveals what a year on a
popular app has taught him.
But what did all of this studying teach me? What
lessons, if any, have I learnt about language learning
by spending 365 days in a row with Duolingo?
1. Motivation is a variable
As teachers, we often think of some students as being
highly motivated, and others as lacking motivation.
Though we certainly try to affect our students’ energy
levels through warmers and rewarding activities, we
do have a tendency to see our students through the
lens of their overall motivation to learn. Perhaps, my
year with Duolingo has taught me, we should be wary
of such sweeping generalisations.
In the months leading up to the summer, I invested a
huge amount of time in the study of Greek because in
June I knew I’d be visiting the country. My motivation
could not have been greater. But even then, it was not
a constant, it was a variable. When I had a long day
of teaching ahead of me, I’d do one review activity
first thing in the morning to keep my streak going,
and then I’d forget about Duolingo – and Greek – for
the rest of the day. Sure, I was a motivated learner in
general, but not right then. I can imagine that if I’d
been studying Greek as part of a course, I might have
neglected to do my homework if I’d had a day like
that: my priority would have lain elsewhere.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Later in the year, I switched to Polish (I live in Poland,
so the focus is entirely natural). But I found it difficult
to get into the language. It’s a very tricky one to
learn, and I became increasingly frustrated with
myself for making the same mistakes over and over.
After a week like that I noticed that my motivation
was bottoming out, and I switched to Spanish: a
fun language, you might say. I never dealt with the
consequences of my declining motivation with Polish
but instead opted out of studying it entirely. My own
students, who have signed contracts with the school
that run for at least one semester, would have no such
luxury with their English studies.
Sometimes I was highly motivated; other times I had
almost no motivation. We must remember to treat our
students’ motivation as a variable, not a constant.
2. Progress is slow
Not all of the courses on Duolingo are the same size.
The Latin course, for instance, is only a couple of
units long. In total, you learn twenty-two skills in the
Duolingo Latin course, and when you’ve finished, you
might have reached a relatively comfortable A1 level.
When I studied Latin with Duolingo (to get the course
completion badge), I could see where I was going, and
gauge how long it would take for me to get there.
The Spanish course is a different beast entirely. It is
composed of nine units, and I’m currently on the fifth
skill of 32 for unit three. At the rate I’m going, it’ll be
2023 before I’m finished Spanish, and I don’t think
that means January 2023 either.
Could I go any faster? Not really. At the moment, I’m
able to maintain a steady pace through the material
but I have outside interests to balance – work being
the first of these. The language I’m learning right
now is not terribly advanced, and I’m still several
units away from hitting A2 level. It takes a long time
for me to remember that ‘el negocio’ is ‘the business’
and not ‘the negotiation’, and that we say ‘me gusta
el chocolate’ but ‘me gustan los chocolates’. That’s
nothing compared to Polish, certainly, but I can’t
afford to go any quicker through the content without
risking losing my way.
Sometimes I find myself planning a lesson for my A2
adult students, and I want to get through two pages of
content in only ninety minutes. I pause and consider
how long it would take me to really absorb the same
amount of material in Duolingo, and my conclusion
is generally that ninety minutes would not be long
enough. Not if I wanted to do it properly, and to make
sure that I remembered it going into the following
week. But I don’t teach these students once a week
– we meet twice, with only a day’s break between
sessions. Is such swift progress at lower levels really
achievable? In The Owl Factor, André Hedlund
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
(2022) stresses the importance of letting your brain
rest, and how vital it is to sleep at least once before
you attempt your homework. By trying to cover so
much in the three hours I had with my students, was
I overloading their brains? Progress is slow for me
on Duolingo, so am I forcing my students to go faster
than even I could manage?
3. Accuracy is a challenge
Duolingo will fail you for your mistakes, but it’s just
a piece of software and it’s impossible to think that
the cartoon characters that introduce each question
are actually being critical of you and your incessant
failures. Failure is fertile ground on which to grow
your skills, as Duolingo won’t let you pass the lesson
until you’ve corrected all of your mistakes. This
means that the areas of language that I struggle with
the most are also those areas that I practise the most.
I’m also a long way from being conversationally fluent
in any of the languages I’ve studied, bar Polish, but
when I speak Polish in the real world I make so many
mistakes that I often cause my wife embarrassment.
For instance, it has taken me twelve years to learn
that the polite diminutive of the name Krzysztof
is actually Krzysiek, not Krzys as I’d thought. The
latter form is actually more like a baby name, and
now I cannot make eye contact with the forty-year-
old accountant I teach who I’ve spent the last three
semesters calling Krzys.
My problem here has to do with accuracy. I need
a strong foundation of language to build upon,
one that is not composed of half-guesses and
suppositions about the language. If I don’t know
how to say something, it’s good that I try my best
to say it but if it’s wrong, I need to know and I need
immediate correction.
This would be far less true if I was at B1 level or
higher. My year with Duolingo, where I could not
move on until I had mastered each little bit of
vocabulary or grammar, has made me reconsider
how I teach lower level students. In fact, I wonder a
little if I should even be teaching students at A1 level.
Does it help them or hinder them for me to work on
their fluency when almost none of their utterances are
accurate? And what does it mean to their delicate L2
egos when I, a fellow human, correct those mistakes?
I’m beginning to think that this is a job better left to
an owl.
4. The renaissance of the Grammar-
Translation method?
And that leads me on to the next lesson: what is
the best way to learn a language? Whole books
have been written on this issue, but teachers
are notorious for not reading them, and besides,
Volume 31 Issue 4 23
[ Hybrid learning ]
none of the research I have seen comes to a firm
conclusion. There are popular histories of the different
methodologies employed in the industry, among
which Scott Thornbury is famous with his conference
talks, available on YouTube (see Thornbury, 2019).
One approach that seemingly fell to the wayside in
the popular literature is the Grammar-Translation
method, but thanks to my year with Duolingo
I’m beginning to re-evaluate its position in my
teaching arsenal.
The system Duolingo uses is very simple. It presents
a sentence, either in English or in your target
language, and you have to provide the equivalent.
That’s a massive oversimplification of what Duolingo
does, of course, but at the core of the service sits the
traditional translation approach.
The weaknesses of this approach are easy to see,
and it would be a rare thing for a language school
to persist in its use. But I have found it a worthwhile
method. I have gained enormously by following the
approach that Duolingo has adopted – not that I
can think of many other ways that the service could
work given its reliance on code rather than human
teachers. My Spanish is good enough now to allow
me to watch, for example, 7 Años on Netflix and to
the message without being entirely reliant on the
subtitles. Thanks to collecting several thousand points
on the French Duolingo course, the same is also true
with the films of Éric Rohmer that I’ve seen lately,
and it’s been fun to compare the subtitled songs
in Jacques Demy’s The Young Ladies of Rochefort
against the original lyrics.
I would never use this translation method with my
higher level students, and nor with my younger
learners. But I think that it might still serve a purpose
with my lower level adult students, and believing
this has increased my motivation to study Polish.
On Duolingo, that is.
5. Consistency is key
This is a point beyond all doubt, but as teachers it
serves to be reminded of the importance of consistent,
sustained effort over time.
I mentioned that I completed the Latin course; that
was back in around March of 2021. I revisited it
before writing this article, and struggled to complete
even the simplest review activity. Just as my muscles
have atrophied for want of the gym, my ability with
Latin has declined massively. That’s because my
approach to Latin has been inconsistent (or, more
accurately, non-existent). But what about the other
languages that I have studied?
I feel more positive about my Spanish abilities right
now than ever before in my life. If I met a Spanish
24 Volume 31 Issue 4
speaker on the street, I think I could communicate
with them – not perfectly, but with enough confidence
to manage the interaction. At times in the last few
months though that hasn’t always been the case.
For days at a stretch I would go on Duolingo just
to get my daily points and keep the streak running.
I felt my Spanish slipping away. But when I was
able to string together a good couple of days on
Duolingo, I felt my confidence soar, and presumably
my abilities soared too. We can think of this as like
achieving match fitness in sport. Consistency has
a compounding effect. By studying regularly every
day, we become stronger but conversely, by failing
to put in sufficient time, even for just a few days, we
can lose much more than we realise, especially when
we are relatively new to a language and have yet
to internalise the fundamentals. That inconsistency
has a similar impact to when a player returns to the
pitch after a long absence through injury. They are a
shadow of their former selves, initially at least, and
must be given time to recover their match fitness and
their form.
We knew this already, but it serves to be reminded.
It is not rare for my students to miss a lesson or two,
but that might mean seven days entirely lacking in
contact with English. What would the same mean
for my Spanish? I must only consider the state of
my Latin on Duolingo to know. When a student has
been missing, they must be brought back into the
fold slowly and delicately, for fear of risking further
damage to their confidence. And imagine what
dreadful impact the summer break has on our less
advanced learners, as our school year finishes in
June and doesn’t resume until October. Fortunately,
though, help is at hand to get them more comfortably
through such breaks: Duolingo.
References
Hedlund A (2022) The Owl Factor: Reframing your Teaching
Philosophy. Independently published.
Thornbury S (2019) What’s the Best Teaching Method? (Video).
Available at: https://youtu.be/nue8AN9XsuY
Christopher Walker is a teacher
and writer based in Bielsko-Biala in
the south of Poland. He has been
a teacher for fifteen years, and yet
still finds new things to explore
every day.
Email: closelyobserved@gmail.com
www.modernenglishteacher.com
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[ Hybrid learning ]
Building an
international
learning
community – and
a village school
‘C
an you get someone to get you some eye
drops?’ I asked Christian. ‘I have some,
thanks!’ he replied. He had already been
reading out loud each and every word
from the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
dictionary for 12 hours. Christian calculated that it
would take him about 30 hours to read the 165,000
entries of the 1,460 page ‘lexicon’. His aim was to
raise 50 thousand dollars for a US-based non-profit
(better said, ‘for-purpose’) organisation called Pencils
of Promise (https://pencilsofpromise.org/) that has
been building schools in Laos, Guatemala and Ghana
since 2008 (Braun, 2013).
Christian chose the eve of World Teachers Day in
2020 for what he called ‘maybe the most boring live
streaming event in the history of live streaming’ but
many of us were mesmerised watching him and
clicked on the ‘Donate’ button repeatedly, rejoicing as
the total amount got closer and closer to 10 thousand
dollars. Seeing how tired he was getting, we were not
26 Volume 31 Issue 4
Erzsébet Ágnes Békés
describes an amazing
community project with added
results.
sure whether we should cheer him on or beg him to
stop. And stop he did, after carrying on for altogether
16 hours. One-fifth of the money was raised, an
extraordinary amount in less than 24 hours, but it
was below his expectations.
By then I knew Christian Saunders because I had
been watching his videos for a good couple of months
on his YouTube channel called Canguro English
(with around 270k followers at the time), so after the
extraordinary vocabulary-reading challenge that he
set for himself I sent him a message on Facebook
saying that he should not stop now: could he not find
400 volunteers from among his YouTube followers
and the many members in his Facebook group who
would be prepared to put in 100 dollars each so that
his school could be built? Perhaps worth a try?
In December 2020, Christian created a closed
Telegram group asking future members to donate
100 dollars in exchange for individual or small-
www.modernenglishteacher.com

group Zoom chats with him on language issues and
freely available activities with other members of the
community. The group of the 130-odd volunteers
who subsequently signed up included teachers and
learners from more than 15 countries (from Latvia
through Kazakhstan to Brazil). We created a wealth
of language learning activities run by both native and
non-native English speaker teachers, emphasising
the idea that we are all learners of English at
various stages of language acquisition. As one of our
experienced non native speaker English teachers
(NNESTs) succinctly put it: ‘My English continues to
improve. The more I teach, the more I learn.’
So, what is it that is fairly unusual about our project
and how could it be adapted by other learning
communities?
As for the fundraising side, there is a myriad of
education projects supported by crowdfunding but
they do not usually involve a sustained effort to go
beyond asking for donations and offering some (often
symbolic) perks. As opposed to this, we have created a
learning community whose members are continuously
engaged in genuine communication, often through
activities that constitute an interface between
classroom and real life.
This brings us to the issue (and value) of learner-
centred approaches in English language teaching.
The way the Canguro English charity group functions
can be best related to Task-Based Learning (TBL)
and Project-Based Learning (PBL) (Bilsborough, n.d.).
The main task is to raise money to build schools
by making donations to Pencils of Promise. This is
achieved through a fundraising project which creates
a lot of opportunities for members to get involved in
coordination, collaboration, project management and
logistics, using English as a tool for communication.
The ethos of the group
Many of our members are adult learners who tried to
learn English for many years and after numerous ‘false
starts’ have ended up watching Christian’s channel,
which consistently conveys the same message:
■ Learning another language is hard, it’s an arduous
journey and there are no shortcuts
■ Those of us for whom English is a second language
will never become native speakers, but we can
become proficient multilinguals
■ Communication (basically, by whatever means)
is the aim; reaching it necessitates skills such
as cross-cultural sensitivity, code-switching and
translanguaging
■ Adult learners bring a number of special skills
to the table that compensate for gaps in their
linguistic knowledge
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
■ Building confidence is more important than
increasing knowledge about the English language;
a change in adult learners’ mindsets can work
miracles
■ Authentic tasks and playfulness (competitiveness)
can push adult learners beyond their (perceived)
limits.
How to create authentic tasks in language teaching is
an issue that has been debated for decades (Pinner,
2019). One aspect is the authenticity of the task
that is set for the learning community, namely, how
‘real’ it is. In the context of our project, the degree
of authenticity is understood as offering a variety
of different activities on a spectrum from largely
language-oriented activities at one end to fully
authentic, real-life events at the other. In Resources
Online you will find a table which illustrates the
continuum from ‘classroom authenticity’ to the
authentic realisations of the self (Pinner, 2019: 18–23).
Combining the four skills for
authentic activities
Many of our activities are designed in such a way that
they enhance all four language skills. For example,
Cooking Fun requires the sending ahead of the list
of ingredients, the session itself is the combination of
practising speaking and listening skills, while sharing
the recipe afterwards involves a specific writing task.
This activity has also led to ‘vocabulary on demand’
type requests, because participants realised that they
lack the required ‘kitchen vocabulary’ which, in this
case, is not a list of words out of context, but one
that is related to, for example, a specific dish (e.g.,
empanadas).
Once the community decided that out of the three
countries where Pencils of Promise are building
schools, we would like ours to be constructed in Laos,
we set up a Guest Speaker event, where a Dutch couple
told us about their travels in Laos. Our next Guest
Speaker was an English teacher, who lives in South
Africa but is still running a language school in her
home country (Madagascar) allowing underprivileged
female students to join classes for free. Our latest Guest
Speaker, a Slovak businesswoman, Anežka Boriová
recounted how she built a village school (also in
Madagascar) using her own money and how she had
120 second-hand bicycles shipped to the same remote
community to help the movement of goods and people.
Guest Speaker events are par excellence
communicative activities. There is a genuine
information gap, the guest and the host, as well as the
viewers are negotiating meaning and English is used
to convey a message rather than focus on accuracy;
there is an immediacy that pushes learners beyond
the barriers of their proficiency.
Volume 31 Issue 4 27
[ Hybrid learning ]
Houay Loa School, Laos before rebuilding
Outcomes
You may be curious to find out how successful the
fundraising effort ultimately was. The project started
in December 2020 and by May 2021 we gathered the
USD 50k for the first school.1 In early autumn 2021,
about half of the members participating in the first
cycle decided to stay together to raise money for a
second school.2
But, of course, it is not exclusively about money. Our
members have a lot to say about how they think they
have improved their language skills and proficiency
in the past 15 months. One of the participants, who
lives in Latin America and has only recently joined us,
considers education ‘a powerful life-changing tool’:
‘I firmly believe that education is the best
investment that you could ever make. This was the
main reason why I decided to join this amazing
project. Besides that I have the fortune of finding
a group of amazing people. Teachers incredibles
and diligent students. On top of this… all of them
are kind and conscious people, with a strong
commitment to education. They have made me
feel comfortable since the first day and they have
pushed me to overcome my fear of making mistakes
while speaking. … Today, I’m feeling completely
different about my English skills. I’m sure I still
make a lot of mistakes however I see and feel my
mistakes as a great opportunity of improving.’
This is a perception that is echoed by another member
of ours, who comes from Colombia and is now living
in Madrid:
‘I have improved a lot in all my language skills in
English. I am using the language and that makes the
difference. Each day I go forward even if is only a
little, but in the end, I understand more and better
reading and listening and I am able to speak and
write more. My vocabulary is wider and I’m feel
something like an intuition while I’m in an English
conversation.’
Like many of our members, Johann3 is a mature
learner, in fact, he retired from work a decade ago:
28 Volume 31 Issue 4
‘I took part in a lot of sessions […] So a lot of
speaking practice and some writing practice via
chats. So I‘m more experienced and have more
confidence in myself. Can express myself more
variably, however I’m not really satisfied. It means,
a lot has still to be done … ’Canguro’ should have
started 10 years earlier at the beginning of my
retirement… But I want to be grateful that this is
now possible.’
Sasha belongs to a younger generation; he is
someone for whom attending sessions is not that
easy. Since he lives in Kazakhstan, he is five hours
ahead of group members who live in Europe. In spite
of the logistical challenge, he has also experienced
positive changes:
‘I cannot say my language skills jumped forward in
several steps, but it has been improved significantly.
I have no doubts about it, because everyday
practice should bring its results anyway. However,
the biggest effect from our group and Canguru
English I have got in building of my confindence as
a speaker. I continiue make a lot of mistake and
I know that my vocabulary is far from required,
but I don’t shy or afraid it more.’
Our member from Slovakia, who acted as a ‘goodwill
ambassador’ when we set up the Guest Speaker event
with her compatriot, Anežka Boriová, has probably
advanced farther than she expected:
‘At first I had to translate almost all the messages.
But with the support of all the great teachers and
other members in this group, my English is slowly
improving. And it is unbelievable to me, that our
dear teacher Chris motivated me so much that
I started writing poems in English last year, and I
still continue on that. I never wrote poems in my
native language. And the best of all, my fear of
speaking is getting smaller and smaller. You, dear
teachers, believed in us more than we believed
in ourselves.’
Veronica left an audio message instead of written
feedback, so some of her comments have been
transcribed:
www.modernenglishteacher.com

‘English has become the way we live … Little by little
we think more time in English, and I could say even
we dream in English more often…Entering English
world with interesting, respectful, kind and unique
people with endless things to learn is creating in turn
a world of personal enrichment.’
In summary, members of the community feel that
their speaking skills have improved, but beyond
that, they have gained confidence and their attitude
and perception of making mistakes have changed
profoundly.
A new beginning
In October 2021, Christian and another teacher from
the original group, Matt, started Canguro English
Academy (https://canguroenglish.com/academy/) with
all its profits going to Pencils of Promise. Many of the
activities for their subscription-based course have
been tried and tested in the charity group, others are
brand new, such as Slow English for beginners or
the sessions for solving crossword puzzles together.
Interestingly, it is not only some of the teachers
from the original project that now run sessions in
the Academy, but some of our learners as well. For
example, the Off the Cuff activity, which promotes
spontaneous communication about a multitude of
topics, is led by one of our members who has, by now,
not only gained enough confidence to act as the host,
but is quite comfortable with the occasional mistakes
that she might make.
Takeaways
When we are making an attempt to suggest ways
how other learning communities might adapt
what has been outlined here, we need to take into
consideration the specificity of our experience,
which constitutes some limitations as well. I have
described a fully online, non-classroom project whose
members are adults (often middle-aged and above).
They have self- selected themselves into a group that
is characterised by a higher than average level of
social motivation.
However, it is not impossible to devise a similar
project at classroom/school level, in fact, many of the
fundraising teams for Pencils of Promise are schools.
Our learners can be rallied around educational
charity projects, because they are increasingly
aware of global issues (Maley & Peachey, 2017).
Watching the TED talk of Pencils of Promise founder
Adam Braun (2013), reading his book (2015),
getting in touch with organisations and asking
their coordinators to talk to a classful of learners,
setting up fundraising teams and choosing a target
amount, creating fundraising events like story-
telling or spelling competitions are not very difficult
to envisage.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
The fundraising and language learning effort has
brought our members together so much so that they
treat each other as friends and family, a community
that has helped under the extraordinarily difficult
circumstances of Covid-19 – and then the crisis in
Europe.4
Our learners of today are the agents of tomorrow.
The more we create the opportunities for them to
engage with not just a global language but global
issues as well, the greater the chance of seeing the
global citizens of the 21st century take responsibility
for their actions and learning.
Notes
1. The school in Laos is going to be built in a small rural
community called Houay Loa. They broke ground in November
2021 and expect to finish the school by the end of 2022. You
can read more on the project here: https://pencilsofpromise.
org/canguroenglish-houayloa/
2. Should you wish to contribute to the fundraising project,
here is the link to our team’s page: https://fundraise.
pencilsofpromise.org/team/336595
3. All names have been changed to protect our participants’
identity
4. By the fifth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the
group had a fundraising page set up, there was a new,
closed Telegram group for all Ukrainian members to share
confidential information as well as a group to discuss the
crisis on Telegram. The registering of offers, such as free
accommodation and help with travel costs started, and
there was a vocabulary-intense ‘Have Your Say’ session on
the situation in Ukraine, too. We had a special counselling
session on coping with stress and anxiety delivered by a child
development psychologist in the group.
References
Bilsborough K (n.d.) TBL and PBL: Two learner-centred
approaches. Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/
article/tbl-pbl-two-learner-centred-approaches
Braun A (2013) The five phrases that can change your life
[Video]. TEDx Talks. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Z8oE2kqVXkk
Braun A (2015) The promise of a pencil: How an ordinary
person can create extraordinary change. Scribner.
Maley A & Peachey N (Eds) (2017) Integrating global issues in
the creative English language classroom: With reference to the
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. British Council.
Pinner R (2019) Authenticity and teacher-student motivational
synergy. London: Routledge.
Erzsébet Ágnes Békés is a
teacher trainer and teacher-
research mentor currently residing
in Ecuador. As a volunteer, she
taught English in Ethiopia and the
Amazonian jungle. Now a retired
language teacher, her main interests
include supporting the publishing
efforts of classroom practitioners
and promoting the ‘decentring’ of
ELT, which aims at empowering teachers in low- and middle-
income countries. Email: ebekes@yahoo.co.uk
Volume 31 Issue 4 29
[ Hybrid learning ]
Blended
learning in a
digital age
Blended learning: what is it?
Blending learning is exactly that, a
blend, or mix of face-to-face (f2f) and
online learning. It is a hybrid approach
to teaching that combines the teaching
and learning practices of the physical
classroom with online educational learning
materials and spaces. This could either
come in the shape of a class blog, instant
messaging (IM) group, or digital platform,
or a forum space on the school’s learning
management system (LMS).
Why blend?
Before sharing a case study example
of how I introduced a blended learning
solution into a pre-sessional course I
taught, I think it is important to outline
some the reasons why teachers may
consider using a blended approach to
teaching. Often, teachers rush to get
through the lesson content and to meet
learning objectives within the given
time-frame of their lessons. This can
mean finishing the lesson abruptly or in
the middle of an activity, or not having
the time to do practice activities. Having
a dedicated space for learners and for
learning enquiry can help support learners
beyond the lesson time, and just the
knowing that an interactive support space
exists can make them feel more confident.
30 Volume 31 Issue 4
In addition, blended learning fully
embraces the concept of integrating
technology into ones’ pedagogy and
creating institutional change by
implementing digital skills within the
language learning classroom and beyond.
This improves the quality of the learning
experience on-site, and enables students
to engage with the course content more
effectively by combining f2f learning with
online components such a blog that runs
simultaneously with their f2f course.
How to blend: a case study
example
This case study experience shows how
I used a free Wordpress blog to help
support my students on both a 5-week
and a 10-week pre-sessional course. If
any of you have ever taught pre-sessional
you will know just how challenging it is
for learners to engage in all the content
and successfully complete the coursework
assessments.
How to create a community of inquiry
to build student-student rapport and
encourage collaborative learning:
1. On the first day of the course, the
teacher takes the class to an onsite
computer cluster to demonstrate and
explain the functions of the blog and
Kat Robb
describes a recent hybrid
teaching situation.
ensure all students register. If learners
have their own devices this can also be
done using those.
2. The teacher posts discussion threads
and lesson information on a daily basis.
3. The students are expected to
engage with the blog every day and
become ‘prosumers’ (producers and
consumers).
4. Students’ contributions are globally
assessed within their independent
study skills grade. This encourages
their interaction, thereby promoting
motivation.
5. Program 2 sessions per week for
tutorials when students can also engage
with the blog in the presence of the
teacher.
6. Teacher engages with students daily
via blog uploading learning material,
providing feedback and encouraging
contributions.
The simple flow diagram below shows
the direction of the interaction which
was based on the learning model of
Garrison, Anderson, & Archer (2010),
that was designed to promote a
community of inquiry (see Figure 1).
The advantage of creating a learning
community is that is acknowledges
the social nature of education and the
roles that interaction, collaboration
www.modernenglishteacher.com

and discourse play in constructing
knowledge (Garrison, Anderson, &
Archer, 2010)
Figure 1 Community of Inquiry Model
(Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010)
What were the learning
objectives and the
expectations?
■ The below list outlines the main
learning objectives I aimed to achieve
my creating the interactive learning
space for my students.
■ To give students thinking time for
brainstorming and sharing ideas
asynchronously
■ An opportunity for learners to respond
to discussion threads without open
class inhibitions
■ To provide learners with practice,
feeling comfortable and more confident
to share their ideas
■ To give students model examples
of academic texts would help them
understand the lexicogrammactial
features
■ To have a space to upload lesson
content so absent students could
catch up, and all learners could refer
back to.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
Were there any anticipated
problems?
These were the problems I anticipated and
how I managed to avoid them!
Problem:
Students would have high expectations in
terms of teacher availability for queries
and feedback.
Solution:
The lessons started at 9a.m. and finished
at 4p.m. every day except Friday when
we finished at 1p.m. I learnt quickly
that students would post queries about
homework first thing in the morning
and last thing at night. I therefore had
stipulated times that I would interact,
which was from 9a.m. to 6:30p.m. Monday
to Friday. This allowed ample time after
class for learners to post any questions
about what they had learnt, or queries
about homework.
Problem:
I anticipated that some learners would
experience a lack of confidence to interact
and build rapport with their fellow
classmates. I also feared challenges with
building teacher-student rapport.
Solution:
This is the reason why I scheduled 2
sessions per week for tutorials when
students could also engage with the blog in
my presence. This gave me the opportunity
to look at the blog in the presence of the
students to encourage them to do the same
in their own time.
Problem:
I envisaged there may be a lack of
enthusiasm to engage with blog in the same
way as f2f sessions because I did not have
a live synchronous presence with students
when they were accessing the blog.
Solution:
I encouraged student contributions by
informing them that their interaction in
the blog would form a part of their globally
assessed independent study skills grade,
and this certainly helped with motivation.
The case study: what I did
I created a single community blog
on Wordpress because it is a form of
‘social software’ which ‘supports group
interaction (McLoughlin & Lee, 2007:
665). A blog is capable of providing
the affordances to establish a sense of
[ Hybrid learning ]
community among learners both online
and f2f. The blog ran simultaneously with
the pre-sessional course therefore crafting
a blend of f2f and technology enhanced
learning (TEL). The objective was to create
an online sense of community that would
support class contact time, and provide the
opportunity for learners to have a space
to engage and interact with each other
without feeling inhibited. The blog had
restricted access to the students to avoid
privacy and hacking issues, so it was only
accessible to them and me.
Conclusions
I had little expectation that a class
community blog would provide an
instantaneous or easy solution to my
teaching context, but I do believe that it
is a feasible option. By crafting a blend
of asynchronous online interaction and
synchronous face-to-face interaction
during lessons, it was possible for me to
create a community of inquiry and better
support learners throughout their pre-
sessional journey. It does take nurturing,
but it saves constantly reminding students
of key elements of the course because
students have a space where they can
find everything they need, and in addition
interact with me and the other students
to develop their learning and solve any
problems or queries they may have.
Reference
Garrison DR, Anderson T & Archer A (2010)
The first decade of the community of inquiry
framework: A retrospective The internet and
Higher Education pp 5–9
McLoughlin C & Lee M (2007) Social software and
participatory learning: pedagogical choices with
technology affordances in the Web 2.0 era. In: ICT:
Providing Choices for Learners and Learning.
Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007. http://www.
ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/
mcloughlin.pdf
Kat Robb has been
involved in ELT since
1995, and during this
time she has spoken
at conferences,
authored, taught,
and trained teachers
globally. Her passion
lies within educational
technology, which has
seen her move increasingly in the direction of
authoring digital teachin and learning solutions,
including AI and autonomous systems. She can
be contacted at trinarobb@hotmail.com
Volume 31 Issue 4 31
[ Hybrid learning ]

Teaching in Sheridan Orr

describes the ups and downs of

London during
online and hybrid learning.

lockdowns
– all of them
E
nthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with
all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be
energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was
ever achieved without enthusiasm.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lockdown. Aaaah, such strange memories!
Fortunately, it has been a number of months since we
were allowed out on day release, and now, in 2022,
we are nearly functioning in a similar manner to two
years ago. I’m sure I’m not the only one who wishes
to forget that period, but it’s worth looking back to
reflect on what we achieved.
In March 2020, people in the UK were told we must
stay at home for three weeks to flatten the curve
(and not to eat bats), which initially sounded quite
appealing, except for the fear, unease, and uncertainty
that bubbled to the surface like swamp gas. And, of
course, lockdown wasn’t three weeks. It was never
going to be just three weeks…
Everything simply stopped, and London felt surreal.
There were no noisy planes at 4a.m. waking me up,
no cars, trucks or motorbikes on the streets, only
empty buses sailing along empty roads like ghost
ships. There were no bustling crowds; orderly queues
formed at the local food stores where people warily
squinted at each other, sizing up fellow shoppers,
preparing to scratch eyes out for that last roll of
loo paper.

32 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com


But the sun was shining and it was weirdly warm.
You could hear the birds singing and how joyful
they sounded!
Apart from the instant lack of income, I didn’t feel
worried. Was this really the end of the world?
I wondered if I should have spent more of my savings
on travelling and quietly pondered what kind of reality
lay ahead of us.
School immediately went online but, initially, I wasn’t
teaching. As the weeks went by, I was very relieved
to be told that I would be eligible for some furlough
payments.
For the first few weeks I slept a lot and cautiously rode
my bike around the neighbourhood in the sun, barely
daring to pause for a breather in case Mr Plod strode
50 metres across an empty park to tell me off again
(yep, that actually happened and it was unsettling).
I did a course on FutureLearn. I looked up long-lost
friends online. I hid in my room. I coped.
One day, an email arrived from my Director of
Studies, asking me to teach online and THAT was
when I panicked! I literally woke up gasping in the
night with my brain shouting at me, ‘I can’t teach.
I can’t teach! I CAN’T TEACH!’
Sure, I had done one-to-ones over Skype before, but
this would be actual classes on Zoom with lots of
students. This was uncharted territory and I had to
quickly don my thinking cap.
I downloaded Zoom, quizzed my Director of Studies
for tips on its capabilities, and practised using it by
calling my boyfriend, whom I wasn’t allowed to see
because we live in different houses. While the staff at
Number 10 were partying, the official government line
was that seeing your beloved wasn’t classed as being
‘essential’. Hmm.
I found Zoom was quite straightforward and
happily felt my confidence start to gently seep back.
The next thing was to find course resources and,
fortunately, the school staff sent materials to me
until we could arrange access to digital versions of
course books. Being a huge fan of British Council
lessons, I immediately jumped onto their Learn
English websites to find suitable exercises. I was on
a mission!
I also downloaded a basic version of ActivInspire, so
I could prepare my whiteboard, and signed up for
Edmodo, which is a great platform for communicating
effectively with students. I thought about what
other websites I could use to keep lessons lively and
decided to purchase a subscription for ESL Brains
(who do great e-lessons). I chose free versions of
LyricsTraining for music and Kahoot! for quizzes.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
Next, where to teach? This was a tad more
challenging. Renting in London is extortionate,
and, unless you’re extremely well-off, then you’re
unlikely to have a spare room to use for teaching.
I was sharing a one-bedroom flat in a Victorian
terrace, I slept in a small bedroom, my flatmate
had the larger living room. With both of us at home
full-time, I couldn’t use the kitchen without causing
inconvenience to my flatmate or possibly having the
class interrupted. So, I pulled up a chair and put my
laptop on my bed, and that was where I taught for the
next few months – my bed was now my classroom,
which definitely impacted my ability to sleep!
It was certainly a challenge and very different to the
in-class experience, but it was enjoyable and it was
wonderful to see the students, even if my synapses
were firing overtime. After completing the first day,
I had a much better idea of how the dynamic worked
and how to improve my lessons.
Our online timetable was different to the usual in-
school classes, so students (and teachers) were not
immediately overwhelmed by the shock of too much
screen time.
Already a preparation freak, I quickly discovered that
online Zoom classes required additional preparation.
I spent hours and hours creating my ActivInspire
white boards with snips of course materials, relevant
eye-catching images, video links, vocabulary and
grammar tasks they could work on together, and
answer pages, so the lessons could flow smoothly
without having to constantly change screens or find
pages online.
It was easy to share my screen to show class materials
or other websites, and the breakout rooms were
brilliant for putting students in pairs or groups. I could
switch them around far more easily than if they were
sitting in front of me in the real world.
However, teaching online does have some
disadvantages. You don’t have all the energy, the
connection, or those non-verbal cues that you pick up
in class with your peripheral vision. Being conscious
of the students’ experience, I wanted to ensure that
everyone was learning and to address any queries.
To do this individually (or sometimes in groups in
breakout rooms) tended to slow the pace of the lesson
but I felt it was vital. The online classroom can feel
remote, so it was worth pausing to discuss things –
whether a grammar point or to have chance to check
on everyone’s well-being.
Of course, technology is only useful when it works
and there are multiple possibilities for skulking
disasters to manifest. Not having internet connection
is a major one, followed closely by its hilarious mate
‘intermittent’ internet. Often, when connectivity was
Volume 31 Issue 4 33
[ Hybrid learning ]
poor, students would have to attend with their camera
turned off. As a teacher, I found that tricky since
I can read a lot from a student’s facial expressions.
It felt like I was shouting down a well when I spoke
to a black screen that should have shown a bright
and attentive visage! The uncertain wait for a voice
to reach me from the darkness was tortoise-like.
Sometimes their words were literally lost in space.
ESL Brains do a very amusing and useful lesson about
problems we encounter when using technology for
communications such as business meetings, but the
issues equally apply to the online classroom. The
comedic video (made by Zoom) demonstrates some
fabulous examples of complications that arise in a
video conference call. It has loads of useful language
and is well worth using with your class (ESL Brains:
Functional language for online meetings).
Other problems included interruptions from people
in the students’ homes, students being distracted and
possibly using their phones to message friends or
check social media sites instead of paying attention
to the lesson, and some students doing their actual
classes on their phones rather than a tablet or laptop.
Lags, screen freezing and outside noises became part
of our day.
Online classes can be painful! Craning your neck
forwards for hours, staring at a screen, focusing and
concentrating so that you don’t miss anything is hard
work. It’s far more mentally exhausting than being
in school and we all quickly learned that too much
screen time was not ideal.
With younger classes, I enjoyed introducing activities
that were less screen-centred and more fun; the idea
was to have a chance for each of us to move our
bodies or engage in something creative. Once again,
I was on a mission and found some excellent short
videos for yoga, disco dancing, boxing, doing a hip-
hop dance workout (harder than you think), karate,
singing, films, games, and ‘arties’ where we used
34 Volume 31 Issue 4
items close to hand to imitate various artworks chosen
by me. Banksy’s ‘Flower Thrower’ always produced
some excellent results.
The banter and brainstorming of the Teachers’ Room
was something I truly missed, and while I was busy
beavering away on my own, I wondered about my
colleagues. Were they OK? Were they losing their
minds? How were they coping? What was in their
coffee mugs?!
We had the opportunity to catch up on Zoom, but by
the time Friday afternoon arrived, I was honestly all
Zoomed out. I couldn’t face any more screen time, so
only popped in to join these meetings occasionally to
keep in touch.
On the bright side, there were some advantages.
I saved myself a minimum of two hours each day, and
a chunk of cash, by not having to endure a three-
train commute to school. I could get up later, have my
coffee and wear yoga pants, or shorts and a T-shirt,
put my laundry on to wash, and grab a cuppa and a
snack in the short class breaks. Eating at home was so
much cheaper than buying food on the way to school
in the manic morning rush.
Our online realm included many students from across
the globe, all caged in their own respective lockdowns,
but we could see each other’s faces without masks
and virtually ‘travel’ to each other’s part of the world.
It made a delightfully refreshing change from my
minuscule claustrophobic four walls.
The months went by and soon it was warm sunny
August. School reopened and I eagerly returned to see
everyone IRL (in real life). It was a wondrous feeling
to return to the bright classrooms in our beautiful
school building.
Class sizes were very small and this provided a
fantastic opportunity to give the students who
attended loads of personal attention. We had our class
bubble and numerous restrictions but it was fine. We
were all happy to have human contact. As the year
progressed, we were able to go on excursions around
London’s legendary galleries and museums.
Determined folk from numerous countries trickled
into the UK and endured 14-day quarantine periods
in order to come to school. Honestly, I salute their
tenacity.
To help them to transition into school, and give them
something to fill their time, I was given the honour
of taking our first ever hybrid class. Now that was a
steep learning curve, and quite demanding!
It really was like teaching two classes at once, but
somehow I managed to balance things and have
www.modernenglishteacher.com

our online learners become a ‘real’ part of the class.
Putting their faces on the giant whiteboard so they
could participate helped! And having the in-school
students join the online students on Zoom using their
phones meant they were able to communicate directly,
which they really enjoyed.
The students in school were friendly and welcoming
and eager to meet their new compadres, so while
it wasn’t easy, it was exciting when their virtual
classmates came to school to physically join the class.
We formed close bonds, like survivors in a life-raft,
and many of my students from that time still keep in
contact with me today.
A pleasant few months floated by and the government
started murmuring about rising infection rates and
implementing restrictions again as winter approached.
We shared another, less restrictive, lockdown and
doggedly persisted in attending classes at school. We
supported each other as best we could, I encouraged
the students not to give up as we descended into Tier
4 restrictions (almost another full lockdown), and we
made it through to Christmas, hooray!
After the two-week break, we were back for one day,
when Boris Johnson announced ANOTHER lockdown
that would be more restrictive than the previous one.
I’ll never forget the crestfallen faces of my Advanced
class; this really hurt us all.
Empathising with my ‘crew’, I swiftly decided
not to use the course book in that lesson, instead
I introduced them to Shakespeare and irony, we
watched the Upstart Crow episode called Lockdown
Christmas 1605 on BBC iPlayer. The clever humour
helped us to deal with our inner disappointment and
share a much-needed half-hour of laughter.
The next day, we were all at home and learning
online. Some students dropped out at the end of the
week as they didn’t like the online experience, but the
majority hung in there.
This time I was better prepared. I knew how to make
this virtual malarkey work!
And I was in a better place, literally. I was flat-sitting
for a friend at Tower Bridge, so had a beautiful
apartment to myself with a living room and a table
to work at, hallelujah! The bitter winter temperature
outside dropped below zero for a few weeks, so I was
not averse to being inside where I was very warm
and cosy.
Again, I could sleep in a little, make my coffee,
wear yoga pants and, to my relief, not face a hostile
commute. There was undeniably ‘fear and loathing’
on London public transport. People had been told
to be afraid and some were becoming seriously
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
  It really was like teaching two
classes at once, but somehow I
managed to balance things and have
our online learners become a ‘real’
part of the class. 
aggressive and weird. It was not uncommon for
people to abuse others (or even see a bit of a scuffle)
on the trains. I had made myself as invisible and
inconspicuous as possible.
I still spent ridiculous amounts of time preparing my
lesson materials, as this time we were running the
full-time school timetable. Plus, I often stayed online
after class to talk to students who either wanted
to discuss course work, or who just needed an
empathetic ear.
As the weeks turned into months, I ventured out
for daily walks, and soaked up the scenery as the
season slowly thawed and spring arrived. There was
a real sense of loneliness and isolation as I roamed
along the River Thames. With everything other than
supermarkets and takeaway food businesses closed,
people wandered around aimlessly like mournful
zombies.
Eventually, despite all the hindrances, lockdown rules
eased and in April school reopened. Students from
across the world have returned to classes and we
haven’t looked back!
References
ActivInspire. https://www.prometheanworld.com/gb/products/
teaching-software/activinspire/
Edmodo. https://new.edmodo.com/
ESL Brains (2020) Functional language for online meetings.
https://eslbrains.com/functional-language-for-online-meetings/
LyricsTraining. https://lyricstraining.com/
Kahoot. https://kahoot.com/
Upstart Crow. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qrsx
Born in New Zealand and currently
residing in the UK, Sheridan Orr
has a Bachelor of Communication
(Media Communications) and has
worked in a number of sectors over
the years. Her love of language and
travel led her to complete her CELTA
training several years ago. She has
been teaching in London for five
years, and it’s proved to have been a
wonderful experience for both her and her students.
Volume 31 Issue 4 35
[ Hybrid
Sectionlearning
Head ] ]
Mobile microlearning
for professional
development
Lucas Krohnke and
Benjamin Moorhouse
describe high-interest and
Q
high-energy PD.
uality and continuous
professional development
(PD) are essential to ensure
a highly skilled teaching
force. Today, teachers need
to continually update knowledge and
skills not only in their teaching subjects
but also in online and blended teaching
pedagogies (Philipsen et al., 2019). Yet
PD has traditionally involved attending
an endless parade of lengthy, compulsory
sessions that are neither teacher-centred
nor teacher-initiated and fail to effect
change (Guskey, 2002). Furthermore, the
36 Volume 31 Issue 4
demands of teaching, including instruction,
marking, attending departmental meetings
and contacting parents, leave teachers
little opportunity to invest in their own
learning. Therefore, it is vital to provide
meaningful PD, so that language teachers
can exploit PD opportunities to their fullest
potential. One effective form of PD is
microlearning: short learning nuggets that
provide knowledge and skills at the point
of need and encourage reflection on a topic
of immediate interest.
We encourage providers of PD for
teachers to consider developing
microlearning opportunities that
instructors can access through their
mobile devices. In this way, more
teachers can be reached, and they will
have greater autonomy in engaging in PD.
Developing microlearning lessons for PD is
a simple process. In this article, we suggest
practical strategies to provide multifaceted,
high-energy, and high-interest PD in bite-
sized chunks through mobile devices.
What is microlearning?
Microlearning consists of small, high-
impact, informal learning experiences
that last from a couple of seconds to ten
minutes and are usually delivered through
a mobile device (Kapp & Defelice, 2019).
The aim is to achieve small, specific
learning goals (e.g. how to use the word-
cloud function in Mentimeter) rather than
just shortening the length of the learning
experience (Kohnke, 2021). Content
can be presented through animation,
infographics, podcasts and a range of
www.modernenglishteacher.com

other modalities. Teachers can access
manageable pieces of information – for
example, by spending two to three minutes
on just-in-time learning at lunchtime - that
relate directly to their teaching needs.
Why use mobile
microlearning for PD?
Teachers are busy, and we don’t want
to create another layer of PD that is not
aligned with their needs and interests.
Therefore, microlearning PD activities
should provide nuggets of inspiration,
quick answers and little ideas that promote
innovation. They should be personalised
to resonate with individual teachers and
spark their interests.
We use smartphones daily. Therefore, it
is only natural to move PD to our phones.
Teachers can access PD content on
demand without leaving work or home.
This facilitates just-in-time learning.
Furthermore, we have found that mobile
microlearning motivates teachers to
participate in PD, experiment with
new tools and have confidence in their
teaching practice.
How do I get started?
Mobile microlearning has enormous
potential for PD. To begin developing a
www.modernenglishteacher.com
  One effective form of PD is
microlearning: short learning nuggets that
provide knowledge and skills at the point of
need and encourage reflection on a topic of
immediate interest. 
microlearning PD activity, ask yourself the
following seven questions:
1. What is the learning goal of this
microlearning project (e.g. delivering
teaching tips)?
2. Who exactly are we creating this
for (e.g. novice teachers and/or
experienced teachers)?
3. How will microlearning help teachers to
achieve this goal?
4. What form should the microlearning
take (e.g. animated video, infographic)?
5. Will the teacher find the resource
useful?
6. What does the teacher need to know
and learn?
7. How do I disseminate the materials,
and how do teachers know where to
find them?
The following section describes practical
strategies for creating microlearning PD
lessons.
Practical strategies
The aim is to provide straightforward,
engaging and well-structured PD. To
achieve this, it is important to use a range
of media but minimal text. First, find
out what teachers need and what is not
already available. It is easy to conduct
a needs analysis by surveying faculty
virtually, using tools such as Kahoot!
(https://kahoot.it/), Mentimeter (https://
www.mentimeter.com/), GoSoapBox
(https://www.gosoapbox.com/) or Poll
Everywhere (https://www.polleverywhere.
com/). Through this research, we can
establish learning goals for our PD - for
example, ‘teachers will be aware of three
innovative ways to Google Classroom
for English language learning’. We can
then consider how we will help teachers
address their needs through mobile
microlearning and whether we need
[ Hybrid
[ Section
learning
Head ]
a one-off resource or a sequence of
microlearning PDs.
The PD must be simple and engaging but
have high-quality content. When selecting
the media types, ask yourself:
■ What media would be most relevant
and specific to the target teachers?
■ Would it be helpful to include multiple
learning elements (visuals, audio,
quizzes, slideshows, etc.)?
Remember to match each mobile
microlearning PD to a specific learning
outcome. Less is more!
Tools
When creating microlearning lessons, the
key is to create effective and engaging
content. The lesson should deliver
messages simply and effectively while
simultaneously reinforcing the learning
process. There are many tools and apps
available for designing microlearning PD
lessons. Below are five that we have found
easy to use.
1. Podcasts
Podcasts are an effective microlearning
tool. Teachers can listen passively to
a quick talk on a given topic while
commuting to work. Two handy, built-in
mobile phone applications for recording
short podcasts are Voice Memos (iOS) and
Anchor (Android).
A podcast is essentially a microlearning
lesson on a given topic and ideal for
mobile learning. We have found recording
pros and cons on a subject helps teachers
remember key points. Another strategy
is to start a podcast club: each week a
teacher shares best practices for using a
tech tool. For example, one instructor’s
podcast might explain how to use the
jumble feature in Kahoot! to give students
Volume 31 Issue 4 37
[ Hybrid
Sectionlearning
Head ] ]
practice at putting words or phrases in the
correct order.
2. Infographics
Infographics help us to digest complex
information. They can provide step-by-
step instructions or a quick snapshot of
new information. Simple web-based apps
for creating infographics include Canva
(www.canva.com), Piktochart (https://
piktochart.com), and Venngage (https://
venngate.com/).
Infographics are easily understood and
provide just enough information to
jumpstart the process of trying something
new. We have found that infographics with
appealing graphics make new information
easily digestible, especially if they present
a limited number of key points. They can
be used to present sample lesson plans
that teachers can adopt on topics such as
modal verbs or vocabulary. Subjects such
as ‘5 easy ways to use student response
systems in communicative language
teaching’ can be quick to grasp if they are
presented visually using an infographic.
3. Flipgrid videos
Personalised PD can be created and
shared with others using the Flipgrid video
platform (www.flipgrid.com). Flipgrid
allows teachers to create and reflect on
goals, engage in discussion, and model
and share best practices by uploading
videos free of charge.
Videos offer a peek into other classrooms,
decrease isolation and show teaching
in action. We have found short videos
of instructional strategies motivating
for teachers, especially when they are
narrated by teachers. Such videos can
illustrate, for example, how to maximise
student engagement with tools such as
comic strips, student response systems
and augmented reality. If the videos are
short, teachers can watch them quickly
and immediately use the step-by-step
teaching strategies in their classrooms.
If a teacher has tried a tool previously
but was not successful, watching short
videos over and over can reinforce
best practices.
4. Flashcards
Flashcards are simple but effective options
for professional development. They are
easy to create using sites like Flashcard
(https://flashcard.online/), Quizlet (https://
38 Volume 31 Issue 4
  If the videos are
short, teachers can
watch them quickly
and immediately
use the step-by-
step teaching
strategies in their
classrooms.  rewarding and motivational just-in-time
quizlet.com/) and Brainscape (https://
www.brainscape.com/).
Interactive flashcards incorporating
videos, sounds and images are a great
source of immediate professional
development. On one side is a keyword or
phrase and on the other, an explanatory
text or animation. For example, a set
of flashcards might suggest ways to
encourage students to talk in the online
classroom or introduce concepts such as
teaching conversational communication
without textbooks. Such flashcards give
teachers information that they can use
immediately, as well as the ability to quiz
themselves on the topic.
5. Scoop.it
Once you have created your microlearning
PD lesson(s), you can store them on
a website or social media community
so teachers can access them at need.
Scoop.it (www.scoop.it) is a great option
for hosting a learning community.
Alternatively, consider creating a PD blog,
wiki or Facebook or Instagram account
that teachers can access to locate the PD
resources and share ideas. Engaging in
PD online can be isolating so take care to
foster social engagement.
As you develop your microlearning
activities, remember to
■ keep the text and layout simple
■ incorporate visuals
■ and keep it social by including social
media, forums and polls.
We suggest that you survey teachers
regularly with Kahoot! Mentimeter or
Poll Everywhere to find out what is and
isn’t working so that you can refine your
PD offerings. The educational landscape
is continuously evolving, and as English
language teachers we need to evolve with it.
Conclusion
As teachers, we find it challenging to
keep up with the pace of educational
change. Professional enrichment is
something that we struggle to fit into
our busy schedules. But we can provide
PD by using mobile microlearning. As
you develop microlearning PD lessons for
your teachers, remember to keep them
short, focused, graphic and social. Happy
microlearning!
References
Guskey TR (2002) Professional development and
teacher change. Teachers and Teaching: Theory
and Practice 8 (3/4) 381–391
Kapp K & Defelice R (2019) Microlearning: Short
and Sweet. Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.
Kohnke L (2021) Optimizing microlearning for
mobile learning. In: JR Corbeil, ME Corbeil & BH
Khan (Eds) Microlearning in the Digital Age: The
Design and Delivery of Learning in Snippets
(pp80–94). Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.
Philipsen B, Tondeur J, Pareja Roblin N,
Vanslambrouck S & Zhu C (2019) Improving
teacher professional development for online and
blended learning: a systematic meta-aggregative
review. Educational Technology Research
Development 67 1145–1174.
Lucas Kohnke is a
Senior Lecturer in the
Department of English
Language Education,
The Education
University of Hong
Kong. Over the past 15+
years, he has taught
English in China,
Thailand, South Korea,
Oman, Afghanistan and Hong Kong.
Email: lucaskohnke@gmail.com
Benjamin Luke
Moorhouse is an
assistant professor
in the Department of
Education Studies,
Hong Kong Baptist
University. He is author
of Writing with Young
English Language
Learners, published by
SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, Singapore.
Email: blmoorhouse@hkbu.edu.hk
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Student-focused
assessment
I
f you ask a group of students whether they would
like to be assessed, the most likely response would
be a sudden squirm. This usually happens because
of the lack of continuous feedback, or learning
oriented assessment (Jones & Saville, 2016) and
because of a stigmatizing grading system that tends
to lock students in a category where they might not
actually belong (Harris & McCann, 1994). No wonder,
therefore, that assessment is considered daunting or
stupefying by most students. However, if we attempt
a transition from product-based to process-based
assessment, and even involve our students in the
entire process so that they can become agents of
their own learning, we can achieve greater success
and show that assessment can actually become a
harmless, and even enjoyable part of the learning
journey. By opening this part of our toolbox that has
been seemingly exclusive to teachers, we can increase
our students’ intrinsic motivation, autonomy, critical,
and creative thinking (Harris & McCann, 1994). This
article will show you three plus one activities that
make use of self-evaluation and peer feedback in
order to boost student engagement in the classroom.
The goal of assessment
Even though assessment tends to be used
interchangeably with testing, it is crucial to point out
that testing is just a portion of the larger concept,
which is assessment (Harris & McCann, 1994).
And one of the most important requirements of
assessing our students is to have a proper reason for
it. Therefore, the first thing to decide when we start
planning the assessment procedures of our course or
lesson is not the how – whether we want a test, quiz,
poll, project, or assignment – but the why – what
kind of decisions we would like to make based on
the results and why these decisions are necessary
(Bachman & Palmer, 2010).
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Hybrid learning ]
Joanna Szoke
looks at self-evaluation as a
way to increase motivation and
engagement.
Assessment currently can be done in three different
ways: assessment of learning, for learning, and as
learning (Gottlieb & Katz, 2012, in Chapelle, 2020).
According to the first method, teachers assess the
product of learning usually at the end of a study
period, i.e., they assess summatively. The second
method looks at assessment as a looped process
during which both students and the teacher get
continuous feedback on the success of instruction
and on potential areas of difficulty or confusion (this
can also be called formative assessment). In the third
case, the assessment process itself becomes part
of the learning process. In other words, students
are instructed and guided to take an active part
in assessing each other and giving feedback. This
definition essentially includes peer feedback and
self‑evaluation.
1. Let students write their own test!
Most certainly the majority of tests and pop quizzes
that students write are compiled by their teachers,
and this setup seems to be taken for granted by
students. But have you ever considered that this
traditional arrangement can be turned upside down?
What if we get our students to write their own test?
Some of the benefits of this approach include
revising the material while writing the questions,
collaborating through teamwork (if you ask them to
work in pairs or small groups), and improving higher
order thinking skills by making them come up with
wrong answers and distractors (if you’re putting
together a multiple-choice quiz).
To make it more engaging for the younger
generation, you can use websites that turn any quiz
into a fun competition, such as Mentimeter (Figure 1)
or Quizizz.
Volume 31 Issue 4 39
[ Hybrid learning ]
Answer fast to get more points!
Start question 1
Figure 1 Quiz starting slide
There is the potential pitfall that students will only
write questions that are less challenging. In order
to dodge this issue, you can include some additional
questions in the quiz that you have written in
advance.
2. Checking and evaluating students’
own work
While the previous activity is predominantly built
on collaboration and competition, this next one
involves students individually paying close attention
to the elements of an activity and reflecting on their
performance. Although it sounds like a solitary task,
it can be tweaked to include some collaboration and
brainstorming.
Let’s take this context: There is a pumptrack (circular
track built for improving your bike handling skills)
in your city which was built 2 years ago but still
hasn’t been opened, so it’s still illegal to access the
territory. You are writing an email to the local council
to complain about this situation and ask for more
information about the opening.
Figure 2 Letting students choose what needs to be done
in the email
Figure 3 Self-evaluating checklist with two columns to prove performance
40 Volume 31 Issue 4
With students, you can first start brainstorming
what style the email should be and what guidelines it
should follow (Figure 2).
Once you’ve gone through the main features, you can
ask them to turn these criteria into questions, as in
‘Did I use formal style in my email?,’ for example.
By doing this, you’re basically compiling the self-
evaluating checklist that students can later use to
evaluate their own work (Figure 3).
There is a potential pitfall here as well: What if
students say that they have done everything correctly,
thus the checklist did not fully reach its aim? This
problem can be prevented in two ways: One is to
make them understand in advance that evaluating
their own performance increases critical thinking and
helps them later by teaching them learning strategies.
Number two is actually asking them to prove their
findings in the checklist by bringing examples from
their texts or to come up with action points for
improving what they have done.
3. Peer feedback loops
I used this activity with my advanced business English
group at British Council Hungary, but it can be used
with any age group starting from Upper primary.
The idea here is that students engage in a step-by-
step process of writing, assessing and rewriting (see
more on this on the Teaching English website by the
British Council).
In my activity, students had to write again, but you can
also do this with presentations or shorter monologues
if students record them (for example, via Flipgrid or
Videoask). After having finished brainstorming for
the topic, we created a similar self-checklist as in the
previous activity, and then students wrote the first draft
in pairs. Once this is done, you can potentially show off
your ICT skills by taking a photo of the finished works
and uploading them onto Google Slides where the rest
of the work is going to be done (see Figure 4 – and note
this version works best in smaller classes). Otherwise,
you can simply ask students to exchange their pieces of
paper and get them to evaluate the works based on the
checklist we have already put together.
The next step is highlighting parts which students are
not happy with - doing this on a smartboard can make
it more understandable and easy to follow for students
(Figure 5. There should be no judgment at this point,
just record whatever they say to promote safety
and acceptance. They are more likely to share their
thoughts if their ideas are not immediately rejected.
The final step is rewriting the first draft based on the
peer feedback received. Again, I would suggest writing
everything down as students say it and let them revise
what they have said once it’s all on the board. With
www.modernenglishteacher.com
 [ Hybrid learning ]

this method, you can also show them writing subskills,

such as proofreading and editing, in action. Let them
revise the new version as many times as they wish;
they can even argue with each other. The point
here is to think together, suggest new ideas without
judgment, and check whether they are feasible.

When it seems that there are no more new ideas, you

can step in to suggest certain expressions or sentence
structures that are possibly new to students. I would
suggest leaving this part last because you can then
encourage more student-student interaction and
have them rethink the idea that whenever they face a
slightly more difficult case, they should turn to their Figure 4 Written work and guiding questions for peer feedback
teacher for help.

Emotional and linguistic scaffolding during

peer feedback
The previous activity was done with adults, who are
typically more developed emotionally to give such
feedback to each other that considers the others’
feelings, unlike teenagers or even younger students.
Nevertheless, adults might still need some support in
how they should phrase their ideas.

To put it differently, successful peer feedback can

work best if some scaffolding is provided to students.
Figure 5 The final product
With the help of sentence stems or sentence heads,
we can show our students various ways to express
their thoughts, both linguistically and emotionally
(Figure 6).

Takeaways
To sum up, assessment does not always have to be
done by the teacher or be a negative experience for
students. If they are involved in the entire process so
that assessment serves as learning itself, students are
going to experience the benefits much more. These
benefits include improvement in such 21st century
skills as collaboration, learning to learn, emotional
Figure 6 Sentence heads to scaffold peer feedback activities
development, critical thinking, and creative thinking.

References
Bachman LF & Palmer AS (2010) Language assessment in
practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
British Council (n.d.) Teaching English. Available at: https://
www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/product-and-process-
writing-comparison
Joanna Szoke is a teacher trainer
Gottlieb M and Katz A (2012) Assessment in the Classroom. and EFL teacher in Hungary. She
In: CA Chapelle (Ed) The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. is a regular presenter at TEFL
Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
conferences, an assistant lecturer
Harris M and McCann P (1994) Assessment. New York: of ELT methodology at a Hungarian
Macmillan Heinemann. university, and a content creator for
Jones N and Saville N (2016) Learning Oriented Assessment. A several English teaching websites
Systemic Approach. Studies in Language Testing 45 Retrieved and video channels. She has also
from: https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/Images/639876-silt- just started her PhD, focusing on
volume-45.pdf assessment and feedback in online
Mentimeter. https://www.mentimeter.com education. Email: joanna.szoke@icloud.com Twitter: https://
twitter.com/jo_shortnsimple
Quizziz. https://.quizziz.com

www.modernenglishteacher.com Volume 31 Issue 4 41

[ Global Voices ]
Global
Voices
Teaching stories from around the world
Stella, Argentina

My name is Stella Maris Saubidet Oyhamburu and I
am a teacher trainer in a state-run teacher training college
in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina. My subject is,
‘Discursive Practices in Written Communication’. In 2020 and
2021, due to the pandemic, lessons were delivered online.
One of the biggest challenges during these two academic years
was to have ‘presence’ in our students’ lives. Classes were
carefully planned, and lessons were divided into different
sections so that students would become familiar with their
structure. In order to focus on language and improve writing
skills I included micro lessons every Wednesday. On a weekly
basis during the first semester, each lesson consisted of a
Holly, Hong Kong
 A student is speaking in front of the class. His hand that holds
the cue cards is noticeably trembling; he splutters up to almost 200
words a minute, and scampers off to his seat as his voice fades out.
Does that sound familiar? In an English language classroom, students
often feel nervous, or worse, terrified, when asked to express their
opinion, give a response, or deliver a speech in front of their peers.
However, communicative competence in English is an essential
requirement that all Hong Kong students need to master. English
language is a core subject in schools and speaking is tested in the local
public examination. Without a pass grade in English, students will not
be able to study in local universities.
As an English teacher who teaches mostly senior form students aged 16
to 18 in a local secondary school, I notice that students may be hesitant
to embrace the rewarding, yet vulnerable, experience of speaking in
front of the class because of their fear of judgment or fear of failure.
With my experience in public speaking, I’m thrilled to share the good
news that this pivotal communication skill is a learnable one. With
sufficient practice both inside and outside the classroom, students can
harness the power of speech to persuade, to connect and to empower.
From my experience, a quick one-minute impromptu speech session
with three lucky speakers of the day is guaranteed to keep students
on the edge of their seats. Speech topics can be related to the learning
theme of the week, recent social issues or a more personal topic. To
ensure success, teachers should build rapport with the class and teach
42 Volume 31 Issue 4
grammatical item, e.g. irregular
plurals. After a short explanation,
students were invited to produce
a short written piece (a caption,
a meme, etc) to practise this
language focus. During the
second semester I wanted
them to revise some language
learnt with the coursebook. So I
gave them different videos and
instructions to write narrative
texts based on lessons they had already learnt. Needless to
say, careful planning is key at every educational level, and
especially in remote teaching. Teachers need to provide
students with a predictable structure, well developed tasks
and instances of revision.

them to be a supportive audience before
beginning the exercise.
The session can also be adapted to a
collaborative storytelling game where
three speakers work together to form a
coherent story while incorporating random
prompts chosen from a bag. At the end of
each session, students can get individual
feedback from the teacher and multiple
encouraging messages from classmates.
While it is possible that students do not initially ‘enjoy’ this exercise,
more often than not they are grateful for their ‘daily heart attack’
moments in the English lessons. Practice makes progress.
Outside the classroom, I founded an English Public Speaking Club to
personally mentor students who are interested in sharpening their
leadership and communication skills. They attend regular workshops
on overcoming stage fright, verbal and non-verbal delivery techniques,
speech evaluation skills and so on. I am thankful that universities and
numerous organisations in the city make consistent efforts to organise
various contests every year. Motivated to embrace new challenges,
students who do join such contests gradually grow to become even
more confident and effective communicators.
Communication is one of the 21st century skills that prepare our
students for the unknown future. The English language classroom
might just be the best place for them to overcome their fears, develop
their confidence, and reconnect themselves with the community in the
post pandemic world.

www.modernenglishteacher.com

Sergei, Latvia
 Hi, my name is Sergei, and I’m a beginner EFL/ESL teacher in
an Upper-secondary school in Latvia. I would like to offer you a glimpse
into the first steps of an English teacher’s journey and why it’s OK to
stutter on your first day of teaching.
By a turn of fate that I haven’t yet made sense of, I happened to do my
first English lessons that were a part of my supervised teaching practice
right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. I was thrown in at the
deep end.
The pandemic was reshaping our known and comfortable ways of life.
In quite an unexpected way, Covid-19 has proven the idea that we,
as teachers, must prepare our students for the future in a way that
connectivists urged us to. Since the world is ever-changing, shifting,
interconnected, reactive, the content and skills we teach can never be
‘frozen in time’, or boiled down to one-size-fits-all information transfer
and ‘mechanised’ reproduction. I got to taste this approach practically
when I waved hello to my first students during Covid-19.
They were digital. I never got to meet my first students in person. We
met via ‘MS Teams’, I listened to the voices and smiled at the faces of
most of them – for the others, the sign of presence was just a profile
picture and a nickname (which comes as no surprise but, fortunately,
I managed to engage them too). When teaching, I supplemented our
school’s paper-based textbooks that the students had at hand when
studying from home with my own online presentations, games, and
digital tools, such as blogging platforms and podcast recorders. I taught
like that for two semesters until I graduated, and I’m grateful for the
whole experience.
The next stage of my journey kicked off with momentum when my
home country ushered in the ‘covexit’ and we were back to live classes.
It’s OK to stutter on your first day of teaching. Yes, literal stuttering
was an issue I dealt with when I entered the classroom and taught
face-to-face for the first time to several groups of teens ranging from
15- to 18-year-olds. These students were either yearning to learn
the language or dismissing it is an irrelevant subject. Looking back
on those first days of teaching, I would say that the reasons for my
stuttering were twofold: the excitement brought along by the new
role, and the genuine fear of failing: failing my students, both the
motivated and fluent ones who needed to have their language bar
kept high and the ‘lazy’ and ‘spaced-out’ ones who, as it turned out,
James, Spain

Hello, My name is James Santana Heal. I am half Spanish and
half British and I am currently teaching in Spain. When I was younger,
I was much more adventurous and I lived and worked in Poland and
Indonesia. Those were the good old days!
I have been in sunny Spain, in Seville, for the last 20 years where I have
been working at the same school. It is a very interesting set-up because
we teach on site in our own centres and we also offer our services
to mainstream schools where we offer English as an extracurricular
activity. It’s interesting because I feel I have to wear two hats at all times.
Our centres and the other schools have different protocols and standards
and very different settings. A good example of this is that in our centres
we have the latest technology at our disposal whereas most of the offsite
classrooms I teach in only have the traditional blackboard with chalk!
Some teachers hate not having an IWB or internet access but I feel that
not having these luxuries has made me a better teacher. It has made
me more resourceful, more inventive and less dependent on resources.
When teachers complain about the photocopier not working or the
internet being unavailable, I just smile and think, ‘all in a day’s work
for me’. I have no access to these wonders and we just make do with
whatever we have.
When I am back on-site I am amazed at all the things I can do with the
click of a button! But I am happy with these two very different worlds
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Global Voices ]
only needed to be poked and pushed in the
right manner.
September 2021, that’s when I was
given my first students as a fully-fledged
beginner teacher. That was when I
stuttered. Teaching is exciting and scary
enough, after all.
Teaching face to face is more literal now
that we have stopped wearing masks
and can see each other’s faces. As for the learning environment, the
classrooms in our school are refurbished, equipped with projectors,
interactive whiteboards, wi-fi and movable desks and chairs. The last
allows me to play around with the seating arrangement to find out
which way works best for my students in terms of cooperation and
learning. The materials I’m using in class are not rocket science: Oxford
textbooks and a good range of free online tools.
An important thing I must point out is that I’m working with classes
of students with a great deal of gender diversity. Some of my students
don’t feel like they’re either a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’, and on the first day they
asked me to refer to them in a gender-neutral way. Other students
broke my assumptions of their identity, based on appearance and
outfit, by revealing to me which gender they truly feel like. Attending
to the needs of the non-binary and transgender students, adopting my
language, on the one hand, and helping those students feel safe and be
treated fairly, on the other hand, are a few new teaching points that I
unexpectedly but eagerly included in my agenda.
Another thing worth pointing out in the light of recent dramatic
events in the world is the ethnic diversity of my students. Most of my
students are ethnic Latvians, but, in fact, I teach a fair number of
young people of Russian descent and with Russian as their mother
tongue. To cut a long story short, I observe with satisfaction that my
Latvian-speaking students understand how pointless and unfair it is
and how stigmatising it could be to ‘shame’ the Russian speakers who
have nothing to do with the atrocities committed by a political regime.
I see how crucial it is to be sober-minded, especially when it comes to
teaching the up-and-coming generation, especially now.
At the end of the day, ‘orchestrating’ such classrooms and caring for
every individual make me feel privileged and grateful because the bar is
high, and things that keep one on their toes improve your skills.
I have so much to say already, but even more to ask from the fellow
teachers in the community of MET. And this notion is so driving.

as I can confirm that
students learn in both
contexts and that it is up
to the teacher to ensure
that learning takes place
and that students are
motivated and keen to
learn.
I love my job and one of
the major changes I have
noticed is that we have started teaching younger and younger children.
We now teach 4-year-olds, which I have to say I have not done so far
but I have taught 5-year-olds and my goodness, these students are very
different to those adult students we had on our initial teacher training
courses like CELTA. Still fun though, and certainly a challenge.
Apart from teaching children, teenagers and adults I help out with the
teacher training programme at school. We are extremely lucky that our
school takes teacher training extremely seriously and weekly sessions
are organised to cater to our teacher’s needs. I have learnt so much
as a teacher trainer and have had to look into a wide range of areas
to ensure I am informed and able to deliver useful sessions. I have
noticed that as teachers we have many skills that are transferable to
teacher training, such as empathy, the desire to work as a team and
inquisitiveness.
The hours can be long and a higher salary would be desirable but I love
that feeling of achievement when a student can express themself in a
second language accurately.

Volume 31 Issue 4 43
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[ It works in practice ]
More tes
ted lesso
suggestio ns,
ns, tips a
techniqu nd
es which
have all

It Works
worked f
or MET r
Try them eaders.
out for y

in practice
– and th ourself
en send
own con us your
tribution
.

Developing Ideas
Daria Pankratova describes an activity to help learners Step 2. Let the learners listen to a pair of proficient speakers/strong
generate ideas in speaking activities. candidates doing the same task. I took one from their Student’s Book
(Objective First 4th edition for Spanish speakers p.130), but you could also
I believe that English teachers could (and should) develop learners’ minds,
record it with your colleague beforehand. While the learners listen, they
particularly given the range of material we have at our disposal. This lesson
complete a worksheet that shows ‘the flow of ideas’ in a conversation (see
aims to reduce the problem of ‘lacking ideas’ in speaking activities, at the same
Figure 1). Each bubble in Figure 1 represents one speaker’s idea. NB: my
time as showing learners their progress in the skill of speaking.
sample refers only to the dialogue I used.
One key component of teaching speaking is teaching to develop ideas. Many
teachers are only too familiar with the so-called ‘I don’t know what to say’ issue.
It is especially prominent in teenage learners who have less experience and Step 3. The learners in the same pairs listen to their own recorded sample and
knowledge of the world and thus have usually less to say. draw a similar diagram of their conversation. To make it more manageable each
learner may only focus on something he/she said.
This activity was developed for a group of teenagers preparing for B2 First,
where one of the speaking assessment sub-criteria descriptors is, ‘candidate is
able to maintain and develop the interaction’. My class had learners between 15 Step 4. Individually, looking at their diagrams, the learners think of other ideas
and 25 years old. Based on the Task-Based Learning approach, this activity also they could have suggested with each of their responses (see Figure 2 for a
allows learners to see their progress in speaking which is sometimes a difficult reference of what one of my learners came up with). The bubbles in Figure 2
thing to measure. contain original ideas of the learners: the ones they recorded, while the notes
Step 1. Ask your learners to do an interactive speaking activity (B2 First Speaking outside the bubbles are the ones the student added later.
Part 3) and tell them to record themselves while doing the task. In this example
the task is:
Food stalls
Which of these ideas would attract more people to an arts festival?
Stalls selling food; activities and events for children; stalls where people can
create their own art; an art exhibition by local schools.

Natalia
Natalia
If food is good - more people

Pedro
No. Many good cafés

Children activities

Pedro Pedro

Natalia
Natalia Concerned with legal issues
of looking after kids

Figure 1 The task that learners have to complete while listening to the recording of the model answer.

46 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com

 [ It works in practice ]

Step 5. Using the diagram they built individually, the learners compare their One other idea for a short practice task could be to develop the statement
ideas, and build a final conversation template. They then try to use it to do the further during class discussion, for example, ‘Organising study groups helps
same interactive speaking task again. It is a good idea to record it, too. learning.’ Everybody can pool ideas; it is easier to determine together which
ideas are useful and which are not and ideas belong to the group and no one
gets hurt if their idea is discarded. These tasks broaden learners’ views and
Step 6. As a reflection, they could listen to both recordings and compare their
allow them to look at the statement and the task from other perspectives,
performances on a number of points, such as:
which, in turn, helps to maintain and develop an interesting conversation.
■ Were my ideas more developed the second time?
■ How did I react to my partner’s words/ideas?
■ Could I have elaborated more on the topic?

Step 7. Follow up: to practise the skill of ideas development, I suggest doing
a series of short similar activities every other lesson: give the learners a
statement, for example, ‘Organising study groups helps learning’. Ask them to
discuss in pairs what they might say on the matter and record their ideas on the
board. Using these prompts they will find it easier to maintain a conversation.

Natalia
Ira
Me Activities for children
Exhibitions show things
Boring for other kids – good. Can’t put
that children made.
and parents activities and exhibition
Parents – proud.
together – too noisy

concert/masterclass with
other kids - show what
they can do Me
Yes, after activities –
hungry – need food

Need to be healthy, light, different time/different

something traditional? corners of the festival

Figure 2 The completed diagram of the real dialogue between my learners on the same topic, with red arrows
showing their later thoughts about how to improve the dialogue

Vocabulary revision
James Heal describes an activity to revise vocabulary
which requires very little preparation.
Ask all the students to come up to the main board. Draw a horizontal line across
the board so you have two clearly defined areas. Tell students they are going to
write a chain of words they have studied doing the term/year. Each new word
must start with the last letter from the previous word.
Nothing new until here ...
However, there is a twist to this activity.
Tell them that while they are writing on the board you will be monitoring closely As both groups are writing at the same time, I tell them they must keep an eye
to ensure they are words you have covered in that year/term. If they write a on what the other group is writing, since if both groups write the same word,
word which doesn’t correspond to the level, you will suddenly shout, ‘rubbing you will also shout out, ‘rubbing out!’ and they will have to start again from
out!’ (or whatever word takes your fancy) and eliminate all the words they have scratch. This means that students need to pay attention to what the other
written until then and they have to start again. This will ensure students are students are writing and stops them from simply copying from one another.
making an effort to remember the vocabulary they have covered recently. The first group to reach 20 words (or 15) wins.

www.modernenglishteacher.com Volume 31 Issue 4 47

[ Teacher education ]
Reflections
from online
observations
S
ince the Covid-19 pandemic
started and thrust us into
the unknown world of online
teaching, I have had the
privilege of observing a large
number of teachers transferring, many
for the first time, to teaching in an online
environment. It has been a steep learning
curve not only for the teachers but also for
myself: a new teacher trainer with limited
previous online teaching experience! I
have, however, been challenged by and
reflected on a lot of things along the way,
and I’d like to share my top eight insights
with you.
1.  Focus on the physical
For teachers used to in-presence teaching,
being confined inside a rectangle on a
screen can feel like having our wings
clipped. However, there are a number of
questions we can ask ourselves to help us
bring some physicality back to the online
48 Volume 31 Issue 4
classroom. For example, which non-
verbal gestures still work online (e.g. third
person), and which need to be modified to
suit online learning (e.g. ‘get into pairs’)?
How can I bring realia into the class to
get my students talking about the physical
world (e.g. students asking each other
questions about an object)? Are there
any activities in which I can encourage
students to stand up or move around (e.g.
treasure hunts or charades)? Am I close
enough to the webcam for students to
see my facial expressions, but far enough
that they can see my body for non-verbal
gestures? Is my background cluttered and
distracting, or clear enough to encourage
the students to focus on me?
2.  Think about tone of voice
Even if we do focus on the physical, as
suggested above, teaching online inevitably
means that some of the subtle cues that
our body language can provide are not
Emily Bray
offers some sound advice for
those of us teaching online.
as easily picked up on. Consequently,
our voices take on even more importance,
becoming one of the strongest clues
students have to our meaning and
intention. Additionally, consider that
we don’t always know the quality of the
students’ audio equipment, so our voices
may not be coming across as we imagine.
This doesn’t mean we should be talking
more (low teacher talk time is still an
admirable goal), but that it would be a
good idea to pay a little extra attention to
(and perhaps slightly exaggerate) what we
do with our voices when we speak. For
example, it’s easy to praise students with
a flat-toned ‘well done’ (especially if we
are already thinking about moving on to
the next activity), but the student may not
even recognise this as praise. Raising our
pitch or volume slightly can help it stand
out. Similarly, with correction, using rising
intonation invites self or peer correction
in a friendly way, whereas a flat or falling
tone can sound overly harsh and critical.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

3.  Great group work
By now, most of us know that breakout
rooms are really useful for speaking
and collaborative tasks, but that they
are also the times when students risk
going off task or getting confused. To
make them as effective as possible,
we need to make sure they are set up
clearly (e.g. modelling the task, checking
comprehension of the activity, giving an
opportunity for questions), monitored
well (particularly at the beginning to
make sure students are on task), and that
there is feedback at the end to bring the
activity to a conclusion (e.g. language
feedback, third person feedback,
getting students to perform to the rest
of the class). A word of caution: from
experience, including too many breakout
rooms can also lead to students feeling
abandoned or lost. A suitable number for
my own classes has turned out to be two
or three per one-hour lesson, but this will
depend on level, type of activity, and how
long classes are.
4.  Stop screen sharing
Viewing the teacher’s screen for
an entire lesson demands a lot of
concentration from students, and
can risk feeling boring, impersonal
or detached. We can mitigate this by
including ‘off screen’ moments – where
the screenshare mode is removed and
everyone can see each other’s beautiful
faces clearly! This feels more ‘real’,
enables everyone to interact more
authentically, and helps develop a better
sense of rapport. Good moments to do
this are at the beginning and the end of
the lesson, as well as during feedback
from breakout rooms/tasks.
5.  Take advantage of tech
There are now many technological
features and products (often free) that can
be used to enhance our online lessons
online. Understanding which ones are
useful/relevant to our materials and class
type can help us to increase engagement
and efficiency and generally enhance
the student experience. Possibilities
include, but are not limited to: in-built
features of video-calling software (e.g.
polls, breakout rooms, chat boxes); online
games websites (a personal favourite is
baamboozle.com); googling pictures or
www.modernenglishteacher.com
definitions to share with students as the
need arises; watching videos together
in class; using annotating tools to elicit
(e.g. highlighting the stressed syllable in
a word to elicit correct pronunciation);
using colourful arrows or boxes to show
students where to read/look on the
screen; creating ‘on the spot’ gap fills
and other exercises based on student
mistakes; and using symbols to mark
students’ work.
6.  Keep things simple
The next insight is really a word of
caution based on the previous point.
Given all the options available, it can
be tempting to introduce lots of new
technological elements into one lesson,
especially for tech savvy teachers.
Additionally, as we get used to switching
between screens, it can be easy to do this
at the speed of light, without considering
if the students are following us! Both
of these things can make our lessons
difficult for students to follow, or feel
disjointed or bitty. This can be combated
by having a strong core focus that unifies
the lesson, such as a coursebook or
PowerPoint, and being selective about
which supplementary elements we add
(as with breakout rooms, a few great
additions are better than lots of bitty
ones). Another tip is to open all the
materials you will need as tabs in one
browser window, (to make switching
between them easy), and to make sure
you intentionally give students a few
seconds to breathe before switching from
one screen/activity to another.
7.  Leave students a record
Enabling students to fully concentrate
on the lesson (instead of worrying about
taking notes), will drastically improve
engagement and means that they can
be more present and focused on things
like non-verbal gestures, annotation,
and the interactive elements of the class.
Online, this is actually easier to do than
in a physical classroom: we can save
and send the whiteboard or chat, create
a shared (Google) document to work on,
or even send a recording of the whole
session (if student consent and privacy
allows). Whichever form you use, you
will find that students hugely appreciate
having the key points to review after
the class!
[ Teacher education ]
8.  Be deliberate and purposeful
When we first started teaching online,
many of us will have felt nervous
and insecure about our new work
environment and tools, something
undoubtedly picked up on by our
students. Additionally, as mentioned
previously, a lot of the subtle cues that
can be communicated in person get lost
online. Consequently, teacher-student
interactions, such as giving instructions,
initiating drilling, praising, concept
checking and correction, can come
across as unclear or pass students by
entirety. This means we need to be extra
deliberate and clear about what we want
from our class, for example, nominating
students we want to respond (or clearly
indicating that anyone can answer),
giving purposeful praise and being
specific about what the student/s did
well (e.g. ‘great pronunciation!’), writing
corrections or interesting vocabulary
in the chat or on the whiteboard to
consolidate them, and specifically letting
students know if we want them to repeat
after us when drilling. Doing these
things will not only make us seem more
confident, but also give our students
confidence, as the lesson becomes
more dynamic and easier to follow/
participate in.
So, there we have it – my top eight
insights. I hope that these reflections will
prove useful for those of you who, like me,
will be continuing to teach/train online in
the future. Of course, many of the areas
above can serve as good reflection points
for in-person teaching too!
Emily Bray is the
Director of Studies
of MYES Connect: the
online branch of My
English School (a chain
of English schools
based in Italy, with
schools in France
and Spain). She has
worked in educational
environments for many years, and as an ELT
teacher since 2015. She has a CELTA, an MA in
Applied Linguistics and TESOL, and her current
professional interest is adapting and developing
successful teacher training programmes for
online teachers. Email: emilyestherbray@gmail.
com
Volume 31 Issue 4 49
[ Teacher education ]

On reflection 2: the
importance of reflection
in teacher training
I
Matthew Gordon n the previous issue of Modern English
Teacher, I argued for a structured
reflective skills a learning outcome on a
Trinity College London CertTESOL course.
continues his thoughts on approach to the development of
reflective skills in teacher reflective skills in teacher training, Methods to encourage the
training.
emphasising how the development development of reflective
of these skills can empower teachers to
develop their teaching according to their
skills
own needs and priorities. I also outlined In On reflection 1, drawing on Dewey
some techniques for how this development (1933) and Schön (1983), I suggested
could be encouraged. In order to show that a useful definition of reflection for
how some of these techniques worked in the purposes of teacher training is: the
practice, after briefly summarising the questioning by a teacher of their own
points raised in the previous article, I will pedagogical beliefs and practice with a
report some of the findings of research view to altering that practice. In practice,
I conducted into the effectiveness of my this means that teachers should use
attempt to make the development of evidence to examine and question their

50 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com


current practice and use this examination
and questioning to make changes to their
teaching.
The article stressed the importance of
setting a clear aim for trainees in order for
them to develop their reflective skills and
suggested Ward and McCotter’s (2004)
dialogic reflection as a reasonable aim
based on the above definition of reflection.
This type of reflection includes:
■ A focus on students which assists
teachers in collecting evidence about
the effect of their teaching practice.
■ Integration of other perspectives – for
example those of tutors or peers and
tutors – which can create conditions
conducive to the questioning of current
practice.
■ Ongoing enquiry which facilitates this
questioning.
■ An emphasis on a change in practice.
The article also outlined some possible
methods of encouraging the development
of trainees’ reflective skills. These
included a process of reflection which
supports this development including an
initial reaction to their lesson; spoken
feedback with tutors and peers and a
final more considered written reflection;
open-ended written reflection forms
designed with the learning aim in
mind; a focus on experimentation and
development over summative grading
of reflections and teaching practice and
the encouragement of open and nuanced
discussion of alternatives instead
of directive feedback. The research
described below focused on the effect of
these methods on the development of
teachers’ reflective skills.
Research findings
The research involved deductive analysis
of 10 trainees’ written reflections using
Ward and McCotter’s (2004) rubric,
inductive analysis of the transcripts of
interviews conducted with the same
trainees and inductive analysis of self-
evaluations of their reflective skills.
Relevant findings from the research are
outlined below.
1. The development of reflective skills
given specific learning aims
www.modernenglishteacher.com
Figure 1 Progression of participants’ written reflections from TP1 to TP6.
  In practice,
this means that
teachers should
use evidence to
examine and
question their
current practice
and use this
examination and
questioning to
make changes to
their teaching  different focus (listening, reading, writing,
The analysis of the written reflections
showed that, given a clear aim, all of
the participants’ reflections developed
from the first teaching practice lesson
(TP1) to the sixth (TP6). Figure 1 shows
this progression. Participants were
divided into those whose TP1 reflection
showed elements of both routine and
technical reflection (termed here routine-
technical reflection) and progressed to
show elements of technical and dialogic
reflection (technical-dialogic reflection);
those whose reflections progressed from
technical to technical-dialogic reflection;
those whose reflections progressed
from technical to dialogic reflection; and
those whose reflections progressed from
technical-dialogic to dialogic reflection
(see On reflection 1 for the description of
[ Teacher education ]
these levels of reflection). As can be seen,
all participants were able to integrate
some aspects of dialogic reflection into
their reflections and half of them reached
a fully dialogic level of reflection. They
were uniformly able to develop a focus
on students, were generally successful
at integrating other perspectives and
reaching new insights and were all able
to use their reflections to change their
teaching practice. There was less success
with the ability to engage in ongoing
enquiry.
This difficulty emphasises the importance
of setting learning aims which are
appropriate for the context. The teaching
practice on the CertTESOL is commonly
divided into six lessons, each with a
functions, grammar and lexis). These
different focuses make it difficult for
teachers to conduct ongoing enquiry.
They may have questions relevant to the
teaching of grammar which they want to
explore but this would be difficult to do in
a listening lesson, for example.
In the interviews, trainees described
finding criteria specifying clear learning
aims particularly useful, showing
the importance of these aims. This
importance is further emphasised by a
finding that trainees found an initial lack
of clarity on how to achieve certain aims
detrimental to the development of their
reflective skills.
2. The importance of feedback
One of the most common reasons given
by trainees for their success in the
development of a focus on students was
Volume 31 Issue 4 51
[ Teacher education ]
the feedback given by tutors, which often
focused on this area. Meanwhile, many
trainees who had found the development
of a particular reflective skill difficult
noted a lack of feedback as a reason. This
emphasises the importance of feedback in
the development of reflective skills and,
thus, the importance of a clear definition
and learning aims for trainers as well
as trainees. Without a clear idea of what
reflective skills trainees are aiming to
develop, trainers will not be able to give
effective feedback.
3. Other useful aspects of the course
Trainees described the ability to discuss
their lessons with peers and tutors in
spoken feedback as useful in order to
integrate other perspectives into their
reflection. Meanwhile, the new ideas
encountered in input sessions focused
on language awareness and teaching
skills combined with teaching practice
and reflection helped them to reach
new understandings and change their
perspective on teaching. This shows that
standard elements of TESOL Certificate
courses can have a positive effect on
trainees’ reflective skills when the
development of those skills is made a
central focus of these courses.
The written reflection pro forma described
in the previous article were also found to
be particularly useful by trainees in the
development of their reflective skills in
general. In particular, the way in which
these were linked to teaching practice
through the inclusion of personal aims
for the next lesson on the form helped
them to use their reflection to affect their
teaching practice. The habit built up in
this way also led to all of the trainees
interviewed applying aspects of the
process of reflection used on the course to
their teaching and/or other aspects of their
jobs. This shows the effect that a strong
focus on reflection can have on trainee
teachers in their future careers, which is,
ultimately, the goal of such a focus.
The development of
reflective skills in teacher
training
The findings noted above show the
relative success of a structured focus on
the development of reflective skills on a
CertTESOL course and, in particular, the
52 Volume 31 Issue 4
  Meanwhile, the new ideas encountered
in input sessions focused on language
awareness and teaching skills combined
with teaching practice and reflection helped
them to reach new understandings and
change their perspective on teaching. 
importance of clear learning aims being
set for both trainees and trainers. The
focus on reflection can help to maximise
the effect that other elements of the
CertTESOL have on the development of
reflective skills, while customised written
reflection pro forma were also found to
have a positive effect on this development.
Some negative findings also emphasise the
need for a clear learning aim which takes
account of the particular context in which
teaching is taking place.
While this article and On reflection 1
have focused on reflection on TESOL
Certificate courses, there is no reason
why the ideas mentioned cannot be
implemented in other contexts, such
as in-service professional development
programs. School managers who wish
to help teachers develop their reflective
skills should encourage them to question
their own practice, give them the freedom
to experiment with different approaches,
encourage open discussion between peers
and make class observations a learning
experience rather than using them for
evaluative purposes.
A teacher who is reflective has the ability
to develop their skills independently and
is empowered to do so according to their
own needs and priorities. This will likely
benefit their teaching skills, engagement
in their job and, ultimately, their students.
I would like to finish with a quote from
one of the participants from the study
outlined above which I feel sums up this
point neatly:
‘As I am often teaching the same lesson
to multiple classes with a restrictive
curriculum, I found myself stagnating
in my development. This reflection
process over this course has shown
me several ways to develop myself and
pose questions and experiment with my
regular teaching even within a restrictive
teaching curriculum.’
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the trainee
teachers whose efforts during the
reflective process outlined above made
it work. I would especially like to thank
those who participated in the research.
I would also like to thank the colleagues
and management who followed the
reflective process and supported me in its
implementation.
References
Dewey J (1933) How We Think: A Restatement
of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the
Educative Process. Lexington: DC Heath and
Company.
Schön D (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How
Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic
Books.
Ward JR & McCotter SS (2004) Reflection as a
visible outcome for preservice teachers. Teaching
and teacher education 20 (3) 243–257.
Matthew Gordon has
worked as a teacher of
General and Academic
English, academic
manager and teacher
trainer in China for
over 12 years. His areas
of interest include
logical argument in
academic writing,
reflective practice in teacher training and
discourse level aspects of spoken and written
English. He currently works as a Lecturer of EAP
and as a freelance Teacher Trainer on the Trinity
College, London CertTESOL and DipTESOL. He
has a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and
TESOL, a PgCert in Teaching English for Academic
Purposes and a DipTESOL.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
 ETpedia Teacher Training
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ETpedia Teacher Training provides both new and more
experienced teacher trainers with pointers, ideas and
activities to support both pre- and in-service teachers.
In addition, you can use it in a variety of different teaching contexts,
including in the classroom and online. Each unit of 10 tips is easy
to use and will aid or inspire you whether you are dipping in for a
quick idea or looking for more comprehensive guidance.
ETpedia Teaching Training is packed with ideas for beginning
TT courses, input sessions, teaching practice, lesson planning,
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[ Teacher education ]
Katarzyna Kępińska
offers some useful advice to
candidates.
F
or the past four years I have
been tutoring teachers preparing
to take Delta Module 1. Quite
a few teachers perceive it as
the first step in their journey
toward a full Delta qualification. This
theoretical exam might be intimidating
though. In the following article, I will try
to answer five questions I regularly get
asked, hoping that you may find some
of my answers useful if you are thinking
about doing it, too. I will then move on
to outlining potential pitfalls for each
task and I will try to suggest some ways
to avoid these.
1. How do I prepare for Delta
Module 1?
This is a very broad question, asked
usually before any decisions are actually
taken. The easiest answer would be: do
a course with one of the exam centres.
While this is a very good idea, there is a
lot of work you need to do on your own,
possibly even before your course starts.
54 Volume 31 Issue 4
Delta Module 1:
tips and pitfalls
First of all, go back to your notes on 2. How do I learn to analyse
language analysis from your CELTA language better?
course. It really is important to read
Well, there are a few things you can
up on language quite a lot. Focus on
do about that. Start with studying the
different uses of the same structure as
language pages in the coursebooks and
this is something which regularly features
teacher’s books you are using and pay
in the exam, e.g. ‘Is the agent always
attention to how the same structures are
unimportant/unknown in passive voice?’.
presented in a different way (often with
different shades of meaning) depending
Secondly, go back to your notes on stage
on the level. Present Perfect will be
aims from your CELTA course. In Paper
discussed to a different depth at A1
2 you will be asked to analyse activities
compared to B1.
from a coursebook and you will have to
write lots of aims. Reviewing these will
Another thing you could do is read
prove invaluable. While you are at it, make
grammar/vocabulary reference books
sure you pay attention to how coursebook
dedicated to different levels and see what
lessons are organised and try to find
they focus on. While books for A2 learners
links between activities. I’m sure that
will deal with widening the range of
your listening is there to contextualise the
simple grammar and vocabulary items, C1
grammar bit that follows. All the examples
content is going to be more about idioms,
of target language are probably taken from
collocations and less obvious ways of using
that very listening, too.
certain grammar structures.
Finally, have a look at Quizlet. You’ll find
Last but not least, ask to teach various
sets of flashcards dedicated to Delta M1.
levels at your language centre, if possible.
It can be really helpful when it comes to
This will give you a chance to actually do
terminology and definitions!
www.modernenglishteacher.com

all of the above as part of your job so that
you don’t have to add yet another task to
your busy schedule.
3. How long should I spend on
each task?
The answer is quite straightforward,
really. For each paper, there are 90
minutes and 100 marks to get. We can
assume then that the number of marks
available for a task corresponds roughly
to the number of minutes you should
spend on it.
2. Task 2:
4. Should I start from the first
task?
It is entirely up to you, but I’d say no.
The first two tasks are about definitions
and these can be tricky. It might be a
good idea to go back to them at the end
if you have time. What’s more, Task 1
3. Task 3:
is only worth 6 marks so you may want
to deal with something more valuable
first. Task 5 is worth 50 marks (half
of the marks available for this Paper
One) so why not spend 45 minutes on it
(half the time), and then move on to the
other tasks?
5. Can I write in block letters
only?
Hmm, that’s a tough one. I’d say it’s not
advisable but if your handwriting really
is illegible, then just make sure that it is
clear which letters are capitalised in your
sentences.
I know that some solutions I have just
suggested, such as going back to your
CELTA notes, are very simple but I believe
they are underestimated. I also believe that
in order to fully benefit from a preparatory
course or in order to be well-prepared for
4. Task 4:
the exam itself, you really need to refresh
the basics. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty
then and see what the potential pitfalls
are, ordered by task.
Paper 1 potential pitfalls
1. Task 1:
This task is only worth six marks, and
the pitfall is to get stuck, which can
result in lack of time for the final task,
which is worth 50 marks.
Advice: start from Task 5 and spend 45
minutes on it. Also, if you don’t know
the answer to a question, move on.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
  While books for A2 learners will
deal with widening the range of simple
grammar and vocabulary items, C1
content is going to be more about idioms,
collocations and less obvious ways of using
certain grammar structures. 
a. Spending more than 10 minutes on
this task.
Advice: Writing definitions might
be tricky, so write the first thing
that comes to your mind and don’t
forget to state the obvious (e.g. that a
modal verb is an auxiliary).
a. Writing more key language features
than required by the task. If the task
asks you to write three language
features, the marker is going to read
the first three. Writing more is a
waste of time.
Advice: Read the task carefully and
organise your answer as a numbered
list. This will help you see how many
points you already have.
b. Coming up with features which
are incompatible with the level in
the task, e.g. mentioning language
for agreeing and disagreeing and
exemplifying with: ‘I agree with you’
/ ‘I’m not sure about that’ might be a
bit too easy for a C1 learner.
Advice: Read the task, highlight
the level and write the level again
somewhere on the answer sheet for
you not to forget it.
a. Mentioning four key strengths AND
four key weaknesses as opposed to
four in total. Again, the marker is not
going to read more than four points
in total so writing more is a waste
of time. Don’t worry, you will have
plenty of chances to show how much
you know.
Advice: Again, organise your answer
into a numbered list. Also, be clear
if your point is a strength or a
weakness.
b. Not sticking to the categories given in
the task, e.g. writing about accuracy
[ Teacher education ]
of vocabulary when asked to write
about its range.
Advice: Write a numbered list first
and next to each number write one
category from the task. This will
help you stay on task. If there are
more categories than points to make,
you can skip one. If there are fewer
categories than the points you need
to make, you can make two remarks
within the same category.
c. Writing about strengths/weaknesses,
which are not key, e.g. sometimes
there are more important problems
than incorrect punctuation,
especially with lower levels.
Advice: Think about the frequency
of the error and how it influences
the reader/listener. If the message is
blurred because of the errors, then
this is one of the key weaknesses. If
something makes you view the text/
utterance in a positive way, that’s
one of the key strengths.
d. Writing about strengths/weaknesses
which are not coherent with the level
in the task, e.g. using modal verbs
for speculation about the present
might be appropriate for B1 but not
for C1.
Advice: Similarly to the advice in
Task 3, read the task, highlight the
level and write it somewhere in your
answer sheet. This will hopefully
make you think about it.
5. Task 5:
a. In part a, including features which
are too broad, e.g. using present
tenses. Many genres use present
tenses so you’d need to make it more
specific.
Advice: Try to state the purpose of
the feature, e.g. using present tenses,
such as Present Simple and Present
Continuous, to make the narrative
more dynamic.
Volume 31 Issue 4 55
[ Teacher education ]
b. In parts b, c and d, analysing
language as if it wasn’t
contextualised, i.e. not taking into
account the text printed in the task,
which the language items come from.
Advice: always think about the
context, e.g. ‘broadcast’ can be an
infinitive but if it happens to be
in a sentence which reads: ‘The
programme, broadcast by three
different TV channels, has become
an overnight sensation!’, it should
be treated as a part of a reduced
passive relative clause.
c. Analysing something other than
target language, e.g. if the task is to
analyse ‘I had my bike stolen’, focus
on the analysis of causative ‘have’
and not on ‘bike’, unless the task
asks you to.
Advice: read the rubric and highlight
what you need to analyse. After
that, highlight the structure / word
to be analysed in each example that
follows. Then transfer the structure
to your answer sheet. This will
hopefully help you stay on task.
d. Stating that a structure is always
used for the same purpose in
different examples. It’s hardly ever
true on M1. If you are asked to
analyse four examples of the passive,
it is probably used for various
purposes so you really need to look
deeper.
Advice: Your prep work on language
analysis will show here. Think
back to what information you give
learners at different levels about
these language items. Then go back
to the original context and see how
they were used there. This should
give you some ideas of what to write.
If you still don’t know, then state the
obvious things and move on.
e. Confusing items which look the same
but are different, e.g. ‘If you wanted
it, you would find the means’ is an
example of the second conditional
but ‘I saw her a month ago and she
said that if you wanted it, you would
find the means. I guess it’s too late
now,’ is a reported first conditional,
even though they look the same.
Advice: Cambridge hardly ever ask you to
analyse identical structures twice. Bear
that in mind and look deeper. Going back
to the original context will hopefully help
with that.
56 Volume 31 Issue 4
  I also believe
that in order to
fully benefit from a
preparatory course
or in order to be
well-prepared for
the exam itself,
you really need
to refresh the
basics.  follows, I bet there are examples of
f. Imprecise information on
pronunciation.
Advice: If you decide to underline
parts of words to show word stress,
make sure you underline ONLY the
vowel which is stressed, nothing
else. Try to be precise so that there
is no doubt about your answer.
Another thing is, if you are not
sure about the terminology, don’t
use it. It’s far better to describe the
connected speech process than to
use the wrong term.
Paper 2 potential pitfalls
1. Task 1:
a. Using testing terminology without
actually writing about the features
of the test, e.g. claiming that
‘Content validity is high’ and never
saying why.
Advice: Make it clear that you know
what content validity is. Similarly
to the pronunciation advice in
the previous point, it is far better
to describe the feature than to
use lots of fancy terms without
demonstrating that you know what
they mean. You could write: The
students studied email writing and
the test asks them to write an email
so its content validity is high. Now,
this shows that you know what you
are talking about.
b. Writing six positive and six negative
points as opposed to six points in
total. Writing more than necessary
is a waste of time, nobody is going to
read them.
Advice: Organise your answer into
a numbered list with a maximum of
six points and state which remarks
are positive and which ones are
negative.
2. Task 2:
a. Looking at exercises in this task in
isolation, as if they weren’t preceded
and followed by any other tasks.
Advice: Even if you are asked to
analyse only selected exercises from
the extract reproduced in the test,
you really need to look at the other
tasks and find the connection. E.g.,
if there is a text to read or listen to
and some grammar or vocabulary
target language in that text. That
means it is there to contextualise
target language which is going to
be presented in the subsequent
exercises. Exercises are always
connected with each other, even if
only by the topic.
3. Task 3:
Going off-topic. If you are asked to
write about ways of giving feedback
on language, avoid writing about
content feedback.
Advice: Read the rubric carefully,
highlight key words and write them
somewhere in your answer sheet.
This is what I have observed and learned
in the four years I’ve been tutoring Delta
Module 1 courses. I do realise that some
of this advice might be stating the obvious.
However, this is something that teachers
often forget to do under exam conditions:
to state the obvious. I really hope it helps
and good luck with your Module 1!
Katarzyna Kępińska
holds the Cambridge
Delta diploma and
an MA in Linguistics
and has worked
internationally
for over 13 years.
She is currently an
EAP teacher at the
University of Wrocław,
a teacher trainer at IH and The University of
Lower Silesia, and a materials writer for a
Polish publishing house, Edgard. Her book with
poems for children is coming out this year.
Email: goteflteachers@gmail.com; blog: https://
goteflteachers.wordpress.com/
www.modernenglishteacher.com

The ABC of being
a teacher in the
‘new normal’
I
Natalia Wright t has been almost two years since the
Covid-19 crisis disrupted our living
argues for a change of attitude and teaching routines. However, even
towards teachers. if we managed to get ourselves more
or less ‘back on track’ by adapting
our lifestyles to the changed habitat of
our new existence, the situation in the
educational domain is still very poor.
In English Teaching Professional issue
129, while warning against a probable
future of education where teachers are
made redundant, I described them as the
central agents capable of bringing positive
changes, especially in these turbulent
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ In my opinion ]
times. What was and is still needed is
support and encouragement from the
administration and policymakers as
teachers’ lives have not improved over
those two years, to say the least. In this
article, I wish to continue this conversation
about what it is like to be a teacher in the
‘new normal’, the challenges educators
still face, and what has to be done to
prevent them from leaving the profession.
In doing so, I continue to knock on the
doors of the ivory tower of the neoliberal
structure that undergirds the entire system
of contemporary education.
Volume 31 Issue 4 57
[ In my opinion ]
The digitalised context of
the ‘new normal’
When the online mode of teaching
became a necessity, teachers were
assigned the responsibility of making
learning happen. They were the ones
who eagerly responded to the duty.
Suddenly, they were grappling not so
much with what to teach but how to
teach. Not surprisingly, challenged by
technology (or the absence thereof),
teachers felt that they lacked the
technical component in their knowledge
base. I myself am a big fan of technology.
I willingly plunge into ‘the unknown’,
especially if that makes transmitting
the knowledge possible. However, I did
not envisage that the significant part
of lesson preparation time and my
weekends would be spent mastering
the new tools. Words like ‘upload’,
‘download’, ‘redeem a code’, ‘(un)mute
your mics’, ‘use the chat’, and many
others have come to forever occupy my
everyday teaching vocabulary.
A is for anxiety, adaptation,
apathy and attrition
Almost two years later, I see very little
has changed in terms of how teachers feel
towards what they do or what they have
been forced to do. They are still anxious
about what tomorrow will bring and
how they are going to deal with it. New
instructional modes that require a lot of
adaptation have not brought much joy
back into teaching. We proudly announce
that we have gone hybrid, but in essence,
we have not departed far from where we
had started.
I work as an English instructor, and I
have always felt that to instruct, as the
Oxford dictionary definition goes, is ‘to
teach (someone) a subject or skill’. Under
the new circumstances, the word has
taken on a somewhat different angle that
views the teacher as the one who ‘tell[s]
someone to do something, especially in
a formal or official way’.
Another issue concerns the quality
of teaching. As educators, we strive
towards excellence in what we do;
we try our best to reach out to every
student in a personalised and learner-
centred manner. However, many
58 Volume 31 Issue 4
  Almost two
years later, I see
very little has
changed in terms
of how teachers
feel towards what
they do or what
they have been
forced to do.  the physical and psychological health
extra hours of work that resulted in
teachers’ exhaustion have thwarted our
enthusiasm for what we once so dearly
loved, leading to apathy. Therefore, the
only best we can do is what is best under
the circumstances.
In addition, the job market has reoriented
its demands toward online teaching,
giving rise to newly coined job-related
titles. Here are some of them found
in the international job database
called Teachaway: ‘online English
teacher’, ‘online ESL tutor’, ‘virtual
English teacher’. The core of such job
requirements is the ‘ability to provide
instruction in a virtual classroom’. Many
of us, the ‘old school’ professionals, are
against such nomenclature as this is not
what lies at the heart of what we do in
the classroom, and this is certainly not
how we see ourselves in the future. No
wonder teachers’ attrition rates have
increased dramatically. In my workplace,
we have lost six teachers over the last
two semesters. Two more have just
resigned and are seriously reconsidering
their careers. Doesn’t that remind you
of Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory?
It certainly does me.
B is for burnout, burdened
and baffled
The rapid move to online learning
without sufficient training and guidance
left teachers burdened with solving
this problem on their own and having
to come up with new classroom
pedagogies overnight. I must admit
that my university has provided us with
a series of professional development
sessions that focused on using specific
technology-based applications but not
on disciplinary content or pedagogical
approaches. While I acknowledge the
importance of technology, I believe that
it alone is still inadequate to achieve
successful results. More importantly,
thrown into the ‘unchartered waters’,
teachers are baffled with how to handle
not only students’ well-being but also
their own health issues. Various ‘sink
or swim’ situations have had a toll on
of teachers. Teachers worldwide report
high levels of depression, online fatigue,
burnout, and lack of emotional or
psychological support from management.
Add the feelings of isolation to this list,
and you will easily get the portrait of a
modern-day teacher.
C is for confusion, conflict
and concerns
What worries me is that the newly
pandemic-imposed role of teachers as
‘front liners’ has become synonymous
with ‘risk takers’, whose concerns are
often overlooked because the job by
default implies irregular work hours
and excessive workload. Teachers had
very little to do with the major decisions
regarding the new modes of instruction.
Yet somehow, they are the ones who
implement these decisions, often having
to go against their grain, thus being in
conflict with themselves.
As I sit glued to my desk in the
classroom every day, I have to juggle
between a physical and virtual class
simultaneously. With my mask on,
I teach students the difference between
‘run’ and ‘ran’, albeit unsuccessfully.
To minimise their confusion, I write
the difference on the virtual board.
The students finally see what I mean.
Suddenly, I cough, then take a sip of
water and continue to strain my already
stressed vocal cords, then I cough again.
I stand up and go outside to grab a bit of
air and then go back to the classroom.
I have another class after this in ten
minutes. Just hang in there. After the
day is over, grieving over a loss of the
traditional way of teaching, I dream of a
better future for education.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
Towards a human-centred
approach
It has become clear that many of us may
need help adjusting to the new teaching
conditions during these turbulent times
of change and uncertainty. One way to
provide such support can be seen in
adopting a human-centred approach to
teachers. The idea behind this approach
is that teachers are placed at the centre
of educational processes. In essence, this
approach prioritises the whole person
and their well-being. At the same time, it
aims to value and foster essential human
elements such as care and compassion.
Such a stance would require a reappraisal
of people’s understanding of those who
teach as human beings with a wide range
of emotional needs inherent to their
human nature.
First of all, educational establishments
should facilitate a supportive work
environment where educators are
provided with professional and
psychological assistance to cope with
stressful experiences. The cliché of ‘What
doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ does
not act as an encouragement here.
Another step is to make teachers co-
creators of knowledge by giving them the
power to make decisions regarding the
whats and hows of teaching as they know
better than policymakers what works best
for their students.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
We should stop ‘singing dithyrambs’ to
technological advances. After all, they
other. And everybody is scared. But
at least, as Charlie Mackesy’s (2019)
come alive only in the hands of their inspirational quote goes, ‘… we are all
users. Instead, there is a necessity for less scared together’.
collaboration between educators and big
tech heads to create new ways of teaching
and learning that would empower both
teachers and learners. Such methods
would allow us to re-envision the
classroom, which promotes and sustains
creative pedagogies.
A human-centred approach indeed calls
for a redefinition of a teacher’s role as
a humanist who treats their students as
human beings with their worries and
imperfections and whose teaching is
geared toward helping their learners fulfil
their own potential.
On a final note
References
When I recollect the consequences
Mackesy C & Schumann R (2019) The boy, the
of the pandemic, I imagine with fear mole, the fox and the horse. London: Ebury
what’s is still to come. Akin to the
Covid-19 symptoms patients acquire,
as educators we have developed a kind Natalia Wright has
of ‘anosmia’, the loss of sense of smell been an EFL teacher
that has manifested itself in our loss of and teacher trainer
for over 20 years in
the sense of who we are as educators.
Russia and abroad.
In light of the above, what is needed Now based in Kuwait,
now is to turn our gaze to teachers and she works as an
listen to their voices as warning bells English instructor
about what is coming next if they are at the University
of the Middle East.
not heard. But these voices are barely
She holds an MA in Language Education from
audible behind the thick walls of the the University of Chichester and currently is
staff room. Meanwhile, in the absence of an EdD student at the University of Glasgow.
other support, teachers find consolation, Her research interests include social justice in
comfort, and encouragement from each ELT and teacher identity.
Volume 31 Issue 4 59
[ Management ]
Coping
strategies for
the residential
teacher 2
Placement testing
You are quite likely to find that you will
be expected to administer placement
tests and assess students on their
first full day. If you have a group who
arrived late the previous evening and/
or had a long and eventful journey you
are distinctly likely to have a set of
placement results that do not reflect the
students’ ability and levels accurately.
There’s always a few students who
freeze like rabbits in the headlights
when faced with a speaking test at any
time too. They may not have had a good
night’s sleep, not eaten well, be away
from home and family for the first time,
and so anything could happen!
60 Volume 31 Issue 4
If you have an allocated classroom for
testing I would counsel you to prepare
as much as you can the evening before.
Often, placement tests take the form of a
multiple choice grammar and vocabulary
test, a piece of free writing and a speaking
test. What I do is to copy the format of
the two writing parts onto the whiteboard
along with an example of how they are
filled in. This gives students a visual
model that works with people of all
language levels. I also fill it in in block
capitals because if the student copies it in
the same way, their names are easier to
read if they have bad handwriting or they
don’t use the Roman alphabet in their
first language (L1). In making things as
easy as possible for people sitting the test,
Matthew Hallett
In his second article, Matthew
Hallett looks at the testing and
teaching side of things.
you make it easier for yourself and any
colleagues involved in the marking and
assessment process.
On that note, make sure you check
names are written clearly on every
document before taking in each piece
of paper! There’s nothing worse
than being handed papers without
names on them, or papers with just
a first name. Whoever is in charge of
allocating classes is not going to look
at you favourably if they are left to play
Sherlock Holmes and have to work out
who a student is on top of an already
time-pressurised task in creating classes
and registers and assigning teachers to
them. Testing day is often aptly named!
www.modernenglishteacher.com
There is almost certainly going to be the
marking of grammar and vocabulary tests.
Whenever I was a Director of Studies on a
residential school and we had a multiple
choice test, I would get the teachers to
mark the tests together with the students
in class so that I would already have
everyone’s mark and not have to waste
time marking the tests by myself. It’s far
more efficient and reduces room for stress
induced mistakes. I would usually avoid
sticking to an arbitrary timetable when
everyone was being tested. My focus was
to get everyone tested properly before
anyone went for a break and move that
day’s timings around what needed to
get done. It’s a much more sensible way
to do things. There’s no point having
dozens or hundreds of students waiting in
classrooms for a while just because such
and such a time is ‘break time’ when the
focus is on testing and allocation. Nor is it
wise to let everyone out before the testing
process is properly finished for everyone
because the timetable says that’s when
you have a break. The point of a schedule
is to make it work for the purpose you
have in mind: it is not to make the purpose
fit the schedule. If you drive to work and
you know there are roadworks about to
take place, do you drive to work at the
same time because that’s the time you
always drive to work, or do you set off a
little earlier to compensate for the delays?
I am of the school of thought that thinks
www.modernenglishteacher.com
it is better to do this most important
task properly at the first time of asking
rather than rush teachers who may be
inexperienced or who are working for
the company for the first time and are
not entirely familiar or comfortable with
the process – and have to reallocate
students later.
It is possible that once papers have been
marked the allocation process may be
a collaborative one with the Director of
Studies and others. My advice is to speak
your mind when asked or if you think
something is worth pointing out. Be honest
and be brief – a good manager will respect
that. Otherwise just help by being efficient
and following instructions: that too will
be noticed and appreciated. Basically,
this is the day for following the aphorism
‘Lead, follow, or get out of the way’! And
as Aristotle observed, ‘He who cannot be a
good follower cannot be a good leader.’
Another part of placement testing is
speaking tests. This is often a source
of stress for both those inexperienced
at doing them and those who have to
interpret the results for the purposes of
student allocation. Often a teacher is given
a piece of paper with a series of questions
to ask a student where the questions are
listed in level order. They usually come
with no practical guidance for the novice
speaking tester and so, unsurprisingly,
they often yield unhelpful assessments and
misallocated students.
What is helpful is a question with an
example answer that demonstrates
a command of the language at that
particular level along with an example
that demonstrates comprehension but not
the level of grammatical competence for
which the tester is listening. For example,
‘Tell me some rules at your school’ is
looking for ‘We must/have to…’ as part
of the answer at a low B1 level, whereas
an answer like ‘do homework’ is not
demonstrating B1 English. With such an
approach the teacher has material that
supports them and makes it easier for
them to make a more reliable diagnosis.
It also makes the tester more confident
and usually quicker, thus helping to meet
those testing day deadlines.
I have been using an oral examination
sheet (whose origins remain a mystery
to me despite Google) with the levels,
questions, suitable and unsuitable
answers laid out in a table for years and
shared it with colleagues. At one school,
I discovered one of my colleagues used
the identical sheet, and as some of the
other teachers found it very helpful, they
decided to try and persuade the senior
teacher to change the company placement
test to the same format. We knew she
would automatically reject any suggestion
Volume 31 Issue 4 61
[ Management ]
that came from me so two of the teachers
that she was prepared to listen to showed
her the form and talked her through it
and explained how and why teachers
find it helpful. So she went away and
proceeded to put the questions in boxes
and completely ignored the suitable and
unsuitable answers! I’ve encountered
plenty of people who think inside the box
but not met many whose response to a
problem is to literally reframe it in a box!
In the classroom
Most residential schools tend to focus
lessons on confidence, communicative
ability and, specifically, speaking fluency.
This sometimes gets accompanied by an
in-house syllabus. If you have to teach it,
get familiar with it and work out where
the weaknesses are and how to adapt it.
It’s the speaking skills and usually the
emphasis on building both confidence
and fluency that are the main educational
reasons that children go abroad to an
English-speaking country. Given that
most people attending a residential school
are there for a week or two, you have to
accept that you are unlikely to make a
major impact on someone’s grammar in
that time but you can probably make a
significant different to someone’s speaking
skills if you concentrate your efforts in a
particular direction. Have a few interesting
speaking activities in your back pocket
that you can use as a meaningful activity,
containing variety, that can be done as a
carousel. Carousel activities are a form
of cooperative learning where students
move round the class and repeat the
same task(s) or exercise(s) with different
individuals. It’s good practice because
repetition ‘...has been identified as the
single most important factor in making
language memorable’ (Bilbrough, 2011:
43). Have some activities prepared that
require no technology and even no
resources whatsoever. That way, you’re
prepared for most eventualities.
In terms of practical classroom
management, a lot depends on the
nationality makeup of the students. If
you are lucky and have a multilingual
classroom, make sure you try to prevent
students with the same L1 sitting together.
They might promise to speak English only
in the classroom but they rarely keep that
promise! Often they have come together as
part of the same group and already know
62 Volume 31 Issue 4
  The point of
a schedule is to
make it work for
the purpose you
have in mind: it
is not to make the
purpose fit the
schedule. 
each other and about each other so they
finish an activity quicker. It also defeats
the purpose of people coming from all over
the world to mix together. In order to try
and prevent this problem I give students
the instruction to sit next to someone who
speaks a different language from them
straight after I’ve taken the register. The
numbers rarely fall perfectly but it sets
the tone and the expectations from the
start. And to avoid any hint of mutiny,
you have to remind them that they’ll all get
the chance to speak with everyone in the
group during the lesson.
As residential schools normally have
students staying for a fortnight at most
there’s a high chance you will end up
having to teach the same level classes for
four or six weeks, or maybe even longer.
This means that the pragmatic teacher
should be thinking about recycling lesson
material. It’s not being lazy as long as you
remember the purpose of your materials
and your lesson aims and objectives and
tailor it a little for each group. Also, if you
have a school where you have the freedom
to teach the material of your choice, it’s a
golden opportunity to try new materials
and strategies as well.
Preparation is the key to
happiness
The second summer I did residential
teaching, within days every week my
students asked me why I was so much less
stressed than the other teachers! As I’d
done my photocopying and lesson prep the
evening before, I’d stroll into the staffroom
in the morning, pick up my box and go
to class all relaxed and happy instead of
queueing to do last minute copying in a
staffroom which was like a greenhouse.
I’d do likewise after lunch (making time
for a proper coffee and a modest walk),
rolling in, grabbing my things and going.
Students notice these things far more
than many teachers give them credit for!
And that leads me to the most important
teaching tip: do your preparation and
copying the evening before. You won’t
end up panicky and stressed and hoping
you can use the photocopier ten minutes
before your lessons are due to start and
your breaks will be your own and you can
relax. Standing in a queue minutes before
a lesson is due to begin is a situation that
increases your average teacher’s stress
levels. What makes them go through the
roof is when the photocopier breaks down
and/or gets removed by IT or support staff,
usually without much notice. This happens
regularly on residential courses as most
teachers tend to find themselves copying
more than they normally would whether
through choice or not.
Another frequent source of frustration is
computer security concerning USB ports.
Often you might find yourself unable to
use your USB stick with the institution’s
computers or unable to print something
directly from your USB stick inserted
into a photocopier. Find out if there are
any practical problems like this as soon
as possible and alternative solutions as
quickly as possible.
Residential schools are usually intense,
fast-paced affairs that can prove
very stressful for the unwary and the
unprepared. On the other hand, they can
be an enriching and rewarding experience
for the mentally and professionally
prepared teacher.
References
Bilbrough N (2011) Memory Activities for
Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Matthew Hallett
holds an MEd and
has been a teacher,
director of studies,
and course materials
writer. He is a veteran
of residential schools
where he has been a
teacher, activity leader,
AdoS and DoS.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Holly Morgan
Student-
facing lesson
describes the why, when and
how.
objectives
A
s teachers, trainers, and
academic managers we have
all spent hours perfecting our
lesson objectives to make sure
they exactly capture what we
want our learners to achieve.
We are often this rigorous ‘because
we have to’: the pressure of a lesson
observation or a dreaded DELTA Module
2 teaching practice, where the stakes for
not achieving these objectives are high.
But what about beyond these ‘because
we have to’ scenarios: isn’t there a value
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Management ]
in lesson objectives for the students?
How can we communicate our aims for a
lesson to students in a way that isn’t overly
complex or confusing?
For me, the starting point for writing
lesson objectives, regardless of the
reason, is to look at the type of lesson I
am teaching. Usually this boils down to
whether the lesson is language focused
(grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation)
or skills focused (reading, speaking,
listening, writing.) We are also often
guided by the material; we are familiar
Volume 31 Issue 4 63
[ Management ]
with the one unit per week of the textbook
approach, and by any syllabus that we
might be following.
For lesson objectives to fully communicate
what we want them to, we need to look at
them through a SMART lens:
■ Specific: What exactly do you want the
learners to be able to do?
■ Measurable: How will you know the
students can do it at the end of the
lesson?
■ Achievable: Do the learners have the
language level to achieve the objective?
■ Realistic: Can the learners see the value
in the objective?
■ Time-Bound: Is it possible to achieve
the objective within the lesson length?
So far, so typical when we write objectives
for observations. But let’s home in on the
idea of being realistic. Here we really need
to put ourselves in the learners’ shoes.
It’s all well and good writing a fantastic
lesson objective for an observation, but
if we board that objective and it has no
relevance or meaning for our learners,
then it has really missed the mark. Like
everything we do in the classroom, our
objectives need to be all about the learners.
What do our learners want to get from
our lessons then, I hear you ask! And the
answer is simple and fairly obvious, they
want to be able to use what they have
learned in class outside the classroom
in their real lives. Of course, they may
also have very specific motivations such
as career advancement or future study
at a university, but the ‘want’ from each
lesson I believe remains largely the same.
To meet the learners’ expectations, we
therefore need to make what is learnt in
class relevant to their real lives and really
focus on how language is used.
Regardless of whether we are native or
proficient speakers of English, we have
all opened a textbook at one point, looked
at the grammar point and thought to
ourselves that it is an unusual context for
By the end of the lesson, we will be better able to
Time bound Achievable/Measurable
64 Volume 31 Issue 4
  To meet
the learners’
expectations, we
therefore need
to make what is
learnt in class
relevant to their
real lives and
really focus on
how language is
used.  about skills-based lessons, where we focus
it to be presented in. I have in the past
been guilty of plodding on and teaching
the grammar point as it is from the book
and wondering why the students have
struggled to assimilate it. How can we
expect learners to use new language
if they can’t see how they would use it
outside the classroom?
Of course, textbook writers have a tough
job and it’s difficult to match the context
of the language use to a coursebook unit
topic. Is it our job, however, as teachers
to look at our materials critically and to
create or find alternatives if we think the
language is not presented in a real life
context or function.
So, we have our materials and we have
identified the context in which we would
naturally use the language or subskills:
what now? Here we come to the nitty
gritty of putting our objectives down on
paper. Let’s consider an example; you
want to teach adjectives of personality and
have identified that a real-life use of this
language would be to describe our family
and friends’ personalities. After all, we
often talk about those closest to us when
interacting with different people. I would
construct the objective as shown below.
describe our family and friends’
personalities
Specific/Relevant
As you can see in the table, my objective
is fully SMART. I know that when my
learners leave the class they will be able
to tell me exactly when they will use
adjectives of personality. They should also
be much more confident in trying to use
the language outside the classroom.
I always structure my objectives with
the phrase ‘we will be better able to,’
to not only show a sense of inclusivity
with ‘we’ but also to emphasise that we
cannot expect a group of learners to fully
assimilate new language in a one-hour
lesson. If that was possible then we would
all sadly be out of a job!
We can also use the same concept to think
on reading, listening, speaking, or writing.
Again, I want to think about the skills task
in my textbook or chosen materials and
how I could use this same skill or subskill
outside the classroom.
Let’s think about a typical reading task
as an example – a task where we ask
students to match headings to different
paragraphs in a short article. Here we
want our students to read for general gist
or general information to identify the key
information in each paragraph. Therefore,
I could structure my objectives as follows:
‘By the end of the lesson, we will be better
able to read for general information in a
newspaper article about X.’
As with my language-based objective
earlier, this objective is time-bound,
achievable and measurable, specific and
relevant to the learners’ lives outside the
classroom as they will need to skim many
texts quickly in their daily lives to find the
key information.
So, what’s the difference between a great
and a weaker objective? Let’s consider the
objectives below:
1. By the end of the lesson, we
will be better able to read a
newspaper article.
using different adjectives.
Language focus/skill
www.modernenglishteacher.com
 2. By the end of the lesson, we will be
better able to talk about something
interesting that happened to us
recently using narrative tenses
(past simple, past continuous and
past perfect).
3. Listen for specific information in a
radio show about pets.
Objective 1 needs a little work. Yes, it is
time bound and measurable to some
degree, but it doesn’t give any indication
what specific reading subskills are
going to be worked on. It is also doesn’t
demonstrate to the learners how they
could what they learnt in class in the
future outside the classroom.
Objectives 2 and 3, on the other hand,
are much better as they are much more
specific about the language work or
skills work which is going to happen in
the classroom. The second objective, in
particular, also demonstrates how the
key grammar point can be used rather
than focusing on the metalanguage which
often means little to our learners. They
are much more likely to recycle and use
the language outside the classroom if
they can apply it to different contexts
in their lives, and simply knowing the
name of the tense does not allow them
to do this.
Now that we have got to grips with
analysing coursebook material and
drawing out real-life objectives which
show how language or skills can be used
in learners’ daily lives, let’s look at how to
share and use them with students.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
There are several ways to do this and
I am a huge advocate of displaying
objectives at the beginning of a class.
Spending five minutes discussing them
with our learners not only helps them to
get ready and set their expectations for
the class, but it also can improve learner
confidence in their teacher. Well-written
objectives show learners that we have
really thought about what we are going to
teach and this builds trust.
I also believe that objectives should be
clearly displayed throughout the lesson,
whether that be on the whiteboard or via
technology and an IWB. In this way, they
can be easily referred back to during
the lesson and can be ticked off when
completed. This is a great chance for the
learners to reflect on their own learning
in real time and can give us, as their
teachers, feedback on areas of difficulty
which may need further future review. It
is also hugely motivating: I know myself
that ticking something off a list can give
a huge sense of achievement, no matter
how big or small the task is.
Finally, I like to display them at the end
of a lesson to give an overview of what
has been covered in the class. This means
that the learners leave with a clear idea
of what they have done and achieved,
making it much more likely that they will
try to use what they have learnt outside
the classroom. There is also a great
satisfaction in hearing your students say
they feel more confident or at least on
their way to assimilating the language or
skills work you have covered in class, it’s
a quick way of knowing you have done a
great job!
So why bother with student-facing
objectives?
Put simply, they make our lessons
relevant to our learners’ lives as they
show real life English usage; they can
increase motivation in class especially
when ticked off; they show learners what
they have achieved and your school will
often expect them to be displayed, due to
external accreditation.
But let’s reframe objectives, they
aren’t simply a box ticking exercise for
accreditation purposes, they are a valuable
learning tool in the classroom. Try it for
yourself and you might be surprised by the
positive reaction!
Holly Morgan is an
Academic Coordinator
at English Path London
and has been working
and teaching in the ELT
industry since 2014.
She has worked in
Spain, Japan and the
UK and holds a BSc in
English Language and
a DELTA certificate from Cambridge Assessment.
She has taught a variety of levels and ages but
is particularly interested in Business English and
Teacher Development. Currently, she manages
the teaching team at English Path London and
is responsible for in house CPD sessions. Holly
is passionate about helping teachers to develop
their skills and to become the best teachers
they can be!
Volume 31 Issue 4 65
[ Teaching vocabulary ]
Keep your eye
on the ball and
avoid an early bath
W
hile the game with the oval
ball is still not as popular
as football (soccer), rugby
has continued to gain
popularity around the
world. Originally played in countries where
English is the first language, the sport
has seen a rise in numbers in English
as a second or foreign language (L2)
countries (such as Japan) since becoming
professional in 1995.
Rugby and vocabulary
In 1823, William Webb-Ellis picked up
a football and ran with it. Since then,
the sport has created a ‘global sub-
culture, with a history and language of
its own’ (Wilson, 2011: 6). Specifically,
the technical language is central to the
sport and allows anyone interested in
rugby to converse with each other. For
example, vocabulary in the sport is used
to communicate with other members
(e.g., ruck, maul) in places such as at
practice, during the game, and in the
locker room. For those not playing the
sport in this ‘sub-culture’, you can hear
this language being used on television, in
66 Volume 31 Issue 4
radio rugby commentary, and post-match
interviews. For people wanting to join the
wonderful world of rugby, understanding
the technical vocabulary in the sport is
important. With the upcoming Rugby
Women’s World Cup, annual Bledisloe
competitions, and the Super Rugby league
in New Zealand alone, understanding
the technical rugby vocabulary that
accounts for a large percentage of words
in spoken (rugby) discourse is crucial.
Indeed Benson (2020) found that 12.04%
of the words in spoken rugby discourse
are technical. Knowledge of this technical
vocabulary also allows the user to join the
community, in this case rugby (Coxhead,
2013; Woodward-Kron, 2008). Therefore,
knowledge of rugby vocabulary is needed
to understand the sport.
Corpora Time (minutes)
Interactional corpus 130
TV commentary corpus 240
Total 370
Table 1 Overview of spoken rugby corpus (Benson & Coxhead, 2022: 114)
Stuart Benson
offers a guide to understanding
rugby vocabulary.
Identifying technical rugby
vocabulary
To help L2 rugby players and coaches
understand rugby vocabulary, Benson’s
(2020) study created a pedagogically-
orientated single-word spoken word
list. First, a spoken rugby corpus was
created by analysing authentic spoken
discourse from TV rugby commentary and
using Wilson’s (2011) previous corpus of
interactions in a rugby setting (see Table 1).
From this corpus, technical words were
identified by applying the following
method. A four-scale semantic rating was
used to identify potential technical rugby
vocabulary. Number 1 was used to identify
general words (e.g., like, here) while
Total running words
25,637
35,658
61,295
www.modernenglishteacher.com

number 4 identified words which were
unique only to rugby (e.g., loosehead, ruck)
(see Table 2).
In using this scale, an analysis was
conducted to first determine the
technicality of the word and then its level
of technicality in spoken rugby discourse.
This analysis resulted in a technical
spoken rugby word list containing 252
types (Benson & Coxhead, 2022).
Features of vocabulary in
spoken rugby
As rugby vocabulary accounts for
12.04% of the running words in the
spoken rugby corpus, this means that
one in eight words you will hear when
watching rugby on TV or playing the
game will be technical rugby vocabulary.
When the word list is organised by the
semantic rating scale (see Table 3), the
results show only seven of the 252 word
types that occur in the rugby setting are
highly technical (scale 4). Therefore, for
non-members of the rugby community,
the burden of learning new vocabulary
and its meaning is not that high. Table 3
also shows that 84 of the 252 word types
are categorised as scale 3 (e.g., season),
meaning they are used in the rugby
context with a different meaning to their
everyday meaning. These word types
may be the most difficult for L2 learners
as additional knowledge is required.
Finally, 161 word types are categorised
as scale 2 (e.g., attack), meaning they
have the same meaning in both everyday
English and in spoken rugby.
While technical rugby vocabulary is
prevalent in spoken rugby discourse, the
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Teaching vocabulary ]
Scales Description Scale Examples
Non-technical A word that is general and not related to rugby 1 like, here
A word that is used in rugby, but with the same 2 attack, meters
meaning most frequently encountered in
everyday usage
A word that is used in rugby, with a particular 3 Season, wing
Technical
meaning not frequently encountered in
everyday usage
A word that is unique to rugby and only 4 Loosehead, ruck
associated with rugby
Table 2 Adapted semantic rating scale (Benson & Coxhead, 2022, p. 115)
Semantic scales Spoken word list Coverage
Semantic rating scale 4: A word that is unique to rugby and 7 0.41%
only associated with rugby
Semantic rating scale 3: A word that is used in rugby, with a 84 3.78%
particular meaning not frequently encountered in everyday
usage
Semantic rating scale 2: A word that is used in rugby, but 161 7.85%
with the same meaning most frequently encountered in
everyday usage
Total 252 12.04%
Table 3 Summary of the semantic analysis of technical words in the spoken rugby word list
(Benson & Coxhead, 2022: 118)
level of technicality is not high. Therefore, in rugby with a particular meaning not
while L2 learners still need assistance frequently encountered in everyday usage
to acquire knowledge of these words, (semantic scale 3), explicit instruction with
the main learning objective consists of word cards is also necessary. One example
achieving more accuracy and fluency of activity that can assist learners with these
the technical word list, making them part words is running dictation (Nation, 2008).
of the learner’s active vocabulary. In the rugby classroom, this activity could
entail having the teacher say a phase of
How can we integrate
play or giving instructions to a learner on
technical vocabulary into
what to do in a set play. Then the learner
returns to their group, retells what the
an ESP rugby language teacher said, and the group draws the play
classroom? on a piece of paper.
While vocabulary is not a separate feature
of a language classroom, and should be
Extensive practice
threaded throughout the course, there Exposure to these words in the rugby
are two suggestions ESP teachers should community, such as playing the game,
consider for teaching technical rugby listening to TV rugby commentary,
vocabulary. and talking to people about rugby, will
implicitly improve learners’ knowledge of
Word cards these words. For words used in rugby but
with the same meaning most frequently
Teaching highly technical rugby words encountered in everyday usage (semantic
(semantic scale 4), repeated explicit scale 2), learners need repeated exposure
instruction using a learning strategy such to these words in the rugby context,
as word cards is necessary. Learners need through conversations with classmates,
to both recognise these words in spoken watching rugby on TV, reading rugby
form and be able to fluently use them magazines and websites and activities
when communicating. For words used
Volume 31 Issue 4 67
[ Teaching vocabulary ]

within the classroom. As learners may Technical rugby terms: a vocabulary guide
already know the meaning of these words,
further building on their knowledge, such Common Definition Example phrase
as learning common patterns of use in the rugby terms
rugby context is the next step. An activity
that can assist learners is role-playing Scrum A method to restart play after an infraction. All Put the ball in the scrum
the forwards pack closely together with their
(Burns & Moore, 2008), where specific
heads down and attempt to gain possession of
situations in the sport, such as line out or
the ball.
scrum, can be the topic described and then
the role-play activity using the technical Lineout A method to restart play after the ball has gone Throw the ball into the
vocabulary can be used to simulate that into touch. The players line up at 90 degrees and lineout
one of the locks from each team gets lifted to
situation.
catch the ball when thrown in from the hooker.

Summary Ruck When at least one player from each side bind
onto each other with the ball on the ground
A penalty at the ruck

As with other contexts, rugby contains between them.

a large amount of technical vocabulary Maul When a player carrying the ball is held by one or Collapsing the maul
that can hinder people from fully more opponents, and one or more of the ball
embracing the sport. However, with the carrier’s teammates bind on the ball carrier.
252 word type spoken word list and
Try When an attacking players put the ball down in Score a try
careful consideration on how to learn the the end zone. A try is 5 points.
vocabulary, learners can acquire both
the receptive and productive knowledge Tackle A way of making someone fall over by throwing Tackled by (name of
needed to become a member of the rugby your arms around their legs or hips. player)
community. Turnover when the ball possession is transferred to the (Name of player) won a
defending team from the attacking team. turnover
Extra time Advantage The period of time after an infraction in which the Over the advantage line
non-offending side have the opportunity to gain
If reading this article has peaked your territory to negate the need to stop the game.
interest in the sport, the table opposite
provides a quick guide to common terms Offside A player is offside in open play if that player is in Behind the offside line
front of a teammate who is carrying the ball or
you will hear when watching rugby on
who last played it.
television.
Knock on when a player drops the ball forward or the ball The ball was knocked on
hits off their hand or arm and hits the ground.
References
Benson S (2020) Dot the pill down: Investigating
the linguistic needs of foreign rugby players and Rugby team positions
lexicon of spoken rugby discourse. [Unpublished
doctoral dissertation]. Victoria University of
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
Benson S & Coxhead A (2022) Technical single
and multiword unit vocabulary in spoken rugby
discourse. English for Specific Purposes 66
111–130.
Burns A & Moore S (2008) Questioning in simulated
accountant-client consultations: Exploring
implications for ESP teaching. English for Specific
Purposes 27 (3) 322–337.
Stuart Benson
Coxhead A (2013) Vocabulary and ESP. In: B is an Associate
Paltridge & S Starfield (Eds) The handbook of Professor at the
English for Specific Purposes. John Wiley & Sons.
University of Aizu in
Nation ISP (2008) Teaching vocabulary: Strategies Fukushima, Japan.
and techniques. Heinle Cengage. He has taught in
Wilson N (2011) Leadership as communicative Japan and New
practice: The discoursive construction of Zealand. His areas
leadership and team identity in a New Zealand of interest are ESP
rugby team [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. in non-university
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New settings, vocabulary acquisition, and
Zealand. corpus linguistics. His current research
Woodward-Kron R (2008) More than just jargon: investigates technical vocabulary
The nature and roles of specialist knowledge in spoken rugby discourse. Email:
in learning disciplinary knowledge. Journal of benson@u-aizu.ac.jp
English for Academic Purposes 7 234–249.

68 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com

 ETpedia Vocabulary
TM

500 ideas
and activities
for teaching
vocabulary

500 ideas and activities for teaching

vocabulary
ETpedia Vocabulary is a one-stop resource for teaching
English language vocabulary. It’s full of practical ideas,
inspiration, tips, and classroom activities.
ETpedia Vocabulary offers both new and experienced teachers
new ways to teach vocabulary. Organised into 50 units each
containing 10 ideas, it is easy to dip in and out of to find practical
ideas, useful tips and accessible resources. It will save you planning
time, provide inspiration, and help you motivate students, plus it
will even anticipate problems students might have with different
aspects of vocabulary.
Each unit provides you with 10 tips, ideas or activities related to
theory and practice in the classroom as well as suggestions for
homework and self-study tasks. In the Appendix you will also find
photocopiable handouts with additional classroom activities.
Authors: Stacey H. Hughes,
Fiona Mauchline and Order at
Julie Moore
www.pavpub.com/pavilion-elt/etpedia-
Series Editor: John Hughes series/etpedia-vocabulary
RRP £36.95 Email: info@pavpub.com
ISBN: 978-1-912755-26-4 Tel: +44 (0)1273 434943
[ Teaching vocabulary ]

An online world
Daniel Costa
explores the potential of

of offline words
the popular word game for
language learners.

S
ince its release in October last year,

T A B L E
Wordle has taken the online world by
storm, boasting more than 3 million users
worldwide. Created by Welsh developer
Josh Wardle as a present for his partner
during the notorious global pandemic, it has been so

S N A C K
successful that it was purchased by The New York
Times company earlier this year in exchange for a
significant reward (Hampson, 2022). While many
learners join language courses well aware of apps
such as Duolingo or Babbel, others are still unaware

N O I S E
of this new potential source of lexical acquisition.
What exactly is it all about and to what extent can it
inform language learning?

Understanding the game

O U N C E Reminiscent of games such as Jotto and Lingo, as

well as Mastermind, players are given six attempts
to guess a five-letter word which is randomly
generated. The 26 letters of the English alphabet
could prompt more than 12 million possible
solutions but the rules of the language rule out many

70 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com


possibilities, leaving us with 12,972
words to choose from, of which only
2,315 comprise the solution set (Weiss,
2022). Feedback is provided for each
guess by means of coloured tiles which
tell them when letters occupy or match
the current position. The box turns
yellow if the letter is part of the word of
the day but in the wrong place, while
it turns green if the letter is part of the
word of the day and in the right place.
The box turns grey if it does not belong
to the word.
Developing strategies
A major advantage of a game like Wordle
is that it prompts learners to develop
strategies in order to succeed. Lynne
Murphy from the University of Sussex,
for instance, recommends starting with
words that have the so-called sonorant
consonants, namely a continuing
resonant sound such as N, M and R
(Hampson, 2022). This is based on the
contention that they combine well with
other consonants. She also recommends
guessing words that include several
high-value consonants instead of vowels,
since there are many more consonants
than vowels. This contrasts sharply with
Steven Weiss (2022), who claims that
since only 13 words in Wordle have no
vowels, it is best to repeat as few letters
as possible at the start. He thus suggests
starting with a word that only has one
vowel and no repeating letters, unlike
‘sissy’, for instance.
In this context, frequency plays a key
role. As David Shariatmadari (2022)
claims, Wordle tests players’ knowledge
of the frequency of individual letters. It
also probes one’s instinct with regard
to how they can be combined, leading
the writer to posit a gut feeling which
underscores the decisions of daily users of
the language. While this may be natural
to these people or to those who use it as
a first language, this can be challenging
for learners of English as a second or
foreign language, or for those who lack
practice, thereby prompting them to
develop strategies to accomplish the task
accordingly. Phonotactic constraints can
provide players with useful hints to rule
out combinations of phonemes which
would not be permissible, such as a word
starting with ‘ng’ or ending it with ‘tr’
in English. The author also underlines
www.modernenglishteacher.com
the importance of the so-called ‘sonority
sequencing principle’, according to which
sounds vary from very sonorous (vowels)
to not very sonorous (‘hard’ consonants
like ‘t’). In words with consonant clusters,
such as ‘plump’, two less sonorous sounds
are separated by a more sonorous one,
which can inform the player, bearing
in mind that five-letter words are often
monosyllabic in English. Needless to
say, the extent to which the principle
is adhered to hinges essentially on the
language in question, in a context where
Wordle is not restricted to English.
Linguist Jason Riggle underlines the sense
of validation that stems from answering
correctly, analogous to the interactions
between people during a successful
negotiation of meaning. He goes further
by contending that it turns everyone
into a linguist, as it is ‘a window into the
subconscious ways we engage with and
break down language’ (Witynski, 2022).
Challenging Wordle
A significant challenge inherent in Wordle
is its target audience. At first glance,
it seems to be appropriate primarily
for higher level learners, owing to
the plethora of solutions and options.
Essentially, it is unlikely a lower lever
learner will succeed, one may claim.
Owing to the transfer that occurs between
languages, however, this can be a way
to notice similarities and differences,
and therefore to encourage positive
transfer and alert the learner to negative
transfer. In this context, it challenges the
learner by testing their own knowledge
to begin with, reminiscent of the Test-
Teach-Test approach, as the educator
can subsequently make use of the words
that appear throughout the game in both
online and face-to-face contexts.
It is clear that, as a tool for learning lexis,
Wordle may also seem limited in the
sense that it is devoid of a context of use
as, say, an authentic resource such as an
article, a song, a podcast or a video. It
can however, foster a learning-by-doing
approach, whereby the player would
develop strategies to learn new lexis in
an engaging and intuitive way, even if
devoid of a meaningful context. It can also
be used as a useful tool to consolidate
lexical acquisition. Similarly, learners can
compare their results and newly-acquired
[ Teaching
[ Section
vocabulary
Head ]
lexis with their peers in a constructivist
manner, thereby fostering peer teaching.
Ultimately, educators can ask learners to
write stories using the words they have
guessed, thereby fostering creativity while
consolidating new knowledge.
Words of the future
Owing to the novelty of the tool, we are yet
to witness what the long-terms benefits
of such a game are as far as language
learning is concerned. Wordle has been
praised for being fun and entertaining,
yet we are also to witness whether it
can ultimately foster creativity as well as
take into account the nature of human
language. After all, dictionaries such as
Cambridge continuously list new words
and expressions, which underline the
fluidity of natural languages – will Wordle
follow suit?
References
Hampson L (2022) Wordle tips: How to master
the game, according to a linguistics expert. The
Guardian. Available at: https://www.independent.
co.uk/life-style/wordle-tips-starting-word-
win-b2066678.html
Shariatmadari D (2022) How to win at
Wordle using linguistic theory. The Guardian.
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2022/jan/11/secret-winning-
wordle-word-game
Weiss S (2022) What a Perfect Wordle Guessing
Strategy Teaches us about English Slate. Available
at: https://slate.com/technology/2022/02/perfect-
wordle-guessing-strategy.html
Witynski M (2022) Why you can’t stop playing
Wordle, according to a computational linguist
University of Chicago News. Available at:
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/why-you-cant-
stop-playing-wordle-according-computational-
linguist#:~:text=Wordle%20taps%20into%20
people’s%20knowledge,also%20often%20
monosyllabic%20in%20English.
Daniel Costa is
currently working as a
language educator for
International House
World Organisation
and Woospeak, where
he has taught English,
Italian, Portuguese,
German and French.
He has written for
other publications such as ETp, the Journal
of English as an International Language, the
International Journal of English Language
Teaching and the World History Encyclopedia.
He holds a CELTA, a BET, a COLT, and an MA in
English Language Teaching, and has pursued
additional studies in philosophy and history at
the universities of London and Birmingham.
Volume 31 Issue 4 71
[ Exam preparation ]
Exam writing
activities with
model answers
I
n exam preparation courses, model answers can
be a flexible resource to help students improve
specific aspects of their writing. This article begins
with a number of ideas for taking model answers
to exam tasks commonly found in answer keys or
teacher’s books, and exploiting them for classroom
activities. It finishes with a few teaching notes based
on my experience running this type of activity in class.
Activities
Introductions and conclusions
One simple way to give students practice writing
introductions to essays is to take a model answer
and remove the introduction. In class, students
write just that one part of the essay. If your students
need to work on their conclusions, you could
remove that part instead.
72 Volume 31 Issue 4
Ethan Mansur
explores ways to help students
develop important writing
sub-skills.
Note that students can usually benefit from some
training on how to write effective introductions
and conclusions. For example, you could use a
few well written model essays to elicit that good
introductions are 1) short and clear; 2) state the
specific issues to be discussed; and 3) explain the
point or purpose of the essay. Good conclusions
restate this point or purpose in light of what
has been discussed. They may also include an
element of summary and/or reflection but without
introducing any new analysis.
Topic sentences
The same idea could be applied to topic sentences.
Remove them from the paragraphs of a model
answer and ask students to write their own.
A variation on this idea is to take away everything in
the body paragraphs except for the topic sentences.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Students have to finish the paragraphs, developing
the main themes introduced in the topic sentences.
As with introductions and conclusions, students may
benefit from training on how to write effective topic
sentences. Elicit or explain that a good topic sentence
introduces the main theme of the paragraph as close
to the end of the sentence as possible. The reader
would expect a paragraph starting with the following
topic sentence to focus on the theme of tennis: ‘One
of the most popular racquet sports is tennis.’ They
would expect a paragraph starting with this next
one to focus on racquet sports: ‘Tennis is just one of
many popular racquet sports.’
Paragraphs
You could also take away an entire body paragraph.
This requires students to determine which
main point is missing by carefully checking the
task instructions. A variation on this idea is to
take one of the body paragraphs and rewrite it
about an issue that is related to the topic but not
included in the instructions. Students have to
read the instructions, decide which paragraph
is problematic, and then rewrite it. This type of
activity is good training for exam writing, where
students often lose easy points by not reading the
instructions carefully enough and failing to include
one or more of the main points.
Students sometimes write paragraphs that are
unbalanced. For example, the first body paragraph in
an essay is very long; the second one, very short. We
can call students’ attention to this issue by taking a
sample answer and adding extra reasons or examples
to one of the paragraphs, making it much too long,
and taking away reasons or examples from another
paragraph, making it much too short. Students
have to identify the problem and then rewrite the
paragraphs until they are better balanced.
Planning
One engaging activity is to give students a model
answer and ask them to write a plan. This not only
helps students see how good planning can lead to
clear and organised writing, but it also challenges
students to use their critical thinking skills to ‘think
backwards’. Another planning-related activity is
to write two or three different plans, only one of
which corresponds to the content of a model answer.
Students read the model answer and decide which
plan is the correct one.
Register
To raise students’ awareness of register, take a
sample answer and introduce a handful of words or
phrases that are too formal or too informal. One good
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ Exam preparation ]
  Another planning-related activity
is to write two or three different
plans, only one of which corresponds
to the content of a model answer.
Students read the model answer
and decide which plan is the
correct one.
place to start is linking words and phrases. Even at
higher levels, students may sometimes lack awareness
of when specific linkers like anyway or besides will
sound too informal to the target reader, or when
moreover and however will sound too formal.
Linking words and phrases
Another simple activity is to take a model answer
and remove a number of the linking words and
phrases. Put these in a box at the top of the page
and ask students to decide where each one goes. Or
you could simply gap the linking words and phrases;
students must think of one that would work in each
gap. Or you could underline all the linkers and ask
students to think of possible alternatives.
In my experience, certain students become
enchanted with linkers and overuse them. I’ve
seen paragraphs with one at the start of each
sentence! To raise awareness of this problem,
take a sample answer and introduce extra linking
words and phrases. Students have to go through
and cross out the unnecessary ones. As a class, you
could also discuss more sophisticated organisation
patterns that could do the work of these linkers,
e.g. parallelism, rhetorical questions, correlative
conjunctions (‘not only … but also …’) and so on.
Correction codes
A good way of increasing engagement with written
feedback is to use a correction code. WW stands
for ‘wrong word’, SP for ‘spelling’, and so forth. To
introduce this approach to feedback, hand out a model
answer, in which you have introduced a number of
mistakes and labelled them, along with a copy of the
correction code. Individually or in pairs, students
go through the model answer and try to correct the
mistakes. A more challenging follow-up activity would
be to give students a model answer containing a
number of common mistakes, which students have
to find and mark using the correction code. For this
activity, it’s useful to tell students exactly how many of
each type of mistake they need to find.
Volume 31 Issue 4 73
[ Exam preparation ]
  If you only give students feedback
on the finished product, as is the
case with writing done at home, it’s
easy to focus too much on correcting
vocabulary and grammar mistakes
and not focus enough on developing
important writing sub-skills.  work better on a computer or mobile device. It’s
Checklists
Another useful tool for exam writing is a checklist,
which could include questions like, ‘Have I included
all the main points from the instructions?’ or ‘Have I
organised my ideas into paragraphs?’. Students hand
in the completed checklist with their writing. This type
of formative assessment activity can help students
begin to internalise the success criteria established
by the exam board. To train students to use this tool
effectively, ask them to first assess a model answer with
the checklist before using it to assess their own writing.
Concision
Some students struggle to express their ideas
concisely. They provide information the reader could
easily infer. They repeat themselves. They give three
examples where one would do. On exam day, this
type of student will be in danger of running out of
time. To focus on this issue, take a model answer
and add repetition, extraneous information and
unnecessary metalanguage like ‘As I have already
mentioned…’. Individually or in pairs, students go
through and cross out as many words, phrases or
entire sentences as they can.
Clarity
A related issue is clarity. Some students find it
difficult to state their ideas in a clear and simple
way. Give your students practice identifying and
revising unclear sentences by introducing two
or three such sentences into a model answer.
Students locate these sentences and rewrite them.
Note that if you think your students will find this
particular activity challenging – or, indeed, any
of the other activities above – you could do it for
the first time in open class with the model answer
projected on the board.
Teaching notes
1. Before selecting one of these writing activities for
your class it would be a good idea to carry out
a needs analysis. After your students have done
74 Volume 31 Issue 4
an initial writing assignment, go through the
assignments and make a list of the most salient
issues to address. Then decide which activities
would most benefit your particular group.
2. For all of these writing activities, make sure to
include the instructions for the model answer.
It’s important for students to know the intended
target audience and communicative purpose of
the piece of writing they are working with.
3. All of these activities could easily be done on
paper. However, in my experience, they tend to
faster and easier for you to create the activities
and it’s faster and easier for the students to
complete them. If you are teaching online,
programmes like Google Docs allow students to
easily work together in a shared document. Some
of the shorter writing exercises – writing topic
sentences, for example – could even be done in
the chat box.
4. After providing the appropriate level of support
in class, many of these activities could be set
for homework. However, in-class writing has
important advantages. To begin with, you
can identify potential learning opportunities,
providing extra guidance and support to
individual students on the spot. When students
write at home, they are on their own. What’s
more, if you only give students feedback on the
finished product, as is the case with writing
done at home, it’s easy to focus too much on
correcting vocabulary and grammar mistakes
and not focus enough on developing important
writing sub-skills.
Conclusion
Are you a teacher who tends to set most writing
for homework in your exam preparation courses?
One path towards including more writing in class
might be using some of the ‘mini’ writing activities
described above, where students only have to spend
a short time writing (or rewriting) a small section of
a model answer.
Ethan Mansur is an ELT materials
writer and teacher based in Spain.
Recent publications include the
teacher’s books for Ready for B2
First and Ready for C1 Advanced
(Macmillan Education), as well as
the resource book Activities for
Mediation: Building bridges in the
ELT classroom (DELTA Publishing). He
currently teaches at International
House Madrid, where he participates in the professional
development programme. He has an MA in Applied Linguistics
and TESOL from the University of Leicester.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
 [ Teaching advanced learners ]

Challenging learners
Irina Nosova
And the materials! Yes, there are work is well-balanced. There is an option
proficiency textbooks, some would for a customised workout with a paid
describes why practice makes even argue that post-advanced learners subscription, otherwise the app is free.
have all the authentic texts in the world

T
perfect at proficiency level.
hey say practice makes perfect.
But what if you or your learners’
English is already what
Cambridge dictionary defines as
‘correct in every way, of the best
possible type’? The answer still lies in the
aforementioned proverb, with a twist.
Post-advanced, or proficient users of
English – who are they? According to
the CEFR levels, these are C2 users of
English who:
■ can understand with ease virtually
everything heard or read
■ can summarise information from
different spoken and written sources,
reconstructing arguments and accounts
in a coherent presentation
■ can express him/herself spontaneously,
very fluently and precisely,
differentiating finer shades of meaning
even in more complex situations.
Since there is no higher level presented
in CEFR than C2, it’s safe to say that
proficient users are those who can ‘live’ in
English - think, make jokes, and dream.
at their disposal. Nevertheless, we
proficient learners want something more
consistent than rummaging through a
ton of texts before we discover gems like
to schmooze with someone, cajoling, or
to pay full whack.
One might wonder that if a learner can tick
all the boxes above, what is there left to
study? As a C2 learner, I can confirm that
there is no such thing as ‘to finish studying
a language because there is nothing
left to study’. Studying a language is a
continuous process that requires constant
level-appropriate input and practice.
C2 learners, like any other learners of
English, have weaknesses. Among my
students I usually notice the following:
gaps in collocational competence, and
fossilised mistakes (and L1 interference in
general). In addition, fluency, coherence
and cohesion often require honing.
In this article I’d like to share some
outside-the-classroom activities that post-
advanced learners can do to further fine-
tune their language. Also, we’ll look at
how this can be adopted in the classroom.
Elevate
The choice of activities is impressive, as
well as the depth and levels of difficulty.
Figure 1 indicates the praise I got once
from the app: I was better than 95% of
Elevate users in writing, but my average
difficulty level of writing activities is 120-
170 out of 400. It’s hard to imagine what
goes on after, say, level 350, but we can
deduce that it’s not going to be boring.
Some other advantages of the app:
■ The tasks are not repetitive
■ Wrong answers are thoroughly
explained and such questions are
recycled
■ Besides the game mode, there is a
study mode
■ Gamification elements: there are
achievement badges and detailed
statistics of your progress
■ Users with sophisticated taste will
appreciate the design of the app.
Classroom application
1. Offer your post-advanced learners to
download the app and practise 10–15
minutes every day.

It’s not easy being a C2 learner, though.
One of the most frustrating things for a
proficient learner is that schools rarely offer
C2 courses – there is simply not enough
demand. When I was preparing for my CPE
(Cambridge Proficiency Exam), I had to
settle for 1:1 classes, even though I would
have benefitted more from peer learning.
My teacher, a former CAE examiner, was
visibly challenged by my questions but
stoically refrained from using the internet to
double-check his replies. Well, for the first
two days of the course.
Elevate was originally designed as a brain
training app, but if we look at the rubrics
it offers exercises in, we will find that most
of them train the same skills a typical
English lesson does: writing, speaking,
and reading. They also offer maths and
memory training which can’t harm either.
Especially since you do it in English.
The way I use it myself is straightforward:
I do a recommended daily workout which
takes 5-10 minutes. The program does all
the planning for you to make sure the skill Figure 1 Screenshot of praise from Elevate

www.modernenglishteacher.com Volume 31 Issue 4 75

[ Teaching advanced learners ]
2. Ask them to make screenshots of the
language they made mistakes in and
found interesting, as in Figure 2. You
can start your lessons by discussing
the screenshots learners prepared:
learners can work in pairs and share
their issues and teach each other. After
that, during open class feedback, you
can ask learners to find similarities
and differences between common
mistakes. The discussion can replace a
warm-up activity, or even be the core
activity for the whole lesson.
3. Homework: offer learners create
exercises (flash card sets, gap-fill
exercises, etc.) with the most common
mistakes and new lexis, and present
them in the next class.
4. And, of course, encourage them to use
this lexis in their speech.
The advantage of this approach is that
it will never be too easy for the learners.
Neither will it be repetitive or boring. In
addition, this approach is quite learner-
centred, and a lot can be delegated to
learners due to the high level of English.
C3 chats
C3 is a humorous way to define the level
of English that goes after the CEFR C2
(although, if we follow the same logic,
that’d be D1).
I am a member of a chat group in one
of the messengers, where the entry
requirement is CPE Grade A. Besides great
networking possibilities (since almost
all C2 certificate holders happen to be
teachers of English), there are plenty of
ways to practise speaking at higher levels.
All participants of the chat would agree
that it’s highly satisfying not having to
grade your English as you’d normally do
for the learners.
We have weekly video chats where we
talk, share professional advice and new
lexis we discovered and play games like
Taboo or Alias on an extra challenging
level.
Encourage your learners to find peers
(or study buddies) with similar interests
on social media. One of the ways to do
it is to search using hashtags like #c2
or #proficiency. Create a chat and invite
people to join weekly meetings. That
way, they will have more FREE practice,
76 Volume 31 Issue 4
and, hence, more motivation, and better
command of English.
Classroom application
■ During the lesson encourage learners
to make notes of new collocations they
can later use when talking to their
study buddies: this helps recycle lexis.
■ You can also show your learners some
games that can be fun to play with a
group of people online: we don’t always Figure 2 Screenshot of error
have enough time, people, and resources correction (Elevate)
to play games in the classroom, but
software (e.g. sonix.ai) to create a
we can successfully delegate it, if our
transcript. Create a series of activities
learners are members of proficiency
with a transcript of the podcast (e.g.
chats. For instance, each learner picks
pre-listening discussion, content /
five phrases they would like to use
language prediction, collocational gap
actively in speech, they write them on
fill, etc). Learners can work individually
a piece of paper and put it in front of
or in pairs to complete them.
themself during a chat with peers. Over
the course of the conversation they ■ Learners discuss the facts from an
need to weave those five items naturally episode, exchange opinions and their
into their speech, and it’s up to others expertise.
to guess which phrases are ‘from the
■ For homework learners can conduct
list’ today. In order to do it, one has to
similar research, and then present it in
listen very carefully. And, given that all
the classroom.
participants of the conversation take
part in the game and have their lists, it
One would think that having reached
becomes an intense (in a good way), and
Proficiency level there is no more need
sometimes highly competitive activity.
for taking English classes. However,
it’s when you stop practising that you
Talking to peers in a safe environment
start losing both accuracy and fluency.
helps relieve the stress before or after the
Hopefully, the activities suggested in this
lesson (which is a more controlled and
article can give post-advanced learners
formal environment) and adds to learners’
of English some ideas on how to keep on
confidence. And yes, it works even with
improving their language.
learners at such an advanced level.
References
No such thing as a fish
Common European Framework of Reference for
This is the name of a weekly podcast by Languages (CEFR) Levels Table 1. Available at:
https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-
the makers of the British TV show QI
framework-reference-languages/table-1-cefr-3.3-
(Quite Interesting). In this podcast, four common-reference-levels-global-scale
hosts each share an interesting fact they Elevate. Available at Apple for iOS and Google Play
researched during the week and discuss
No such thing as a fish. Available at: https://www.
it. The facts can be from any conceivable nosuchthingasafish.com
area, like science, history, art, etc.
Irina Nosova is a
This is a highly challenging podcast due
freelance teacher-
to the fluency of the hosts, the depth of
trainer from Saint
detail they go into, sophisticated humour Petersburg, Russia.
and linguistic proficiency of the speech. Apart from majoring in
In addition, the episodes are extremely TEFL, she holds a CELTA
Grade A certificate,
educational.
DELTA M23 from IH
London, and a CPE
Possible classroom application Grade A. She also runs
an ELT club in Saint Petersburg and publishes
■ Run an episode of the podcast (or a ELT board games. Email: irohbo@gmail.com
part of it) through a speech recognition
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Teacher self-talk:
friend or foe?
Dino Dumančić
considers why we talk to
D
ourselves.
o you ever talk to yourself? Have
you ever done it at work? If the
answer to these questions is
yes, you need not be worried.
And no, you are not crazy. Most
people have, at some point, engaged in this
form of self-discourse. Not many studies in
the realm of second language acquisition
(SLA) set out to tackle this fascinating
phenomenon and, if they have, they were
mostly aimed at the learners. What about
the teachers? I will do my best to shed some
light on this topic and showcase its different
facets, both facilitative and hindering.
First, let us clarify what self-talk really is.
The notion of self-talk represents a type of
speech that is directed to ourselves and not
others (Zivin, 1979). In the classroom, we
ordinarily engage the students via the IRF
sequence (Initiation-Response-Feedback).
In other words, we create a dialogue.
Self-talk, also referred to as private speech
(Vygotsky, 1978), is meant only for us and
us alone. It also differs from inner speech
as it employs conspicuously uttered words,
unlike inner speech which takes place
inside our heads (Sokolov, 1972).
What does self-talk look like?
As previously mentioned, individuals that
talk to themselves (use private speech) do
so in a lower register and using a different
tempo than the one used with others
(Lantolf & Yañez-Prieto, 2003). Another
interesting trait is that they tend to look
away from their interlocutors. In addition,
self-talk comes in many different forms
and is used to fulfill different functions.
To illustrate, teachers can use self-talk as:
1. a cognitive tool (dealing with cognitively
tasking activities)
2. a means of interacting
www.modernenglishteacher.com
3. a way of self-regulating.
Let us take a look at each of these functions
and place it in the teaching context. In
regards to using self-talk as a cognitive
tool, it is mostly reported when trying to
learn something new, solve a problem,
memorise a new concept, or simply relate
what one is learning with what they are
doing. When dealing with such matters,
teachers may, for instance, comment on
their actions and use exclamations (e.g.
‘oops’), use hypothetical statements (e.g.
‘If I put this here, …’), self-directives
(e.g. ‘don’t put that one’), self-evaluative
comments (e.g. ‘good’), and markers
expressing a change of cognitive state
(e.g. ‘oh’) (Hall & Smotrova, 2013: 77).
Self-talk as a means of interacting
represents another dimension. A speaker
that is confronted with an unforeseen
circumstance that is obvious to others and
that calls into question their competence
may use self-talk. According to Goffman
(1978:798), ‘When we address a remark to
ourselves in public, we are likely to be in
sudden need of re-establishing ourselves in
the eyes and ears of witnesses as honest,
competent persons not to be trifled with …’
Another example involves teachers using
self-talk to keep student attention. Hall
and Smotrova (2013) reported an example
when a teacher encountered a problem
while explaining a literature review to the
students. The teacher projected a review
for all students to follow when something
went wrong; moreover, they started using
self-talk when they could not find the
section needed for further discussion.
The last aspect to be discussed in this piece
is a self-regulatory one. Self-talk can help
us modify our beliefs so they change from
irrational to more beneficial ones. If used
adequately, it can help teachers offset
undesirable effects of stress, anxiety, or
any other unanticipated situation. Self-
awareness plays an important role here
as teachers need to be able to take a step
back, assess the situation objectively, and
re-appraise it from a more dispassionate
[ In my opinion ]
standpoint (Vygotsky, 1978; Mead, 1982).
Other scholars reported that self-talk was
proven beneficial with both pre-and in-
service teachers when they:
■ were stressed
■ were learning how to teach
■ were testing out a new skill, or
■ when new circumstances interfered
with their previously acquired skills
(Payne & Manning, 2006).
Now, let us circle back around. Do
you remember the title of this article?
Remember the ‘friend or foe’ part? Given
the dynamic and challenging nature of
teaching, it is important to discern the
difference between positive and negative
self-talk. Positive self-talk is also considered
facilitative (Manning & Payne, 1992). The
positive talk means choosing the words
we say to ourselves and making sure those
words promote our well-being. What we
tell ourselves has a direct bearing on our
behaviour, emotions, health and self-
esteem (Payne & Manning, 2006). We are
all aware of the intricacies and demands of
our job. When we face a stressful situation,
instead of allowing our inner critic to
take over, we can try opting for the right
words that will alleviate our stress: ‘I can
get through this,’ or ‘I can handle this –
nothing is so important that I should stress
myself like this and shorten my life,’ (Payne
& Manning, 2006:197). Let us observe the
following examples from the study carried
out by Manning and Payne (1992: 94):
■ Caring self-talk (e.g. ‘These students are
too frustrated. I need to slow down for
them.’)
■ Guiding self-talk (e.g. ‘After I finish
this, then I will review from yesterday’s
lesson.’)
■ Coping self-talk (e.g. ‘I may have a hard
time getting this concept across but I’ll
try several ways.’).
Volume 31 Issue 4 77
[ In my opinion ]
Negative self-talk, on the other hand,
can truly be a foe inside or outside of the
classroom. It is not facilitative by any
means and it detracts from the teacher’s
overall healthy functioning. The majority
of people are prone to being negative with
themselves. According to Helmstetter
(1986), around 75% of what we tell
ourselves is not beneficial. Teachers are not
exempt from entertaining a host of often
irrational thoughts about themselves or
their job. These notions, in turn, cause them
stress, anxiety, or a sense of inadequacy.
Akin to the facilitative examples above,
Manning and Payne (1992: 94) listed non-
facilitative ones as well:
■ Criticising self-talk (e.g. ‘These students
are lazy. They’ll never understand this
anyway.’)
■ Complaining self-talk (e.g. ‘I’m really
sick of these children. I wish I had
chosen another profession.’)
■ Rebelling self-talk (e.g. ‘Just collect my
pay and forget this job!’).
What can we do to make
things better for ourselves?
While I am sure many of us would attest
to the cornucopia of coping mechanisms
out there, I will list several examples that
might aid L2 teachers in their everyday
personal and professional endeavours:
1)  The power of ‘yet’
According to Dweck (2014), if you find
yourself saying something negative, such
as ‘I can’t do that’, consider adding the
word ‘yet’. I can’t do that yet. This may
help you realise that change is a gradual
process and make you aware of the
misconceptions that are keeping your from
realising your full potential.
2)  Cognitive disputation
This is based on Ellis’s concept of changing
your thinking by disputing your beliefs
and changing your point of view (Ellis
1957, Ellis 1991). You might, for instance,
use the questions below to challenge your
beliefs (Mercer & Gregersen, 2020: 91):
■ What unreasonable belief do I want to
dispute and replace?
■ Can I reasonably defend this belief?
■ What proof exists to support the
veracity of this belief?
78 Volume 31 Issue 4
■ What proof exists that this belief is
flawed?
■ What would be the worst outcome if
this belief became reality?
■ What positive actions could I take if this
belief became reality?
■ What would be a more rational way of
viewing this belief?
3)  Replacing negative thoughts
with positive self-talk
This example may bear some resemblance
to the previous one but note that it will
present some examples you may wish
to consider as an alternative. When
attempting to combat the bothersome
negative thoughts, consider the following
(Bourne, 2015; Singer, 2010):
■ when you experience negative thoughts,
write them down
■ challenge these thoughts with certain
questions (you may use the ones above)
■ once you have determined their lack of
validity, do your best to form new, more
realistic statements
■ whenever a negative thought crops up,
fight it with a positive counter-statement.
Example:
Negative self-talk: What if I say something
silly or embarrass myself in front of the
committee during an observation class?
Challenging the thought: What would be
the worst thing if that became a reality?
What positive actions could I take?
Positive self-talk alternative: Teachers
are allowed to make mistakes. No one is
perfect. I can learn from this opportunity.
Coming to an end
Language teachers need to be cognisant of
the fact that what we tell ourselves carries
weight and bleeds into both personal
and professional domains. Following
the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, our
job has become even more arduous and
precarious than ever before. That is why
striking a balance between the unpleasant
and stressful facets of teaching, as well
as those that are pleasant and uplifting,
is paramount. In the face of hardship, we
must remain grounded and remember
to nurture our self-compassion. And
remember, a depleted teacher, just like
the cellphone battery, is not a happy and
efficient teacher. So, make sure you charge
yourself up with a healthy dose of kindness.
References
Bourne E (2015) The anxiety & phobia workbook:
Sixth edition. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger
Publications, Inc.
Dweck CS (2014) The power of yet [Video file].
TED talk. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=J-swZaKN2Ic .
Ellis A (1957) Outcome of employing three
techniques of psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical
Psychology 13 334–350
Ellis A (1991) The revised ABC’s of rational-emotive
therapy (RET). Journal of Rational-Emotive and
Cognitive-Behavior Therapy 9 (3) 139–172.
Goffman E (1978) Response cries. Language 54
787–815.
Hall JK & Smotrova T (2013) Teacher self-talk:
Interactional resource for managing instruction
and eliciting empathy. Journal of Pragmatics 47
(1) 75–92.
Helmstetter S (1986) What to Say When You Talk
to Yourself. MJF Books.
Lantolf JP & Yañez-Prieto C (2003) Talking yourself
into Spanish: Intrapersonal communication and
second language learning. Hispania 86 97–109
Manning BH & Payne BD (1992) A Correlational
Study of Preservice Teachers’ Reported Self-
Talk Reactions to Teaching Dilemmas. Teacher
Education Quarterly 19 (2) 85–95
Mead GH (1982) In: D.L. Miller (Ed.) The Individual
and the Social Self: Unpublished Work of George
Herbert Mead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mercer S & Gregersen T (2020) Teacher Wellbeing.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Payne BD & Manning BH (2006) Self-Talk of
Student Teachers and Resulting Relationships. The
Journal of Educational Research 85 (1) 47–51.
Singer J (2010) The teacher’s ultimate stress
mastery guide: 77 proven prescriptions to build
your resilience. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.
Sokolov AN (1972) Inner Speech and Thought.
New York: Springer.
Vygotsky L S (1978) Mind in society: The
development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Zivin G (1979) Development of Self-Regulation
Through Private Speech (Origins of Behavior).
John Wiley & Sons.
Dr. Dino Dumančić is a
postgraduate researcher
at University of Zadar,
Croatia. His working
experience involves
teaching English at
primary, secondary,
and tertiary levels.
His interests range
from ELT methodology
and language teacher motivation to teachers’
emotional experiences, emotion regulation, and
wellbeing. He gladly partakes in different local
and international scientific and professional
conferences in the hopes of advancing his
knowledge and language teaching skills.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Ownership and
project work
A
n incredible story: A few
years ago, the popular
Australian radio station FBI
found itself in trouble; they
had to raise half a million
dollars, or they would just go under.
The task seemed impossible as previous
fundraisers had only managed to go up
to $80K. Then someone had an idea:
instead of asking everyone for a few
bucks, why not get everyone to ask one
(very rich) individual to contribute the
whole sum? Yes, it does sound crazy.
But this did not stop radio supporters
from rising to the challenge! They came
up with dozens of ingenious ways to
try to catch that millionaire’s attention
and hopefully get him to come to the
rescue. To find out what happened, just
go on YouTube and type ‘Psychology
and ELT – Active Involvement’. For me,
the most salient lesson in this story is
how powerfully motivating a sense of
ownership is.
Ownership and ELT: Countless studies
have demonstrated the importance of
ownership in boosting motivation. When
people feel that what they are working
on is something to which they have
contributed or (ideally) something they
have created themselves, motivation
soars (Ferrier 2014: 106). But this is
certainly not what happens in most ELT
classes. In most cases, it is the teacher
www.modernenglishteacher.com
who decides what the students are to do
and the students’ contribution largely
consists of language manipulation. Yet as
things shift from face-to-face classes to a
new reality of blended learning, it makes
more and more sense to give students
greater freedom. How? One answer is:
project work. Here are three ideas:
The IKEA Effect: In a fascinating series
of studies, Dan Ariely and his team got
people in the lab to make things out of
paper, such as frogs or boats (origami).
They then asked them how much they
would be prepared to pay to take their
creations home. The answer was around
20 cents. The subjects were then shown
perfectly crafted origami creations and
asked how much they would pay for
one of those. Incredibly, the answer was
around 5 cents! (Norton et al, 2010)
The moral is clear: when we have made
something ourselves, we tend to take
pride in the fruit of our labours.
[ In my opinion ]
Nick Michelioudakis
argues for a sense of ownership.
Videos with Lumen 5: We can make use
of this principle by getting students to
produce short videos. Lumen 5 is a free
tool which allows people to put together
a sequence of images (and/or short
videos) and text to create a seamless
video. You can enhance the latter by
adding background music or voice-
over narration (to see some examples,
click on ‘7 Lumen5 Video Examples’ on
YouTube). The videos are all around
30 seconds long, they are extremely
easy to prepare and the whole process
takes less than two minutes (which
means that students can spend most
of their time on discussing the content).
The tool offers students the chance
to practice speaking (by negotiating
what to include) as well as writing (the
short texts which are to accompany the
images). More importantly, students
get the satisfaction of having created
something tangible themselves.
The NIH Bias: What goes for our
creations also applies to our ideas. In
another study, subjects were divided
into two groups and given some
problems to ponder. The latter ranged
from practical ones such as how to save
energy, to bigger issues such as how to
increase the general level of happiness.
The difference was that the first group
were asked to come up with solutions
of their own, while subjects in group
Volume 31 Issue 4 79
[ In
Section
my opinion
Head ]]
B were given some proposals by the
researchers. When the two groups were
asked to evaluate the ideas, it turned
out that group A liked those they had
generated a lot more compared to group
B (Spiler et al, 2010).
Advertise your Teacher: This is an
insight we may take into account when
asking students to work on something.
Rather than telling them what to do,
why not ask them to come up with ideas
themselves? One of my favourite
activities is to ask my students to
advertise their teacher. Some of them
might go for a book bio, others might
prepare a poster, while others may opt
for a ‘product review’ like the ones you
might read on Amazon. One of the most
imaginative ever was a made-up
dialogue between a learner supposedly
looking for a private tutor and an older
friend who recommends a good one he
has heard of (me!) The interesting twist
is that they talk about the tutor as
if he were a car (to watch the clip
[featuring the great Luke Prodromou]
search for ‘ELT Projects – Advertise your
teacher’ on YouTube).
The Egg Theory: Amazingly, it seems
that feelings of ownership kick in even if
our contribution is relatively tiny (think
model aircraft!). In an interesting study,
researchers used a tool that Converse
had on its site allowing visitors to
generate their own shoe designs. Group
A participants were shown some designs,
80 Volume 31 Issue 4
and then they were asked to recreate
them using the online tool, while others
(Group B) were shown the same designs
as well as a video for how the latter had
been created. Later, both groups were
shown various designs (including the
ones they had seen before) and they
were asked to rate them. Despite the fact
that the only thing people in Group A
had done was put together colours, sole
types, materials and laces, when asked
to evaluate the final designs, they rated
‘their own creations’ much more highly
than people in Group B rated the same
designs (Koster et al, 2015).
Variations on a theme: Coming up
with an original idea is often hard,
but using a template to generate
something new is surprisingly easy
(see the Converse shoe-making tool).
Take the brilliant ‘Ads for ELT – Always
Wrong’ advertisement on Youtube.
The structure is quite simple: someone
makes a statement and their colleagues
accuse them of always being wrong.
They then bring up crazy things that
this person has said in the past. Why
not use this as a template? Here is
something your students might come up
with (T = teacher / S = student):
T: Video games are a waste of time.
S1: Teacher – you are always wrong.
T: How am I always wrong?
S1: OK, let’s review: ‘The Game of Thrones’
is not a game.
S2: Eminem is not a type of candy.
S3: A ‘hoodie’ is not a friend who lives in
the same neighbourhood.
S1: And you know what, teacher?
‘Minecraft’ is not a vehicle.
T: So video games are not a waste of time?
Ss: (Shake their heads)
T: You are sure Eminem is not candy??
The possibilities are endless…
Going big: Once educators have realised
what a powerful motivator ownership
is, they can take things to a much higher
level. A secondary school in the US offers
a good case in point: for the past few
years, students have been putting William
Golding (!) on trial. The charge is that
his book ‘Lord of the Flies’ constitutes
a libel against human nature. Students
are in complete control and they prepare
for it for months: some of them prepare
the case for the prosecution, some for
the defence, some appear as witnesses
(among the latter, figures such as Stalin,
Mother Theresa and even Darth Vader
have all put in live appearances!) while
the jury and the audience consists of
alumni, teachers and administrators. (To
watch a short video, go on YouTube and
type ‘Psychology and ELT – Projects’).
Would it not be wonderful if our school
years contained more ‘peak moments’
like this one?
References
Ferrier A (2014) The Advertising Effect. South
Melbourne, Oxford University Press
Koster R, Sharot T, Yuan R, De Martino B,
Norton M. & Dolan R. (2015) How beliefs about
self-creation inflate value in the human brain.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 Article 473
Norton M, Mochon D & Ariely D (2010) The IKEA
Effect: When Labour Leads to Love. Manuscript,
Harvard University.
Spiller S, Barkan R & Ariely D (2010) Not-Invented-
by-Me: Idea Ownership Leads to Higher Perceived
Value. Manuscript, Duke University.
YouTube: ‘Ads for ELT – Always Wrong’ (https://
bit.ly/38MgxVf )
YouTube: ‘7 Lumen5 Video Examples’ (https://bit.
ly/3r59GN7 )
YouTube: ‘ELT Projects – Advertise your Teacher’
(https://bit.ly/37ehpRI )
YouTube: ‘Psychology and ELT – Active
Involvement’ (https://bit.ly/38kTTmF )
YouTube: ‘Psychology and ELT – Projects’ (https://
bit.ly/38w6qUJ )
Nick Michelioudakis,
(B. Econ., Dip. RSA,
MSc [TEFL]) has been
active in ELT for many
years as a teacher,
examiner and teacher
trainer and he has
given presentations
in numerous
countries. He has
written extensively on Methodology, though
he is better known for his ‘Psychology and ELT’
articles in which he draws on insights from
such disciplines as Marketing, Management and
Social Psychology. For articles or worksheets of
his, you can visit his blog at
www.michelioudakis.org.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
 [ Coaching ]

Gabriella Kovács
begins a two-part series with a Contextualising
learner
look at the theory of coaching.

development with
language coaching
A
s you begin reading this
article you might be thinking
‘Oh no, another one of those
“language coaching is the best
thing on earth since teflon was
invented” writings’. This is far from my
intention, after all, it may be the easiest
path to disregard language teaching
practices and theories, based on research
grounded in decades of persistent work
by language professionals. What is much
more challenging is seeing how coaching
practices can be integrated into these
language teaching/language training
frameworks. Hopefully this two-part piece
(over this and the next issue of Modern
English Teacher) will add to the dialogue
around the diversity and scope of language
acquisition instruction. My proposition is
that an integrative approach can better
serve language learners in this day and
age so they can reach their goals and
be more successful target language
communicators – whatever the context,
whomever their audience, wherever they
go, whatever the medium.
What is language coaching?
Language coaching (LC) is an
applied methodology incorporating
coaching fundamentals into the
language learning context. The
role of the coach is to support and
empower the learner on their self-
led learning journey. LC focuses
on the learners’ communication
outcomes and learning processes
in their professional and personal
environments, instead of working
with pre-defined lesson objectives.
(Source: ILCA)
The primary objective of coaching
processes is to build trust and create
an agentic learning environment which
will encourage and uphold deep self
reflection and critical evaluation of
their language usage in social/cultural,
cognitive and emotional contexts
essential to learner needs and goals.
Additionally, beyond identification
of these core areas of reflection and
conclusions drawn, coaching also
supports the creation of effective routes
towards achieving goals.

www.modernenglishteacher.com Volume 31 Issue 4 81

[ Coaching ]
If we are looking for a broader definition
of language coaching we need to start
with the four key points: firstly, it is
a learner-led process which aims to
create target language acquisition in
an optimal way for learner. Secondly,
the learner is working towards future-
related goals. Thirdly, the learner will
be supported in attaining international
communication skills with a framework
based on strategies to refine learning
skills and foster intrinsic motivation with
shared responsibility creating a more
balanced ownership practise. The fourth
key element of language coaching is the
attention to what, why, when and how
the various steps in the language learning
process take place – controlled by the
learner whenever possible.
What does this mean in practice? It
means working with learners without
the conformities of a more traditional
classroom perspective, which feels more
and more claustrophobic nowadays:
■ removing a hierarchical approach to
the relationship between learner and
teacher
■ believing the learner knows what is
best for them
■ using the skill of ’hanging back’ a little
and waiting for the learner to come up
with ideas and lead
■ shifting focus to learner best practices
and working with those instead of
relying primarily on teaching best
practices
■ creating and maintaining time and
space for reflection and metacognitive
moments
The learner perspective
Clearly, all teachers strive to support
what the learner aspires to achieve.
Intentions and specific goals are,
however, often overlooked due to the
pressures of managing a class: we tend
to use the same pair of glasses when
determining class goals. It is always a
challenge to align lesson goals, which
need to cover the syllabus, with the needs
of each of the individuals in the class.
When this tension is palpable, learners
disengage, contribute less and become
demotivated. The work of aligning
syllabus/curriculum coverage with
82 Volume 31 Issue 4
Limited time
Corporate/business
State schools (all levels)
Private learning environments
Table 1 Learning category pain points
individual needs may be brought into the
classroom via coaching interventions to
support this process.
Often when I am coaching clients, the
number one intention they voice is to be
more confident when communicating – at
whatever level they may be. Language
learners understand that it is up to them
to be responsible and proactive in their
learning – and this is a huge wake-up call
for teachers and language instructors.
We want our learners to grow, develop
and take responsibility for their own –
autonomous – learning, yet we teach more
through advice, instruction and telling
learners what to do. What a dichotomy.
Suppose we gave them more choices,
helped them make decisions on their
own and scaffolded instead of giving
advice …? A combination of TBL, PBL,
flipped classroom and inquiry-based
instruction and dogme would support this
approach nicely.
We might need to believe that those who
know best what language learners need
are the language learners themselves.
I hear you, though: How would a learner
know what they need if if they don’t know
what kind of teaching works best for
them? After all, they’re not so well versed
in language teaching methodologies.
Obviously not. My point is more trying to
explore that grey area of trust and belief
and a more collaborative approach to
language learning scenarios (language
learning, mind you, not language teaching).
Take, for instance, the typical language
learner who has reached the plateau
of B1+ and needs to communicate
at work. They may have a corporate
background and adequate language
skills to communicate with business
partners, clients, and colleagues within
their organisation. They cannot afford to
spend years on language courses to perfect
their language skills. It’s much more
a matter of communicating effectively
Limited finances Constraints
X X
X X
X X
and understanding what they need so
as to ensure that they are in an optimal
language learning environment. There
is an ever-growing need for applicable,
relevant input, and bite-sized learning to
decrease long hours of training/teaching.
The use of hybrid learning, working with
online, face-to-face, flipped classroom etc.,
options to get a specific set of scenarios
covered within the constraints of limited
time, energy, financial backing and other
external constraints. This is true in the
corporate world, but also when we are
working with private language learners
or in a class of twenty-five. Table 1 shows
the different dimensions of these factors,
indicating the strongest pain points in each
learning category.
What has changed?
We all know how we typically react to
receiving advice: we agree and totally
understand where it’s coming from and
admit to ourselves that we’re not doing
too much to actually achieve our goals.
We accept the advice, yet this word accept
is such a passive action. What we, as
educators, might be moving towards is
how to activate that sort of acceptance
into something more, something
resembling exploration, clarification,
identification, setting new goals, and
finding ways towards target-oriented
achievement. What language coaching
does is that it boosts self-confidence and
works on learners’ understanding of what
their intrinsic motivation is. Language
coaching gives them the time and space to
identify what their language learning goals
are, how these can be achieved, and what
paths, what options lie ahead for them so
that they can actually reach those goals,
preferably in alignment with expectations
and goals of their organisations or the
language school etc. whose classes they
attend. Motivation will ebb and flow and
have its ups and downs, like the motions
of the sea, yet its consistent pull (or push)
leads to resilient learners who do not give
www.modernenglishteacher.com

up, even in the face of challenges (Dörnyei
& Ushioda, 2011).
(Business) English as a Lingua Franca,
aka (B)ELF has also gained attention
and is a much needed approach to ELT.
Communicating, especially for adults
(but for teenagers through social media,
gaming etc. also) is done through the
very practical application of language
to get something done, so learning and
using a language goes way beyond
learning for the sake of learning, and
using for the sake of not forgetting. There
are things to get done and language is
the tool, the vehicle that will get one
person to communicate effectively with
another in the global, digitalised world.
The global mindset has its imprint on
all our communication channels and
is reframing how we communicate.
Simply put: there is so much going on
out there, we want to engage and deliver
as early as possible and not have to wait
till our language levels are near C1/C2
proficiency. All my clients are saying they
want to be able to interact at A2 level
even, and accomplish the task at hand,
then develop and add to that. Where is
the shyness of the classroom? The world
is our classroom, the walls are melting
away and with it the inhibitions, the
restrictiveness of a confined space to not
only practise, but to learn also. Teachers
need to understand this drive that helps
learners redefine their approach to
learning the languages they aim to use.
We need to reframe how we feel and
think about this or we will be seen as
dinosaurs in our own classrooms.
Skills that teaching catered to developing
in the past are fast-diminishing, as
accuracy and ’sounding like a native’ are
now viewed as outdated in some respect,
to say the least, yet for decades had been
the key focus areas for language teaching
practices. Recently a non-native English-
speaking teacher (NNEST) was given
compensation for not receiving a job on
the basis of not being a native speaker,
despite a ’really interesting’ CV. Times are
changing, stigmas and stilted approaches
re-evaluated.
Scope
The OECD Future of Education and Skills
2030 project outlines ways to support and
develop ’the knowledge, skills, attitudes
www.modernenglishteacher.com
and values students need to thrive in and
shape their future.’ (OECD, 2019)
The Learning Compass (OECD, 2019)
strives to describe what learner well-
being incorporates in 2030. How would
your language learners describe their
present and future well-being? It is a tool
for learners ’to navigate by themselves
through unfamiliar contexts, and find
their direction in a meaningful and
responsible way, instead of simply
receiving fixed instructions or directions
from their teachers’? Quite a definition
with many ideas in alignment with core
language coaching principles based on
learner autonomy and supporting learning
awareness and developing an agentic
learning environment. As one might
conclude, these are all aimed at developing
with a growth mindset and pursuing
personal learning goals.
Let’s take a practical example for the
above.
My learners in the group I am working
with have expressed their need to feel
brave enough to use the language even if
their grammar is unstable.
Let me call attention at this point to the
initial phase: allowing learners to express
their needs.
A teacher would approach this with the
focus on grammar nine out of ten times,
which is what we have been trained to
do in teaching programmes. If a learner
lacks the grammar knowledge and cannot
apply certain grammar rules in writing,
speaking, or does not interpret what they
read/hear based on what certain grammar
rules mean, then we need to explain and
help them practise and achieve better
regarding their grammar. Whatever that
might mean.
A coach, on the other hand, will explore
from a far wider perspective and open up
a conversation on what ’better grammar’
means, and the role of grammar within
learning/communicating in the target
language. We endeavour to re-establish
the very fundaments of what is known for
language learners, and tailor to suit their
perspectives, thus building a paradigm
shift for them to enable a stronger social
and emotional learning (SEL) environment.
Teachers need to acquire what is called
[ Coaching ]
global skills (Sarah Mercer et al, 2020).
With these newly formed foundations
learners can truly identify what, why
and how they wish to learn. As a result,
engagement and motivation will be higher
and classes more in tune with learner
needs and expectations.
For me, the two outstanding frameworks
in psychology and education stem from the
twin pillars of Maslow’s needs hierarchy
and Bloom’s taxonomy for critical
thinking (Maslow, 1943; Krathwohl,
2002). In Figure 1 I have combined
the Maslow needs pyramid (Needs 1
to 5) with the 6 categories of Bloom’s
taxonomy, with categories 4–5 as one.
The coaching questions and requests
formulated based on the active verbs from
the Taxonomy categories will support
at the corresponding levels of Maslow’s
framework, thus creating a foundation for
coaching questions to support learners in
general, but for the sake of our context,
it can be narrowed down to focus on
language learners – so they will feel
secure and be able to strive to achieve
their own goals and perform – and at the
same time find self-fulfillment. By using
verbs from the Taxonomy, one can easily
identify what level a learner might be
stuck at and identify more easily what is
missing to unlock full learning potential.
All this will lead to better accomplishment
of corresponding needs (Maslow, 1943).
An example would be:
Can you define this word? (Maslow level
1: Physiological, or rather basic level)
How would you prioritise the key
concepts based on this article? What
conclusions can you draw? (Maslow level
4: supporting self-esteem)
Develop your ideas and collaborate with
classmates to create a project outcome.
(Maslow level 5: Self-actualisation)
Clearly these categories do not correspond
word for word, after all, being able to
sketch or transfer ideas in the target
language do not directly lead to stronger
bonding with peers. Having an open mind
and looking at the process from a more
general perspective and understanding the
depth of transference, however, it is clear
to see that understanding and writing
words, sentences will not correspond with
self-actualisation, it is more of a basic step
Volume 31 Issue 4 83
[ Coaching ]

to enable more complex activities at higher

levels of the hierarchy. The approach is in
a way aimed at understanding tendencies
and how to support an upwards motion
for your learners using the advantages of
Bloom’s taxonomy and identifying with
Maslow’s needs.

Coaching skills enable teachers to work

with more fluidity and decrease the
burden of always knowing what is best for
the learner. By asking questions we do not
necessarily have answers to, we are also
demonstrating belief and trust in the other
knowing the answers. Teachers being role Figure 1 The Maslow-Bloom Synthesis Model © ILCA
models in this way can be very liberating
for both teachers and learners. Applying
these skills particularly at levels 3 to 5 (see
Figure 2) will help learners move more
swiftly and with more ease towards self-
actualisation and endeavour to accomplish
their language learning goals.

After an overview of where education and

coaching meet, let us take a brief look at
where coaching is building from.

The origins of coaching

The initial meaning of coaching (originally
formed from the word kocsi, refers to a
horse-drawn carriage, meaning from Kocs,
a Hungarian village, fifteenth century)
started to circulate in the mid nineteenth
century in Oxford. It had the meaning of
transporting from one place to another,
i.e. the coach moved the learner from one
state of mind, or one level of knowledge,
to another, obviously higher level. In
order to to do this, the coach acts indeed
as a vehicle, transporting from one level
of awareness, motivation and focus to a
place where all these have been deepened.
There is a strong sense of development
and progress, and not necessarily learning
more facts, figures, data etc. Coaching
drew on various fields, such as philosophy,
social sciences (psychology, education,
linguistics, psychology, eeconomics
to name a few), then in the twentieth
century organisation development, adult
education, management, leadership,
career development, neuroscience, etc.
All these have influenced the way coaching
has evolved over the past decades and
shows what a rich and vast background
flows into its current practices.
As coaches, we will look at how we can be
supporting the emergence of new ideas,
Figure 2 Maslow’s pyramid of needs from a language learning perspective
understanding the context of our learning
habitats etc., and what we need to do
to utilise our existing resources, rethink
our time management and resurrect our
confidence in our abilities and presence
regarding our communication in the
target language. To dare to voice our
opinions at the meeting table, offline or
virtually. Thus from a seemingly abstract
notion we can actually implement very
applicable ideas. In the next issue of
Modern English Teacher, I will describe
what skills and competences are neeeded
to add a coaching mindset and what
focuses coaches can add to their teaching
practices.
References
Dörnyei Z & Ushioda E (2011) Teaching and
Researching Motivation, 2nd Edition. Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited.
Krathwohl DR (2002) A revision of Bloom’s
Taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice 41
(4) pp212–218.
Maslow A (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation.
Psychological Review 50 (4) pp370–396.
Mercer S, Hockly N, Stobart G & Lorenzo N (2019)
Global Skills in ELT. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Mercer S (2020) The wellbeing of language teachers
in the private sector: an ecological perspective.
Language Teacher Research 2 pp1–24
OECD (2019) OECD Future of Education and
Skills 2030 Conceptual Learning Framework.
Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD).
I would like to dedicate this article to
the recently deceased Dr Zoltán Dörnyei,
professor of Psycholinguistics, known for
his research into motivation.
Australian-born
Gabriella Kovács
MA, PCC is an
internationally
certified language
coach with
ICF, a business
communication
trainer, language
teacher, teacher
trainer, international speaker and author of A
Comprehensive Language Coaching Handbook
(2022, Pavilion Publishing and Media). Her
mission is to inspire a holistic approach in
language learning processes and support
corporate clients. She co-founded ILCA, the
International Language Coaching Association,
supporting language practitioners globally.
https://internationallanguagecoaching.com

84 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com

 [ CPD Essentials ]

CPD Essentials
W
elcome to our new professional development page! It’s designed to help you reflect on what you have been reading in this
issue of Modern English Teacher, assist you in trying out some ideas with your classes as part of experiential learning, and
to give you some activities you can do with colleagues or as part of a teacher development or training session. The answer to
these questions as well as your reflections can be added to your online profession development tool, MyCPD, which comes free* with
your subscription (*If you are on a school subscription, please check with the account holder). We hope you find it useful.

Questions for reflection

■ Look back to pages 6–9. Do you agree with the main point about Young Learners? Are there any other terms we use in English
Language Teaching which might merit a rethink? Do you think there are many other differences between mainstream teaching
and English language teaching?

■ Re-read Teaching in London during lockdowns – all of them, pages 32–35. Are there any similarities with your own teaching
situation? Have any improvements to your teaching been made because of the lockdowns? Do you think online learning can ever
be as efficient as face-to-face teaching? If so, in what circumstances?
■ Think about the text you read on Reflections from online observations, pages 48–49. Which points would you like to improve
upon? Do you have any particular strengths when teaching online? How relaxed are you about hybrid teaching?

Things to try
■ Turn back to Student-focused assessment on page 39 to remind yourself about the three ways of using assessment in your
teaching. Think about the language you are going to cover next week and which of these activities would work best with your
learners. Then prepare and try it out with your next class. Gather student feedback at the end. How well was it received? What
did they like best about using it? Would you do anything different next time? How could you adapt it for another class?

■ Re-read Student-facing lesson objectives, pages 63–65. Choose one of your classes and try and write objectives for the
next three lessons. Make sure they are S-M-A-R-T. Meet with a colleague or other teachers on that level and discuss them.
Communicate them to your class and get feedback.

■ Pick out an idea from It works in practice, pages 46–47. Is there anything you need to adjust to personalise it for your learners?
Make the changes (if necessary), then use the activity in your next class. What worked well? Is there anything you need to adjust
for future classes? Make a note, then save the activity in your teaching activity folder (if you don’t have one, think about having
one – they are a good idea!) so you can use it again in future.

Things to share
■ Direct your teachers to look at Delivery, reflection and development on pages 14–15 again, or make copies to circulate for use
in your next teacher development session. Suggest everyone reads it ahead of the TD session. Ask the group to take it in turns to
look at the three areas and discuss how well your institution deals with them. Is there scope for improvement?
Encourage the group to identify areas for improvement and encourage a call to action by various teachers to develop a strategy.

■ Present Mobile microlearning for professional development, pages 36–38 in your next teacher development meeting – or ask
one of your teachers to do so. Elicit the key advice then discuss whether your teachers would like to implement the practice. Allow
the ideas to flow without interruption – this should be teacher-led as much as possible. Encourage different pairs of teachers to
choose one area and develop something using the software and app suggestions made in the article or something of their own
choice. Each sample should be no more than 5–6 minutes long.

■ Discuss together The ABC of being a teacher in the new ‘normal’, pages 57–59. Which issues most relate to you as a group?
What would you like the school to do, or for you to be enabled to do, to avoid these things developing?

Your subscription to Modern English Teacher gives you access to MyCPD, our online professional development tracker
tool. You can access it in the tab under your profile, where you sign in. You can also find out more about the tool here:
www.modernenglishteacher.com/mycpd

www.modernenglishteacher.com Volume 31 Issue 4 85

[ Reviews ]
Reviews
The Stoic Teacher
Ryan Racine
Alphabet publishing (2022)
See page 88 for details
It is well understood, and very well
documented, that teaching is a stressful
profession. Teachers across sectors, levels and
countries experience burnout at concerning
rates, and many leave the profession early
in their careers. This is not only a negative
outcome for individual teachers; it has
long-reaching implications for students
and the development of the profession at
large. The goals of retaining teachers and
fostering rewarding careers have attracted a
lot of attention from researchers, educational
leaders, and policymakers. However, aside
from large-scale change, which we cannot
control as individuals, how might teachers take
care of themselves from day to day? When we
realise, as author Ryan Racine did, that the ‘the
idealized classroom I had dreamt of for a long
time was far from realistic’ (p.3), and wonder
whether we were meant to be teachers in the
first place, what is to be done?
Racine responds to this question through
stoicism, a philosophical framework which is
concerned with what is within and outside our
control. Founded in ancient Athens around 300
BCE, stoicism presents tools to live a life which
is virtuous and rational. Stoicism, as reviewed
86 Volume 31 Issue 4
in the book, is based on four virtues: wisdom,
justice, courage, and temperance.
The book chapters introduce cognitive tools
which teachers may draw on to develop
their resilience and cope with the stresses
of work. Each of these tools has its roots in
stoic philosophy. To begin, Racine locates
his reasons for being a teacher – his ‘why’
of teaching – within stoicism. Rather than
expecting to feel positive emotions at work
every day, he encourages us to consider why
we chose teaching as a profession in the first
place. If we can identify reasons which are
not simply grounded in facile expectations
of constant enjoyment, Racine suggests, then
we take a first step along the path to being
stoic teachers. This is how he encourages
us to begin: by reflecting on why teaching is
meaningful to us, how we might embody our
best teacher selves, and what we want from
our teaching careers.
The subsequent chapters cover a variety of
practical tools which can be implemented
to orient our thinking and practice towards
stoicism. Focusing on what is within our control
is a constant theme. Chapters are organised
based on teachers’ experiences, as indicated
by their titles – for example, Preparing for the
school day, Staying calm in the classroom,
Reframing a ‘bad day’, and Dealing with
imposter syndrome. Quotes from Marcus
Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus, all great stoic
philosophers, wonderfully set the tone of each
chapter.
Racine works as a teacher in the Canadian
public school system, and his reflections are
understandably grounded within his role
and experiences. However, his discussions of
stoicism are substantial and clear throughout,
and I found it easy to translate his advice
into my own professional context. As I was on
the lookout for transferability while reading
through, I particularly enjoyed Chapter 8, which
presents narratives written by other teachers
reflecting on how stoicism has shaped their
thinking and developed their resilience. These
narratives supplement Racine’s reflections
with a range of viewpoints and experiences,
ultimately strengthening his case for stoicism
in teaching.
This book always keeps practical application
close at heart. Racine writes in an engaging,
personal, and reflective way. He provides
activities and advice throughout to guide stoic
teachers’ reflections and development, from
journalling questions to guided mindfulness
techniques. I appreciated Racine’s efforts
to locate stoicism within these activities, as
well as the care he took to provide tables,
questions, and examples that readers can
easily adapt for themselves. In Chapter 7,
Racine points readers to a range of carefully
selected sources on stoicism for further
professional development. These sources
include classic texts as well as modern
discussions and communities.
This is a well-executed book with a clear
purpose. Although it is not a long book, the
advice, meditations and activities provided
will likely stay with readers for some time. As
someone who attempts to merge philosophy
with practice at every opportune moment, I was
drawn to the project that the book undertakes.
I also appreciated Racine’s care to differentiate
what may be within teachers’ control from
what certainly is not. This is not an attempt to
make individuals feel responsible for system-
level failures, nor does it encourage teachers
to internalise the problems and challenges
they face in their work. Quite the opposite –
Racine, and the stoic philosophers on whose
work he draws, encourage us to live a good life,
not based on pleasure-seeking but on careful
and intentional reflection on values and ethics.
I certainly recommend The Stoic Philosopher
for teachers.
Laura Gurney
Laura is an applied linguist and Senior
Lecturer in the School of Education,
University of Waikato, New Zealand. She
specialises in language teacher education,
theories of language, and languages in
higher education.
www.modernenglishteacher.com

Improve your Grammar
The essential guide to
accurate writing, 3rd edition
Vanessa Jakeman, Mark Harrison and
Ken Paterson
Bloomsbury (2022)
See page 88 for details
Do your students know the difference between
apprise and appraise? Refute and reject? Are they
aware that bona fide, de facto and per capita
are Latin phrases that are common in formal,
academic writing? That the use or non-use of a
comma is vital to the meaning of a sentence? And
that when you cite more than one publication,
you must use a semicolon to separate them?
The answers to these and myriad other
grammar-as-writing queries can be found in
Improve your Grammar – the essential guide
to accurate writing, 3rd edition, by Jakeman,
Harrison and Paterson.
If you are already a fan of this title, you’ll be
keen to take possession of the new edition
of this accessible guide. The authors say on
the back cover that it has been updated with
‘new units on common problem points such as
hedging and being critical.’ Just from the blurb
then, we see that this book is aimed at those
students who are already in tertiary education
or planning to attend university or college and
that ‘it concentrates on the specific areas of
grammar, vocabulary and coherence where
students frequently make mistakes...’ (2022:
1). Described as an invaluable reference and
practice book, it can be used in the classroom
or in self-study. The language and writing
points covered are suitable for students ‘at all
levels of proficiency and from a wide range of
subject areas.’ (2022:3)
The book is 152 pages long and organised into
62 units. Everything is easily navigable from the
contents page, where we see at a glance that
the sections covered are as follows:
www.modernenglishteacher.com
■ key terms (parts of speech)
■ key grammar (a comprehensive range
from articles and adverbs to modals,
conditionals, passives and inversion)
■ key punctuation (capitals, colons, commas,
hyphens, dashes etc)
■ connections within sentences (linking,
signposting, avoiding repetition)
■ producing good sentences (parallel
structures, participles)
■ features of writing (hedging, citing,
paraphrasing, incorporating data, formality)
■ using the right words (language of critique,
collocations, spelling rules and common
mistakes, writing CVs, covering letters,
emails to a tutor)
Navigation through the book is helped by
having the key sections in bold black type, and
the individual language points in blue. Each
unit is a double-page spread, with a digestible
explanation of the language area on the left
and ‘check-your-understanding’ practice
exercises (mostly two, but occasionally only
one) on the right - much like the format of the
Essential Grammar in Use books by Raymond
Murphy. Although many of the units are
stand-alones, allowing you to dip in and focus
on, say, apostrophes (unit 23), the authors do
point out that units can build on each other:
‘”Connections within sentences” for example,
contains a series of four linked units focusing
on the language required for “contrasting”
and “adding” information and for describing
“causes” and “results”.’ (2022: 1)
What you also get as a user are Writing Tips
(‘Sometimes, the use of a single, complex word
instead of a basic or common phrase can have
an impact on the reader’ (p.108)); Danger Zone
boxes (‘In spoken English, have may sound like
of, but it is never correct to write of as part of a
past modal form’ (p.15)); Rules boxes (on good
writing practice) and Remember! boxes that
give essential notes. These are not only useful
– I can imagine students highlighting these in
self-study – but also provide a way of breaking
up the page layout and giving a shot of colour
(grey and blue). There are twelve cartoons
through the book, added as visual humour or
light relief, but they could have been omitted
at no detriment to the unit as they don’t add
anything and, in my view, take away from the
‘serious-yet-not-dry’ feel of the book.
Useful early pages are on how to use this book
as both a student and a tutor. The latter sets
out ideas for how tutors might use the points
covered in particular units as essay feedback;
for example a teacher could direct a student
to the units in Features of Writing to examine
[ Reviews ]
what academic style is and how to write more
coherently. For students in the throes of
writing up research papers or dissertations,
teachers can focus explicitly on the unit that
deals with ways of incorporating citations and
which tenses are associated with this.
Grammar stalwarts such as comparatives
and superlatives, articles, relative clauses,
modal verbs, passive voice, and conditionals
all feature here, but there isn’t the in-depth
tense-by-tense focus of more orthodox books,
because this is grammar for accurate writing.
Take tenses: what the authors have done here
is to label one two-page spread ‘Correct tense
formation’, where there is a succinct focus
on what they call ‘special uses of tenses in
academic writing’. And IELTS students would
do well to look at units 16 and 17 on comparing
and contrasting, describing similarities and
differences, plus unit 45 with its lexis on
incorporating data.
For students using the book as a self-study
tool, it will be heartening to find the key to all
practice exercises at the back; plus there is a
clear index, making it simple to access exactly
what you are looking for.
This is not a teacher’s handbook with pedagogy
tips; however, some ideas are suggested on
how to use the book as a teaching tool (p3):
teachers can spend some time each week
focusing on the units that are most relevant
to their students; they can set the practice
exercises as a diagnostic test to help assess
student proficiency before covering the unit
material in class; students can be given the
unit reference page to read at home before the
teacher introduces the practice exercises in
class. The book offers plenty of flexibility and
I can see it working in both whole class and
one-to-one contexts.
As an English Language Support Tutor working
on an international Pre-Masters course in the
last academic year, I saw a cohort of students
once a week. While each student had different
‘gaps’ and requested varying degrees of
remedial work on grammar or vocabulary, what
united them was the pressing need to develop
writing skills based on their academic tutor’s
feedback. How I wish I had had access to this
book back then! I could have made good use of
units 26–29 (linking), unit 30 (signposting), unit
36 (avoiding long and disorganised sentences)
and units 39–40 (hedging).
Clearly, then, the book has suitable material
for students at the higher end of the CEF
scale, linguistically – and cognitively speaking.
But even these higher level learners can be
self-confessed ignoramuses when it comes to
Volume 31 Issue 4 87
[ Reviews ]

identifying what a gerund is, or they don’t know
an adjective from an adverb, and so units 1 and
2 on ‘Parts of Speech’ and ‘Parts of a Sentence’
(‘Teacher, what’s a clause?’) wouldn’t go amiss
as a tutor-led input session, especially at the
start of an EAP course. When I train German
professors – who all have to deliver lectures and
publish in English – they are highly motivated
to develop their own academic writing skills,
and many of our input sessions focus on
the difference between German and English
punctuation. Using this book as my go-to, I will
be able to devise some lessons and workshops
based around the units on the comma, inverted
commas, hyphens and dashes.
Talking of metalanguage, I was slightly
surprised to see that the structures I call
clefting and inversion are referred to in the
book as ‘Emphasising’ (unit 11) and ‘Negative
words and phrases’ (unit 12). But then perhaps
the terms clefting and inversion were deemed
too inaccessible, given that the book is geared
towards students at both lower and higher
levels of proficiency.
As regards the practice exercises at the end
of each unit, there is a nice variety to keep
student interest high: banked gap fill, error
correction, reformulations/rewrites, multiple
choice, punctuation tasks, transformation
sentences and word building. Students should
write in a notebook or on a piece of paper
though, as there is the perennial issue of not
enough space to write answers in.
To sum up: Improve your Grammar is clear
and concise, with the contents presented in
an unfussy way and practice exercises that
test what you have just read. If teachers want
material all in one place that can help students
improve their academic style with logically-
linked, correctly-punctuated sentences and
accurate grammar, this is the book to invest
in. For students, it could serve as the logical
next-step tool to accompany tutor feedback on
written assignments and provide an actionable
plan of self-study.
Clare Henderson
Clare Henderson has been an EFL teacher
since 1987 and a teacher/trainer at
Bell Cambridge since October 1994. Her
interests are contemporary English,
particularly lexical development and
grammar change.

Title Page Author Publisher ISBN

The Stoic Teacher 86 Ryan Racine Alphabet publishing 978-1-956159-12-7
Improve your Grammar – the essential 87 Vanessa Jakeman, Mark Harrison and Bloomsbury 978-1-350933-62-0
guide to accurate writing, 3rd edition Ken Paterson

Future issues
If you have any articles on the themes below, I would like to hear from you. Articles should be 1200–1800 words.
For any further information contact me at Robert.mclarty@pavpub.com

Topics for 2022/23

Issue Theme Deadline
September/October 2022 English for Academic Purposes July 15th 2022
November/December 2022 Classroom Research September 15th 2022
January/February 2023 Speaking skills November 15th 2022

Write for us
We are always looking for fresh ideas that will appeal to our
readers. Whether you are an experienced writer or a practising
teacher with something to say, we would like to hear from you.
Why write for MET? Reader friendly
There are many benefits of writing for publication. It encourages We are looking for articles that are of direct relevance
reflection, which is good for your own teaching and for your continuing and immediate interest to teachers in the classroom –
professional development. Publication enhances your profile as a as you probably already know, we publish a wide range
teacher and can improve your future job prospects as a result. It’s also of features and articles dealing with practical classroom issues,
good for the teaching profession as a whole; the exchange of ideas the latest research and its impact on teaching, professional and
benefits all teachers. personal development, methodology, pedagogy, technology, language and
linguistics, teaching resources – and a lot more besides. Our aim is to be
Starting point fresh and accessible. Please write clearly and simply about what you did
You may wish to submit shorter pieces to begin with. We are very and explain how someone else can do it too/adapt it to their situation,
pleased to receive letters and suggestions for publication, and etc. whilst avoiding, unless you explain, technical terms or jargon.
contributions to Global voices and It works in practice sections
of the magazine. Good, innovative photocopiable materials are Contact the editor
particularly welcome. Robert McLarty. Email: robert.mclarty@pavpub.com

For more information visit: www.modernenglishteacher.com/write-for-us

88 Volume 31 Issue 4 www.modernenglishteacher.com

 Te a c h i n g E n g l i s h

A Comprehensive
Language Coaching
Handbook Te a c h i n g E n g
lish

Theory and Practice A Comprehensiv

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Language Coach
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b. PY
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Gabriella Kovács

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Theory and Prac

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Coaching in ELT is often addressed as in how to coach

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context and be effective language coaches.
By using A Comprehensive Language Coaching Handbook: Theory and Practice you will:
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coaching and its relation to language training
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language coaching practices;
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 Te a c h i n g E n g l i s h

TITLE An Introduction
to Evidence-Based
SUB TITLE Teaching in the English
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Theory and Practice

Carol Lethaby, Russell Mayne and Patricia Harries

Do you want to learn more about the
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An Introduction to Evidence-Based Teaching
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This practical and accessible resource begins
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