​Join 10,450 readers (and counting!)​

Dear Reader,

Have you ever been hit like a ton of bricks by the realisation that all of a sudden, with no fair warning, lo and behold: you're old?

Not to be overly dramatic (yeah, right...), but this happened to me this week.

Let me back up a bit. This week I was finally, after months of relentless rain, enjoying a dry stroll through my university. No hair drying necessary at the end, daffodils blooming everywhere, sun shining, whimsical statues merging Italian heritage and British poetry - what was not to love?

I'll tell you what was not to love: I left my water bottle and wallet at home. And again, not to be dramatic, but thus began my seemingly endless quest for water (OK, full disclosure - water and a muffin).

Seeing as I had no money and I suspected no food establishment would let me pawn my watch, I borrowed some cash from someone. I thought this would be enough to see me through the morning, but dear reader, I had apparently not reckoned with the inevitability of life progressing without letting me know: all of a sudden, all cafés on campus were fully cashless. They literally had no till that stored cash. I went from one café to the next, but the more I tried, the more distinctly I could see the look on the attendants' faces: oh you poor, outdated thing.

Epilogue: after walking for almost half an hour, I did eventually find a place that took cash. It took them 10 minutes to find and give me change, and I had to pivot from the originally planned muffin to a chocolate brownie. At that point, I just shut up and made do.

But this apparently silly and mundane experience left me with the realisation that a) the world is moving on; b) I'm getting older and c) do I like the direction the world is going in? Not necessarily, which reinforces point b).

The silver lining, however, is that this whole adventure inspired today's newsletter. I've started thinking: what has changed in the world of English Language Teaching since I was, well, not old? And do I like the directions it has changed in?

Grab a coffee and take a walk with me down memory lane (with one controversial opinion or two as a bonus) 🛣️

How old is old?

Answer me this: is it just me or is actual age for teachers a very loosely understood concept? I still remember when, in one of my first teaching jobs, I showed a group of pre-teens a photo of me at 21 and they unceremoniously called me a dinosaur.

If you ask them (which is... an experience), children and teenagers seem to think of our age as anything ranging between 20 and 80 - all of which, to them, are absolutely ancient, of course.

I started teaching about 15 years ago, which probably registers as a few geological eras for students. In this relatively short time, a few things have changed - some for the better, some not so much. Can you add any more?

The tech

A pretty intuitive one, but hear me out: I still remember using chalk on black chalkboards, then whiteboard markers, then slowly accepting Interactive Whiteboards and the like. Audios had to be played on CD, then we had USB sticks in computers, and then there was no need for hardware any longer.

Was the past better? It's probably easy to long for the past with rose-tinted glasses, so no, on the whole I don't think it was better, mostly because we now have access to so much more authentic English than we could have dreamed of. We can save things to the cloud and access them from any device (very handy for the scatter-brained who have a tendency to forget physical objects everywhere like yours truly). However, I do long for longer attention spans in students... and myself, which tech hasn't helped with.

Banning the L1 was more commonly accepted

"The students have to think in the L2 if they want to learn the L2": mantras like this one were much more common in English Language Teaching a few decades ago than they are now. Methods like Audiolingualism were based on banning the L1 and creating new "habits" in the L2, and I remember (somewhat fondly, somewhat irritatingly) working for multiple language schools that tried to train me in their audiolingualism-inspired method where I was supposed to stick to English for 100% of the lesson. Needless to say, compliance with this was never a strong suit of mine, but regardless, a whole lot of marketing has been built over the years by private language schools on their supposedly effective "methods" and L1-banning is a big part of this.

Was the past better? I can confidently say that no, it wasn't. Banning the L1 doesn't stand to reason and we now know there are many productive ways of using it in the English language classroom.

You could get info on the number of results on Google

A niche one, but a tremendously useful feature for language teachers, interpreters and translators (so if you've been all three, like me, this probably cheesed you off): when you ran a search on Google, Google used to display the number of results for your search. So if you ever had a doubt about how to translate something, or which version of the same idiom was correct, you could google it and see which one was more common. Not the case anymore, I'm afraid.

Was the past better? Very much so, in my opinion. We can now ask our dear friend AI, but this is what looking up information feels like to me sometimes.

There was more emphasis on learning styles

Learning styles, i.e. the belief that different learners learn better in different ways so it is beneficial to cater for these, were all the rage when I trained as a teacher. So much so that I will admit - not without a hint of shame - to administering learning style questionnaires to students as a novice teacher. This is now in the process of changing, as more and more evidence becomes available that learning styles are a neuromyth. People seem to be reluctant to let go of this one and it's probably good to think about the distinction between learning preferences and learning styles.

Was the past better? I think there's certainly merit to the care we used to put into understanding learners better on an individual level. However, catering to learning styles can waste a lot of precious time that we don't have to begin with, so I wouldn't say the past was necessarily better.

I have many more memories of things that worked and didn't work when I started out, but for today, I will be mindful of your attention span on a Sunday morning and end it here. What is one thing that was different when you started out? Was the past better or worse for you?

Before I leave you: if you're preparing for the oral exam of the concorso or the concorsi abilitanti, you might enjoy the recording of this webinar I did this week, with:

• a commentary of a sample lesson plan
• tips for presenting your lesson plan with and without visual support
• answers to questions from teachers

​

And with that, it really is time to bid you farewell for this week.

I hope you have a wonderful Sunday with your loved ones.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ If you're curious about this sculpture, I snapped a photo of this explanation:

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: A little encouragement if you need to be kind to yourself and pat yourself on your own back: I don't wanna regret by G Flip. Note the "we've all got something we should celebrate" ❤︎

✨Cool things I heard this week

I don't think I would have gotten my 96 at the exam without your help and your trainers' help. I loved it and I'm crossing my fingers this is the time I actually get tenure!

What did you think of today's newsletter?

❤️ I loved it: well, thank you so much! Hit "reply" to let me know (it makes my day) or hit "forward" and send it to a friend

👉 I'm new, a friend sent me this: great to have you here! To receive this newsletter every Sunday (ish), for free, subscribe here​

🚀 I want more: no problem - check out all my previous newsletters with tips, lesson plans and ramblings here or join our YouTube channel​

👎🏻 Meh, I'm not sure: that's absolutely fine: you can unsubscribe from the Sunday newsletter (but still occasionally receive important communications about your courses) or Unsubscribe from all emails.

Quick links

​Updated peparation programme for oral exam​

​Log onto your course​

​Our free resources​
​