Fun things I’ve learnt from writing one ELT coursebook

I've recently read (am a bit slow) this post https://eltplanning.com/2018/08/03/materials-writer-elt/ and one point really stood out to me - about how being interested in lots of things is helpful for materials writers. And as I'm just going through the proof stage of a book I've co-written, it made me reflect on the interesting things I've …

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How to serve PARSNIPs

I'm not convinced that avoiding PARSNIP topics at all costs makes for engaging materials. As I see it, it should be a case of considering HOW and from which angle, not just WHAT topic is covered. It's more important how you serve the parsnips!

Revision Week for my Materials

Finally it is the last week of our semester here, which started in October. It's been a long, hard slog, but we've made it! But the final week of term is a weird one. We still have classes, most of which are revision sessions or tests, and we have to make sure we get all …

Teaching a deaf student EAP oral skills

Since October I've had a student in my class who is practically deaf, especially if she hasn't got her hearing aid.  The class that she's taking with me is actually an Oral Skills class; it's the first class of an EAP programme and focuses on presentation and seminar skills. Clearly, not being able to hear …

Getting the (Conference Speaker) Balance Right

There's been a lot of talk about this recently - getting the balance right. The balance between men and women, between native and non-native speakers at ELT events and conferences.  I've fairly recently joined the committee of an IATEFL SIG. I'm on the events team. So these kinds of 'balance' topics are more pertinent to …

Who can help with my to-do list?

There seem to be a flurry of posts at the moment on how people are feeling, what they're thinking, what's going on in their lives. Maybe these posts are people sneakily trying to hit the record of 15 posts in a month set by Hana Ticha (See: #hanachallenge !). But people also often say that …

Academic Writing Skills & “Just in Time” Teaching

I've been looking back over my notes from IATEFL 2017 to find inspiration for another blog post. I'm a bit late now to just summarise talks, but I'd like to come back to one of the questions that was posed at a talk I attended. It was "Building bridges: the disciplines, the normative and the …