It’s Saturday afternoon and I don’t really want to go into anything too theoretical today. I happen to be in a pretty nostalgic mood, so I thought I’d take quick trip down my language learning memory lane and share with you a few random moments that, for some mysterious reason, I can still recall.
Here I go again. Another can of worms. This time, I’m tackling the M word: the of the mother tongue (L1) in the EFL / ESL class. What’s the role of translation?
Teaching grammar is, indeed, a juggling act. Give students a drill or a very controlled practice activity and, in the end, they might not be able to say what they wanted to say. Give them an open-ended task and they probably won’t use the language you wanted them to practice. That’s where input-oriented activities that …
In the last twenty years or so, I have changed my mind about a lot of things: my mom, Celine Dion, politics, my career, MAC computers, McDonald’s, oral correction in class, soap operas, Ford cars, task-based teaching, grammar teaching, shampoo, drilling, suffering fools gladly, communicative language teaching and Lindt chocolates. I do hold, however, two …