Tag «material design»

ESL textbooks – the current orthodoxy

What do modern EFL/ESL textbooks look like? This is a post I wrote before I became a full time author, back in 2011. Over the past few months I’ve analyzed dozens of EFL / ESL textbooks (I’m using the terms interchangeably) put out by the mainstream publishing houses. For better and for worse, all these …

Controlled practice: 13 variations on the same grammar activity

For this article to make sense to you, you need to agree with three basic premises: 1. Language learning can be regarded as a form of skill learning. 2. Controlled practice has a role to play as a sort of rehearsal, so to speak, for real-life communication down the road. 3. This rehearsal should bear …