While Lexical Approach (Lewis 1993) and the meme Demand High are slowly but surely changing the mindsets of teachers with regard to what learning a language involves and how languages should be taught, the learners’ progress is often hindered by their bad study habits. Being equipped with good study habits seems particularly important bearing in mind that “language development occurs between, rather than during lessons” (van Lier 1996: 43). In my talk I aimed to convince the audience that working on the learners’ study skills needs to become the teacher’s responsibility, and a permanent part of every lesson.

A summary of this talk, addressed to teachers of Business English, has been published in Business Issues, Issue 88 (Autumn 2014), pp 7-8.

Below is the video of my talk at IATEFL conference 2014 in Harrogate. You can download the accompanying handout by clicking here, and my slides by clicking here.

References

Hugh Dellar (2013, July 19) “Twenty Things in Twenty Years Part Ten: The main point of focussing on pronunciation in class isn’t to improve pronunciation!” Message posted to http://hughdellar.wordpress.com/

Michael Hoey (2005) “Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language” Abingdon: Routledge

Michael Lewis (1993) “The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward” Hove: Language Teaching Publications

Leo van Lier (1996) “Interaction in the Language Curriculum: Awareness, Autonomy & Authenticity” London: Longman

Scott Thornbury (2009) “Seven Ways of Looking at Grammar” Video on YouTube