This post contains a very short excerpt from Big Bang Theory with a classic “second conditional” example and on-screen activities.
teaching grammar
Noticing and language learning
Of all the ELT buzzwords I’ve heard, thought about and used over the past decade, noticing is by far the most frequent. Fortunately, noticing is nowhere near as broad and ambivalent as communicative, for example, which makes it much easier to pin down conceptually.
So, what is noticing, anyway, and how does it impact language learning?
Selfies: a video-based grammar lesson
This is a video-based grammar lesson intended for A2/B1 students. Its aim is to review/introduce the use of gerunds after prepositions. The grammar expansion section, which focuses on verb + preposition collocations, is probably better suited to B1/B1+.
Use it to your heart’s content. Any feedback will be much appreciated.
TBL vs. PPP – again…
It seems like I just can’t get away from the same kinds of PPP vs. TBL discussions I used to have in the 1990s, no matter how hard I try.
This morning, for example, I woke up to a bit of a Twitter feud.
Apparently, in a recent talk Penny Ur claimed that there’s no research evidence supporting task-based Learning. Her claim, as you can imagine, didn’t sit well with most TBL advocates, who argue that there’s a solid body of research out there demonstrating the benefits of task-based learning. In particular, they kept referring to a 52-case meta analysis by Bryfonski and McKay, which I intend to read soon. And when I do, here’s the question I will try to keep in mind:
Can we prove empirically that a method works? I’m using the word method in the broadest possible sense, of course.