Tag: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
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CLIL and Immersion: Some differences
This post discusses differences between CLIL and bilingual immersion programmes.
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Innovative writing in English language teacher education and development
Update 2016 The special issue described below has been published and can be accessed from the link below. ELDED 20: Innovative Writing in English Language Teacher Education and Development; Table of Contents I hope you enjoy reading the articles as much as I did. Call for papers Of all the calls for papers that find…
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Tissue rejection in language education
Tissue rejection is a metaphor that helps explain why innovations in language education sometimes fail. Originally used by Holliday in the 1990s, it describes the way new methods are resisted when they do not align with the ecology of classrooms. This post revisits the metaphor to explore its relevance for AI, psychology, and teacher development…
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IATEFL 2015: A retrospective
During IATEFL 2015, I made extensive notes about the sessions that I attended, as I had planned to write up summaries for this blog. It seems, however, that my own recollections of, and reactions to, many sessions have become weaker in the weeks since the conference. However, there’s already quite a lot of material available online, including video…
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Call for Chapters: English-Medium Instruction in Japan
A call for chapters has been issued for an edited collection focussing on English Medium Instruction (EMI) in Japanese higher education. The book, to be edited by Howard Brown (University of Niigata), aims to generate “a picture of EMI in Japan, its development, its current situation and its future”, by looking into topics such as “how…
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This year’s ELT Journal debate
ELT Journal are holding their annual debate at IATEFL in Manchester on Monday 13 April 2015. This year’s motion is Language testing does more harm than good. In the latest issue of ELT J (unfortunately behind a paywall!), the rationale of the debate is described as follows: A remarkable amount of time is devoted to testing and…
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“Exclusively hiring native speakers is not discrimination” Seriously?
A reaction to prevailing practices in language education that continue to discriminate against qualified teachers who are not native speakers
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Understanding the Bottleneck Hypothesis in Language Learning
This post revisits Slabakova’s Bottleneck Hypothesis, which identifies functional morphology as the hardest part of second language acquisition. It critiques early communicative approaches, contrasts drilling with modern practices, and highlights plurilingual competence. Updated 2025 reflections connect research, pedagogy, and AI tools, showing why “easy” and “hard” in language learning depend on context.