Newsletter 2021#27

Good morning

Today is a really exciting day for me. As you may know, I took voluntary severance from my job at Warwick University earlier this year to focus on ELT-Training (and the small matter of writing up my thesis...) and this means that I am now in the lucky position of being able to work from anywhere that has WI-Fi.  So.... my partner and I are off on a road trip! We leave today heading for Greece in our old car with lots of dreams but no fixed plans and I've decided to try out a little travel-vlog on Instagram, so if you want to follow my progress and vicariously experience a bit of digital nomadism, check it out here or look for elttraining on Instagram.

Something old

I started up my free Communication Activities series about a year ago now, so to mark its anniversary, I thought that I'd dust off one of the earlier videos I made for it. It's a fantastic, low prep activity that's really useful (done on a regular basis) to help improve listening skills - try it out with a class and let me know how you get on.

Something new

For trainees on CELTA courses, it's usually pretty obvious what skills, grammar and vocabulary are, but 'Functional Language' can be a bit more opaque. For this week's new video, I made a short overview of what it is and how you could teach it. Check it out here.

Something borrowed

Finally, I love Scott Thornbury (who doesn't?!) and this week I happened to be reminded of the excellent blog post series he did a few years ago called the The (De)-Fossilisation Diaries. This charts his own progress as a long-term learner of Spanish going back to make a real effort to improve. There are 16 posts in total and they make a great read with lots of useful thoughts along the way about learners like this, who have reached a plateau and how they can move forward.

OK, that's it for today. Wish me luck for my Big Trip and I'll see you next Sunday.

Best

Jo