Delivering development

Earlier this year I was interviewed by Ruth Pringle as part of her project to match learners to teachers in a very targeted way. I liked the idea, but particularly liked the way we got talking about language professionals working together and helping each other rather than competing against each other. So, I asked her to come along to our podcast so we could talk more about it.

Today, the plan was to look at some of the terminology around blended learning. We did a decent job on “flipped learning”, I think, but that was all we had time for! We did cover some interesting ground on the nature of blended learning as well though.

An episode on the difficult area of teaching listening with guest Anthony Green. This is definitely a subject we are going to follow-up on!

The first of a regular series of episodes revolving around blended learning to address the need to better understand some of the fundamentals of this aspect of language teaching. We start with an overview of the field.

A short solo episode to get back in the saddle and also to publicise my interview with Ruth Pringle.

A combination of family holidays, workload, building work at home and a lot of editing means that this episode recorded at the IATEFL conference in Belfast in May is only now being published in November 2022! However, it was a really interesting, wide-ranging chat with Kevin, Neil and Pete together face-to-face for the first time for a podcast recording.

This edition is a special interview with Rachael Roberts. It seems to me that many articles, presentations etc. I have experienced about mental health put the affected person in the position of a passive adapter to a bad situation, one that is usually caused by an external agent such as an employer. The advice is to practice, for example, mindfulness, to help cope with that bad situation. That seemed wrong to me and I was interested to hear Rachael's take on it.

A concluding episode for 2021 in our podcast for language professionals. Kevin and Laura talk about some potential positive effects for the industry.

After a bit of a break over the summer (and autumn!), we finally managed to get everyone together for the promised follow-up to our panel discussion on professional development at the IATEFL 2021 annual conference.

Vocabulary is the theme for our latest podcast for language professionals. Our name for this edition is "croissants and cauliflowers". You will have to listen to find out why, but we had a lot of fun recording it.

In this episode of our podcast for for language-teaching professionals, we consider some of the issues around teaching pronunciation,

This episode of the podcast for language teaching professionals concludes a three-part series on assessment. In this episode we look at some aspects such as specifications, working with others and simple analyses and why they are important in the real world of teaching.

Kevin and Neil follow up last episode's discussion of what to consider before writing an assessment with some thoughts about what to do after you have written those questions.

The team are talking about three fundamental questions you need to answer before even starting to develop a language assessment: Why are you assessing? What are you assessing? Who are you assessing?In this episode we have an expert guest speaker from the British Council.

In this episode we look at some of the ways you can produce assessments for distance courses.

In this edition of the podcast for language teachers and other professionals in the field, we looked at some observations of online teaching post-summer and the return to face-to-face.

In this edition of the CPD podcast for language teachers, we discuss the issues for teachers and learners of the general move online.

Pete and Laura are heavily involved in online projects caused by the coronavirus pandemic. They talk about what they are doing and pass on some tips.

An extra episode recorded near the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in the UK. We discuss our own situations and each of us gives a tip relevant to the current work situation.

In this episode we introduce a new format and focus on how to approach English for Specific Purposes teaching.