Eloy Romero Munoz

Why learn how to write an essay when AI can do it for me, or better than me perhaps?’ At a time when chatbots can write convincing essays in almost any language in a matter of seconds, I trust many educators have heard this question already. For many, especially in contexts where learners do not feel an immediate need for the target language, this sounds like the beginning of the end for language teaching. But what if the opposite is true? What if the rise of AI makes the human side of language teaching more important than ever? In what...

How the canon teaches the count-mass distinction (CMD) If you asked 10 different teachers of all ages and experience levels to characterise the CMD, they’d probably come up with a version of this rule of thumb: Countable nouns take a/an, plural ‘s’ and can be counted (one apple, two apples). Uncountable mass nouns take some, have no plural and can’t be counted (milk, furniture). If you asked them to elaborate, they’d probably add that learners should be given a list of each type of nouns and told to memorise so-called ‘exceptions’ such as: advice, information or furniture, preferably contrastively with their mother tongue language. Is it...