Chiara Bruzzano

48 POSTS

Chiara Bruzzano (BA, MA, DELTA M1, PhD) is an experienced EFL teacher, teacher trainer and instructional designer. She started blogging for English Teaching professional back in December 2019, and is now blogging for the new look Modern English Teacher following its launch in January 2022 where she continues to write about teaching and teaching training issues, impacts of research on teaching/teacher training and a lot more besides. Chiara teaches at the University of Milan, the University of Leeds and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. She also designs and delivers teacher education programmes and is the founder of LanguagEd, a professional development company. Chiara holds a doctorate in language education and her interests include listening pedagogy, teacher and learner cognition and migration. She is currently conducting research funded by the British Council on the consequential validity of IELTS.

Access to the full listing of this author’s articles is available only to members or logged-in users. At this time, only the top 15 articles are displayed.

Unexpected twists and turns: giving spontaneous interaction a try

2017-07-10

What do you do when your carefully planned class gets interrupted by students taking the conversation in new and different directions? Chiara Bruzzano reflects on the benefits and drawbacks of relinquishing some control and deviating from the lesson plan to allow for spontaneous student interaction in the classroom.

Designing and conducting an Authentic Listening course – Part 2

2017-03-22

Have you ever thought about running a course focusing exclusively on listening? How could this help students? In this second part of her Authentic Listening series, Chiara explains how she analysed her students’ needs, introduced the course and which activities she started out with.

Is a PhD going to make you a better teacher?

2017-02-09

What is the impact of a doctorate (PhD) in Language Education on a teacher’s practices? Will it make you a better teacher? Chiara Bruzzano discusses what doing a PhD means, the extent to which it improved her teaching but also its possible drawbacks.

To caption or not to caption? Using videos with subtitles for language learning

2016-11-04

In these challenging times, asynchronous learning such as watching clips, TV series and films can help our teaching. This post looks at how foreign language subtitles can help learners, what caveats to consider and how to exploit captioned videos.

Silver linings: the role of language teaching during lockdown

2016-10-03

Online teaching has suddenly become the standard for many teachers around the world, and with it, feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. In this post, Chiara Bruzzano tells the story of how, in the midst of feeling inadequate, she understood that her knowledge and skills as a language teacher actually put her in the ideal position to help others (and herself)… much more than she realised.

Is technology helping? The benefits of technology in task-based language teaching

2016-08-01

We’ve all been using technology to teach and we’ve realised it has many drawbacks, but have we considered how it may be helping our learners? Chiara Bruzzano considers research on the benefits of integrating Task-based language teaching (TBLT) and technology.

What can a dance fitness class teach us about ELT?

2016-05-31

Reflective practice for teachers comes in many forms and in the most unexpected places: this post discusses how the experience of attending a dance fitness class helped Chiara put herself in her learners’ shoes in the classroom and how all of this applies to her teaching.

Why we should explore and evaluate teachers’ beliefs

2016-04-08

In this week’s blog, Chiara Bruzzano explores English language teachers’ beliefs, where they come from, what impact they may have on classroom practices, how they may clash with learners’ beliefs and how to harness this knowledge to evolve in our teaching.

The potential of extensive reading

2016-04-01

Reading for enjoyment: does it work? Does it help language learning, or does it make students dislike reading even more? What could help you incorporate Extensive Reading (ER) in class and why should you even bother? This blog post reveals all!

Let’s look at some common misconceptions in language teaching!

2016-04-01

Who’s heard people say ‘students need a textbook to learn’, ‘native speakers teachers should teach pronunciation’ or perhaps ‘encourage your learners to think in the L2’? Too often such misconceptions like these can quickly be set in stone, but how should we really respond to them? We look at the way such myths can be dealt with to see.

Where are all the women? Gender representation in ELT materials

2015-10-20

How are women and men represented in ELT textbooks and what are the implications of this? Chiara Bruzzano discusses the evidence around the imbalance in gender representation in textbooks and looks at practical ways to address it in the classroom.

Designing and conducting an Authentic Listening course – Part 1

2015-09-02

Have you ever thought about designing a course focusing exclusively on listening? In this first article of her new series, Chiara Bruzzano discusses why she decided to design an ‘authentic listening’ course, why learners need it and how the course differs from other approaches.

Should I stick to the plan? Emergent language and focus on form

2015-05-29

Teachers may wonder how much time they should devote to emergent language as opposed to sticking to the lesson plan. In this week’s blog, Chiara Bruzzano explores Focus on Form, an option for dealing with student-produced language with strong foundations in SLA research.

Why I teach my students how languages are learned

2012-09-19

Is it useful for our students to learn about language learning? In this week’s blog post, Chiara Bruzzano discusses what it means to teach students how languages are learned, gives ideas for how this can be done in practice and lists the eight reasons why students may benefit from this.

Designing and conducting an Authentic Listening course – Part 3

2012-08-31

How do you design an Authentic Listening course? What kind of guiding principles should you use to compile your course, and why? In the final part of her Authentic Listening series, Chiara shares the answers to these questions and much more besides!