Resources for Language Teachers

1. Understanding learners

• Is there a talent for language learning? (2015). Useful when you want to know what language learning aptitude is, how it differs from intelligence, and what its three components (phonemic coding ability, language analytic ability and memory) contribute. The post also argues why aptitude should never be used to decide that someone cannot learn languages.
• On Language Learning Strategies (2015). Useful when you want an overview of what learning strategies are, why they matter, and whether they can be taught, based on a conference in Klagenfurt. It ends with some doubts about adding strategy instruction to teachers’ already heavy load.
• Understanding the Bottleneck Hypothesis in Language Learning (2013). Useful when you are wondering why some grammar (tense, aspect, agreement endings) is so hard to learn, and whether that means learners need drilling. A 2025 update revisits the question in light of usage-based research, focus on form, AI tools and plurilingual competence.
• Time in Language Learning and Teaching (2016). Useful when you want an overview of research on how time shapes language learning, through summaries of the seven articles in a 2017 special issue, with a reviewer’s critical comments.
• What Russian Speakers Find Hard About Greek (According to Their Teachers) (2026). Useful when you teach learners who share a first language, and want to see how knowing both languages can help you anticipate difficulties, without assuming they are predictable.

2. Teaching young learners

• Teaching English to Young Learners: Some insights from the literature (2014). Useful when someone tells you that starting earlier is always better. The post synthesises four studies of age and instructed learning, which suggest modest gains mainly in oral skills, and that late starters tend to catch up.
• Teaching English to Very Young Learners in Greece: When research findings don’t align (2013). Useful when two studies of early English teaching reach different conclusions, and you want to think through why: the programmes, the sensitivity of the studies, the people surveyed, and quality control.
• Teaching English to Young Learners, revisited (2014). Useful when you want a critical reading of the published account of the Greek early English programme, and of what it leaves out, notably any evidence about what children actually learnt.
• The 2014 ELT Journal debate. Useful when you want both sides of the argument about English in primary schools. “Primary English Language Teaching does more harm than good” summarises Fiona Copland’s case for the motion; On the ELT J debate, continued summarises Janet Enever’s response; and Primary ELT: Feedback from the community groups teachers’ reactions to the debate.

3. Multilingual classrooms

• Using Linguistic Landscapes to Challenge Monolingual Norms in ELT (2025). Useful when your school expects English-only lessons, and you want ideas for making learners’ other languages visible, drawing on a study of multilingual schoolscapes by Brigitta Schvarcz and Amber Warren.
• Every Language Is Someone’s World (2026). Useful when you want an accessible introduction to ideas that matter in multilingual classrooms: first languages, languages and dialects, second and foreign languages, plurilingual repertoires and language policy.
• CLIL and Immersion: Some differences (2018). Useful when you need to tell Content and Language Integrated Learning apart from bilingual immersion programmes.
• CLIL in Greece: Uncritical and Unhelpful (2012). Useful when you want a critical view of CLIL: the thin evidence for it, which subjects suit it, who should teach it, and what it means for learners’ first languages.
• Raising children to speak many languages (2020). Useful when you want to read about a study of how parents in mixed-language families discuss raising their children with more than one language.

Language Teacher Psychology is an edited collection that Sarah Mercer and I put together, which was published by Multilingual Matters in 2018. Its 19 chapters turn the attention of language learning psychology from learners to teachers: their motivation, identity, cognition, self-efficacy, emotions, agency and resilience.

We put the book together because research had focused mainly on learners, often treating the teacher as just one of many factors in their success. We wanted to redress that balance, and to affirm the value of teachers as professionals and as people.

4. Classroom practice and the teaching profession

• A classroom observation framework (2020). Useful when you are about to observe a class and need to decide what to look for: the context, the learners’ strengths and needs, and the methodological choices behind the lesson, with focusing questions for each and a critical pedagogy dimension.
• Classroom Observation for language teachers: A how-to guide (2023). Useful when you are planning observation visits, from the first meeting with the school to note-taking, debriefing the teacher and reflecting afterwards. It comes with downloadable planning and note-taking templates.
• AI-Assisted Teacher Reflection: Thinking Before, During, and After the Lesson (2026). Useful when you want to think about how AI can support reflection before, during and after a lesson, and what it cannot do. The post draws on Thomas Farrell’s framework and on work in the AI Lang project.
• EFL teachers’ language use for classroom discipline (2013). Useful when you are wondering which language to use for classroom management, and what that choice does to the relationship with your learners. These are reading notes on a study of two teachers in Korea.
• Some Thoughts on Student Evaluation in Greek ELT (2013). Useful when you need to make sense of an assessment policy, and want to ask how well its terms are defined, whether its criteria pull against each other (such as reliability and validity), and whether it is practical.
• The Book I Wanted to Write (But Didn’t) (2026). Useful when you want an insider’s account of how a school coursebook is designed, and how evaluation and production can reshape it. The book in question is a Modern Greek coursebook for the final year of lower secondary school.
• The history of ELT: A different perspective (2015). Useful when the familiar sequence of methods, from Grammar-Translation to Task-Based Learning, seems too tidy. The post discusses Howatt and Smith’s alternative, which divides the history of ELT into periods.
• Revisiting the Target Language Democratisation narrative (2015). Useful when you want to question the familiar story of how ELT came to accept different varieties of English, in light of a 1964 book by Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens.