Blog posts in April 2014

Here we've got ideas, observations on ELT, including Mark's Pronunciation Blog and loads of conference and speaker reports...

Pronunciation Tasks Video

Saturday - April 12th, 2014
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Mark Hancock demonstrating pronunciation activities

This is a video showing clips from a presentation I did at Living Learning English in Bristol.

  • Pronunciation

Sugata Mitra, ed-tech evangelist

Saturday - April 5th, 2014
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/145

Sugata Mitra argued with evangelical flourish that, given the right resources, children will learn without schooling. He said that the right resource has now come into existence and is potentially available to every child: the internet. To support this argument, Mitra described what have become known as “the hole in the wall” experiments.

  • General
  • Classroom interaction
  • Materials design
  • Motivation

Kathleen Graves, teacher's teacher

Saturday - April 5th, 2014
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/145

Kathleen Graves’s title contained the paradox that in teaching, you sometimes have to be less efficient to be more efficient. In a time in which testing and accountability have become paramount, in an attempt to cut out the dead wood in education, we have neglected the learner and a broader vision of what learning is for.

  • General
  • Classroom interaction
  • Motivation
  • Syllabus design

David Graddol, trends analyst

Saturday - April 5th, 2014
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog

In this plenary, David Graddol delved into the murky world of the English teaching business, where the imperative is firmly profit over people. He asks, ‘Who benefits from English teaching?’, and answers, ‘Follow the money!’. On that basis, it’s clearly not teachers and learners who benefit.

  • General

Michael Hoey, faithful observer of language

Saturday - April 5th, 2014
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Blog - hancockmcdonald.com/blog/66

Michael Hoey’s was a compelling argument in favour of teaching language lexically, because that’s how language is, and that’s also how it’s learnt and mentally stored. On the linguistics angle, he endorsed the work of Michael Lewis and his ´lexical approach´, and on the pedagogic side, he recommended the ´Monitor Model´of Stephen Krashen.

  • Materials design
  • Syllabus design
  • Grammar
  • Vocabulary

IATEFL 2014: The ELT World in Four Plenaries

Saturday - April 5th, 2014
Posted by: 
Mark Hancock
Map of ELT by Mark Hancock

I think of the world of ELT as a map divided into four quarters – the content of what we teach – the English language; the reasons why the students are learning – their needs; how people learn – pedagogy; and the procedures we use to teach – methodology.