It’s the end of the month of Ramadan very shortly, which means that many, in fact, most of my students are approaching the festival of Eid ul-Fitr, the ending of the fast, at least a day of family, prayer, and, of course, eating. At the moment most of my students are from a southern Asian background, so there is a lot of talk of samosa, biryani and pakora in class, not to mention various astonoishingly unhealthy sweets (jalebi is a personal favourite, but being deep fried batter soaked in sugar syrup, is about as far from healthy as it’s possible to be). Times of celebration in ESOL classes, w ..read more

Technology has been a part of my teaching since I first started, Dave’s ESL Cafe and the Internet TESL Journal were both part of my formative experiences as a teacher, then playing with Hot Potatoes in the early 00s, moving onto Moodle, gaining a Level 3 in Educational Use of ICT (yes, really) and then onto the great burgeoning mobile/touchscreen/multimedia madness of the last 15 or so years. I was they guy you asked for help with tech stuff for years, I have (mostly dormant) accounts for almost all the main social media sites, and I reckon I got at least two jobs off the back of that technolo ..read more

I woke up having anxiety thoughts about lessons going back to work this week, after a couple of weeks off sick, thinking about what the lessons were going to be. And, perhaps as some sort of procrastination, this got me thinking about what people don’t understand about approaches like participatory ESOL and dogme ELT. The big thing I used to get about this is that it doesn’t involve planning. “You just walk in, Sam, and make it up as you go along.” Even I’ve joked, quite recently, that I was “winging it with principles.” This is, of course, utterly utterly wrong. The implication behind this ki ..read more

I’ve been writing this blog for years now, with varying degrees of frequency, and teaching ESOL for longer still. In fact, I made the shift from EFL to ESOL in 2004ish, which means I’ve been teaching ESOL for almost 20 years of a 24 year teaching career. Cripes. That’s a long long time. By weird coincidence, I completed my first teaching qualification, the Trinity Cert TESOL, back in 1999, roughly the same time as the Moser Report was published, recommending a dedicated adult literacy and numeracy programme, along with Breaking the Language Barriers, which recommended a separate ESOL curriculu ..read more

I had my first lesson observation in my new job this afternoon, as you do, and there’s a box on the lesson plan form called “self evaluation”. Seeing as it’s been a while since I did a lesson observation reflective post, however, I thought this might be a fun place to do it. A little context, then. I teach a very lovely class on a Friday afternoon, which is a non-accredited speaking skills class. I was given a choice over which class to be observed with, and I went for this group partly because I thought it would be interesting to get an external, non-ESOL, mainstream vocational view of the pr ..read more

Now there’s a word to get the backs up of the evidence-based practice brigade, isn’t it? I mean, to carry out a piece of research and actuallly acknowledge that you, yourself, doing the research, may have an angle, an interest, a stance, a position, as it were, in regard to the research is fundamentally in opposition to the notion that research should be carried out at a scientific arms length from the researcher. Some research can be carried out at a distance from the researcher. Research into microbes, for example, into brain functions, into the movements of astronomical bodies, or into neur ..read more

When I started teaching in a private language school, one of the big rituals of each year was choosing your course book. You’d have a look at previous ones, check out the catalogue and thesample copies, and then order a bunch in, paid for by the students themselves, built into the course fees. Over time I developed some favourites. I always liked Landmark from OUP for not being too fussy, and quite solid. Cutting Edge Intermediate i also liked, because it was new back then. But none will ever compare with the mighty Headway Pre-Intermediate, the original one with the yellow cover, my first eve ..read more

Things went a bit pear shaped this week. Thursday morning I went into class ready to a nice, predictable “reflect on last year, discuss thoughts about this year” task (using an hourglass as a metaphor) and discovered that more than one student had had a couple of really rough experiences last year so very quickly reverted to a mundane reading task which I’d used with another group earlier in the week on the theme of motivation and why goals fail. This was with the intention of following this up on Friday morning with a bit of a discussion about resolutions, and thence to engage students in a b ..read more

This is an old post which I drafted before Christmas, but it links nicely to something which happened this week, so I’ve chosen to publish it anyway…. There was a story in the weeks before Christmas in the news about an alleged, for I believe it is currently officially unconfirmed, illegal party held by members of the current government. Now, for the benefit of future readers, or indeed myself, the party was illegal because at the time, there were laws in place forbidding such gatherings in order to avoid spreading the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result there is a definite sense of frustration at ..read more

I took part in a really interesting #esolchat on Monday on Twitter on the topic of environmentally sustainable practice in ESOL. Like many people, I try to live and work in an environmentally friendly way, and sometimes I do well, and other times rather less well. Now, this is not an authoritative account by any measure, but I have been thinking a lot about my practices, personal and professional, in terms of the environmental impact. First of all, let’s be clear, environmental impact is a hugely complex topic. For example, according to Mike Berners-Lee’s brilliant book How Bad Are Bananas, a ..read more