IH BCN ELT Conference 2018 Almost, but not quite a month has passed since the IH Barcelona 2018 conference – time enough for various work and life priorities to bump this talk write-up further down the to-do list. As in … Continue reading Stop, Collaborate & Listen.
It’s Sunday night and for many of us, classes start tomorrow. Fancy some free material? How about a collaborative TD project for the new year? Read (or skip) to the end for both! It’s that time of year again. A … Continue reading Back to skoool!
IATEFL Glasgow 2017 It was a good conference for listening and phonology, this. Standout sessions from John Field, Sheila Thorn, Richard Cauldwell, Mark Hancock. Sandy Millin’s given a great roundup over here, as ever. I was pleased to have a good audience for the final session on Friday – including some of the very people who inspired me to get more into listening and receptive phonology in the first place. As usual, the original ideas in the talk were rarely my own. Even the title – it’s lifted from an article by Richard Cauldwell. After a run through the background literature, and … Continue reading Grasping The Nettle
Shaun Sweeney “The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience.” Leo Tolstoy I thought I’d start this post with a quote from War and Peace. Just to impress you with how literary I am. I’ve not read the book, but I highly recommend it – if you have the time. And patience. Using transcription and paying close attention to the speech stream requires a good deal of time and patience. Testing our listening proforma (nothing more complicated than a blank page and a grid) we chose to listen to a section from a short documentary about … Continue reading Motivation, Time and Patience
Shaun Sweeney Kicking off with a story of a misunderstanding based on mishearing, we looked at why the decoding gap and blur gap are important and deserve more attention in our listening lessons. Richard Caudwell’s metaphor of jungle listening served … Continue reading IH Barcelona ELT Conference 2017
What did she just say?
What does that mean? Continue reading Lesson 1: Just 2 questions
IATEFL Birmingham 2016 Developing Listening Skills: Lessons From Learning Shaun Sweeney It was a challenge to get through much in 20 minutes, as there were three of us squeezed into a forum on listening skills materials. I was chuffed, though, to be in a forum with someone like Annie McDonald, whose work I admire a good deal. She opened proceedings with a great talk on techniques and materials to use to develop listening skills. Her kitten earworm is still very much in my ears – as I’m sure it is yours if you were in attendance. ‘I know a little bit … Continue reading IATEFL Birmingham 2016
Shaun Sweeney A little bit of context: I moved from Italy to Spain, or more accurately from Milan to Barcelona, just over 2 years ago. By this time, I should be quite good at Spanish, right? Well, sadly, like many of us in this profession, I have to put in a lot of work hours to keep the wolves from the door and this has perhaps impacted on the amount of time I’ve had to spend on studying and learning a new language. I spend a lot of time in the classroom, reading lesson plans, giving feedback, moderating forums – … Continue reading Lessons from Learning: Context
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