Demand is high for comversation classes, but are we demanding too little of our students in them? How can we stop it becoming little more than a chat with…

Teaching materials may deal with pronunciation on a surface level or even as a separate entity, rather than integrating it with routine aspects of language and learning…

Teachers, learners, materials writers and assessment boards often strive for authenticity in language use. Definition of the concept is not trouble-free but balanced against the alternatives – contrived, artificial language input and use, most practitioners …

Listening marks the first step of language development for hearing individuals. As such, its importance in allowing the necessary input for language acquisition to take place should not be underestimated. We use listening in order to …

The weight of evidence from second language acquisition research suggests that approaches that focus on fluency first and deal with language aspects second is the most effective way to speed up our learners’ natural process of learning English. To this end, approaches like task-based language teaching (TBLT), Dogme and Community Language Learning (CLL) are often posited as a way of breaking away from a coursebook-led, ‘Grammar McNuggets’ (Thornbury, 2010) approach to teaching.

Individual lessons and whole courses are often judged in terms of whether or how far they meet pre-agreed aims and objectives. Such a view is…