Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

 You may or may not use many task-based lessons, but task-based language teaching (TBLT) in general gets good support from researchers. Major names in the field associated with TBLT are usually from the field of English as a Second/Foreign Language. They include Jane Willis, Rod Ellis, Mike Long, Peter Skehan and David Nunan. The basic premise is that that acquisition is more likely to be promoted when students are focused on a meaningful task - using the target language for a purpose. Task-based lessons are also more likely to be enjoyable and develop what Deci and Ryan, the self-determination theory scholars, call autonomy, competence and relatedness. TBLT stands in contrast to traditional grammar-based approaches which are more teacher-led and where the main focus is on practising language forms. In my own practice, I used TBLT in various forms whenever I felt it supported students' progress and provided enjoyable, target language-based input and interaction. We all have our go-...

 I asked ChatGPT to summarise a recent paper by a leading, veteran researcher into vocabulary learning. I then edited the summary and inserted some further comments from my perspective. The link to the original paper is below. https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/5/160?fbclid=IwY2xjawIlhNpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHeKzoD89IDaOZB2O4sfoZ6ah_gYS7vbDjY9uGn2Mj-XT4wV3eI5Pi_UrXw_aem_UOW3G1VEv0roD61i56NKcw The ChatGPT summary starts here. This is an interesting paper because it represents Paul Nation trying to simplify decades of vocabulary acquisition research into a small set of general learning principles. It is less about new empirical findings than about providing a practical framework that teachers, researchers and curriculum designers can use. Paper Paul Nation (2024). Re-Thinking the Principles of (Vocabulary) Learning and Their Applications . Languages , 9(5), 160.   The central argument Nation argues that successful vocabulary learning — and, indeed, much other language learning — depen...

 Apart the book I wrote for Routledge, Becoming an Outstanding Languages Teacher, all the other books I’ve written, or co-written with Gianfranco Conti (and recently Steve Glover) have been independently published through the Amazon platform called KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). There have been some good reasons for doing this. 1. If you are already well known to teachers by reputation or on social media you are not building a reputation from scratch so you can market your work without a publisher. Both Gianfranco and I had already been blogging and writing language teaching resources before we wrote The Language Teacher Toolkit in 2016. This is, by the way, still our best selling book, now in its second edition.  2. Royalties are a lot higher with KDP than with a publisher. A typical publisher may offer you 10%  for an education book. With KDP the royalty is up to 70%. That is a huge difference, especially if you are co-authoring. While the main reason for writing teach...

I listened to Dr Liam Printer's new Motivated Classroom podcast this morning. It's a nice listen, as usual, and reminds us language teachers that thinking about language teaching can evolve over time. It would be weird if it didn't, don't you think? He asks the question "Is input enough?" and essentially puts forward the idea that it may be in theory, but that communication/output is needed, as much as anything else, for motivation and engagement. I hope I got that right. So here are my own feelings about this question, with some references to standard research which you might find useful if you are learning about additional language acquisition. Nearly all language teachers would reply to the question "Is input enough?” with "Of course not." We assume that to get better at speaking, you need to speak, and to get better at writing, you need to write. This is not an unreasonable response. After all, in general, we get better at what we practise...