I asked Chat GPT to produce a summary of topics I looked at on my blog this year. My prompt requested a first person account, written as me (Steve Smith). Chat GPT did a very decent job.
What I Covered on Language Teacher Toolkit in 2025
During 2025, my writing on Language Teacher Toolkit continued to focus on what has always mattered most to me as a language teacher and teacher educator: what actually helps students learn languages in classrooms. Across the year, my blog posts explored practical classroom activities, listening and vocabulary pedagogy, task design, grammar and cognitive theory, assessment and curriculum issues (especially GCSE), and the careful use of technology and AI. Throughout, I aimed to connect research insights with everyday classroom practice.
What follows is a reflective overview of the main themes I addressed during the year.
1. Practical Classroom Activities and Resources
As in previous years, a large proportion of my posts in 2025 were grounded in concrete classroom practice. I continue to believe that teachers value ideas they can use or adapt immediately, provided those ideas are underpinned by sound principles.
Listening and Speaking Activities
Listening remained a major focus. Early in the year, I shared a “spot the differences” listening task, designed to encourage careful, repeated listening rather than superficial gist comprehension. The idea was simple: learners compare similar texts and identify differences, forcing them to attend closely to meaning and form.
I also published a post on 30-minute instant listening tasks, offering a bank of adaptable activities (true/false, matching, short answers) that teachers can deploy with minimal preparation. These tasks were especially aimed at GCSE and lower sixth-form classes, where regular exposure to structured listening remains crucial.
Later in the year, I wrote about teacher-led question-answer sequences, a form of guided interaction influenced by ideas such as circling and structured input. My aim here was to show how carefully sequenced questioning can generate large amounts of comprehensible input, recycle language naturally, and promote confidence in oral work without overloading learners.
Across all these posts, my underlying concern was the same: how to make listening and speaking central, routine and manageable, rather than occasional or intimidating.
Games, Sentence Builders and Engagement
I also explored more playful and creative approaches to language use. One example was my post on adapting the NYT game “Connections” for language teaching, where learners group words according to meaning or usage. This kind of semantic categorisation encourages deeper lexical processing and sparks discussion, while still being highly accessible.
Towards the end of the year, I returned once again to sentence builders (substitution tables). I remain convinced that these are among the most versatile tools available to language teachers. In this post, I emphasised how sentence builders can support pronunciation, listening, speaking, reading and writing simultaneously, while helping students internalise chunks of language rather than isolated words or rules.
2. Vocabulary Learning, Retention and Task Design
Vocabulary has long been one of my core interests, and 2025 was no exception. Several posts focused on how vocabulary is learned, and how task design influences retention and fluency.
One important post explored involvement load theory, which suggests that vocabulary learning depends not just on exposure, but on how cognitively and motivationally demanding a task is. I reflected on what this means for classroom practice, questioning whether some commonly used tasks genuinely promote durable learning.
Related to this, I shared work on a GCSE vocabulary and fluency booklet, designed to help learners build usable language through structured sentence creation and repeated practice. In this context, I also discussed my cautious use of AI tools such as ChatGPT, not as a replacement for teacher expertise, but as a way of generating examples and saving time during resource development.
Across these posts, my emphasis was on depth over breadth: fewer words, better learned, and embedded in meaningful language use.
3. Grammar, Pedagogy and Methodological Reflection
Another significant strand of my writing in 2025 involved stepping back from activities to examine broader pedagogical assumptions, particularly around grammar.
In one post, I questioned the traditional “words + grammar” model, arguing that it misrepresents how language competence actually develops. Rather than seeing vocabulary and grammar as separate pillars, I argued for a more integrated lexicogrammatical view, where meaning, form and usage are inseparable.
Later in the year, I explored what it really means to “know grammar”, drawing a distinction between declarative knowledge (knowing rules) and procedural knowledge (being able to use language fluently). My concern here was that too much classroom time is still spent on explanation rather than on helping learners develop automaticity through meaningful exposure and practice.
I also returned to cognitive load theory, applying it specifically to language teaching. This post examined how instructional choices can either overload learners’ working memory or support efficient learning. For me, this is not about dumbing down content, but about sequencing, clarity and restraint.
4. Assessment, GCSE and Curriculum Critique
As always, assessment and curriculum issues featured prominently in my blogging. In 2025, much of this centred on GCSE MFL, which I continue to see as deeply problematic.
I wrote critically about the structure and aims of GCSE, arguing that it remains poorly aligned with communicative language use and learner motivation. I also discussed the negative backwash of prescribed vocabulary lists, particularly how they can narrow teaching and encourage superficial coverage rather than genuine competence.
At the same time, I shared more constructive alternatives, such as “correct the transcript” listening tasks, which combine careful listening, noticing and language analysis. These kinds of tasks, I argued, are far more likely to promote transferable skills than many traditional exam-style exercises.
My aim in these posts was not simply to criticise, but to highlight the gap between what research suggests is effectiveand what current assessment systems reward.
5. Technology and AI in Language Teaching
Technology featured as a supporting theme rather than a dominant one. I wrote about experimenting with AI tools for generating listening texts or vocabulary examples, while stressing that such tools must be used critically.
My position remains pragmatic: AI can help teachers save time and generate raw material, but pedagogical judgement, task design and classroom interaction remain central. Technology is only useful insofar as it serves learning goals.
6. Reflection and Looking Back
At the end of the year, I published a reflective post reviewing my most read posts of 2025. It was striking that curriculum critique and listening pedagogy consistently attracted the most attention, suggesting that these remain areas of real concern for teachers.
Looking back, the year’s writing reinforced my sense that language teachers are hungry for principled, realistic guidance—not silver bullets, but thoughtful approaches grounded in both research and experience.
Conclusion
Overall, my 2025 blogging on Language Teacher Toolkit reflected a continued commitment to:
Making listening and speaking routine and central
Designing tasks that promote depth of processing
Questioning simplistic models of grammar and vocabulary
Critiquing assessment systems that distort teaching
Using technology cautiously and purposefully
Above all, my aim remained the same as ever: to help language teachers think more clearly about what they do in classrooms, and why they do it.
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