Matthew McCormack

Background While doing my CELTA in 2017, I was given a handout that broke down a number of lesson planning frameworks, such as: text-based, test-teach-test, receptive and productive. I kept hold of this handout and it continued to influence my lesson planning up until around the time I did my DipTESOL. Over time, my lessons became a lot more organic, influenced by Dogme (Thornbury & Meddings, 2009), emergent language (Norrington-Davies, 2019) and task-based teaching (Ellis, 2020). My listening lessons, however, continued to follow the traditional pattern of listening to the text followed by comprehension questions, before moving on to a freer,...

Incremental coaching; Traditionally, observations take place once or twice a year and are often related to probationary periods, performance bonuses or contract renewals. This can lead to increased stress and is often not truly reflective of a teacher’s performance and practices. As well as this, feedback isn’t followed up until the next observation, often a year later (Ingham, 2020). Between taking the CELTA in 2017 and starting the DipTESOL in 2022, I can remember being observed six times. Three of these observations were part of the process of passing a probationary period. For two of the observations, I had...