David Byrne, Mark Heffernan

Ahhhhh, critical thinking. This is a big one for us. When we first started teaching, we both began with general English and at the time (too many moons ago to bother counting), critical thinking didn’t feature heavily. The focus was more about checking comprehension. In fact our first encounter was probably when we moved into exam teaching and encountered our first IELTS books. One of our favourite had a page each unit entirely dedicated to criticality, which led us to a question: why are we so quick to adopt good practice in an exam class, leaving general English to...

Know your why! If there is one question that has driven our teaching and our development over the years it is: Why do we do the things we do? This might seem like a simple question but if we’re completely honest, for many years we had absolutely no idea. We did what we did because it was what one did. We monitored because you’re supposed to. We set comprehension checking tasks after a reading because that is what you do after a reading. We put students in pairs because . . . well, what else would you do? B followed...

There is so much tied up in pronunciation. When we choose to correct someone’s pronunciation, are we taking a tiny chisel to their accent – one sound at a time? Are we moving towards one standard, globally understood English? Are we imposing a prestige model of pronunciation on them, like received pronunciation (RP)? Our accents tell our story, they are part of our identity. How we speak is so incredibly personal. With this in mind, we thought we’d begin a little differently this time and take a moment for some personal reflections on our relationship with the teaching of...

Evidence-based reflection One thing I think we can all agree on is that teachers are a reflective bunch. Whether it be on the stairs, in the shower, on the bus or lying awake at night wondering why our meticulously planned running dictation wasn’t the glowing success we’d hoped. But how effective is this reflection? That’s the question that’s kept us awake this week. Is it reflection for reflection’s sake or is it actually driving us forward? As a younger teacher, David would often say that whenever he had a bad lesson, it would stick with him. He’d linger on it; it...

A new model for writing: incorporating AI We (Mark and David) started writing lessons together when we met in 2011 and have been doing so pretty steadily ever since. What’s interesting is that in all of those years, we’ve rarely disagreed about anything…that was until AI came along. Disagreement isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. And it is through this disagreement and the eventual discovery of common ground that we have come to the joint decision that maybe there is a place for AI in our writing lessons, and that maybe instead of AI reducing the amount of creative work required...

The article considers ways of linking classroom activities to the real world.

The authors describe the process used setting up tailor made language courses in a university context. Focusing on the relevant genres of English is a good first step in preparing such a course.

This article offers advice on how to ensure your teaching has real impact. Time must be allowed for feedback and reflection and it is important that the final impact be outside the lesson.

The article describes a seven-step process which allows for meaningful feedback for all students during a speaking activity.

David Byrne and Mark Heffernan discuss the socially distanced classroom and examine how we can compensate for reduced interaction between students and convert a loss into a gain.