teaching sport in the esl/esol/tefl class

There are many different approaches teachers can take when 'doing sport' in the English classroom.

Here are some ideas and lesson plans.

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the decline in reading in the uk - and ways to reverse it

Reading is good for you.

It improves your own language, especially when young:

Jay Doubleyou: "children who read for pleasure are better at english"

It improves your learning of another language:

Jay Doubleyou: 'first language literacy skills enhance second language learning'

Jay Doubleyou: reading really is the best way to improve (your own and a second) language

And there are lots of ways to do it:

Jay Doubleyou: how to get back to reading

Jay Doubleyou: do you enjoy reading?

Jay Doubleyou: reading skills

The problem, at least in the UK, is that we're reading less:

More than a third of UK adults have given up reading for pleasure, study finds | Books | The Guardian

Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure | Books | The Guardian

It's not just in the UK that it's happening:

Recent studies have highlighted a disturbing trend: over 50 percent of American adults haven't read a book in the past year. Worse still, fewer younger people are reading, and they read less than half the amount of older generations.

This is a unfortunate, since reading has so many scientifically-backed benefits: it increases intelligence, improves memory (especially in later life), makes it easier to relate to others, reduces stress, helps us to sleep better, and more.

So why aren't people reading as much as they once did? And what can be done to reverse this trend? In this post, I take a stab at answering both those questions. Here are 5 reasons why people aren't reading, and 5 good solutions to this problem...

5 Reasons People Don't Read Anymore, And 5 Good Solutions

There are indeed ways to reverse this:

From a silent reading club in Plymouth to "book fairies" who hide interesting reads around Cornwall, book lovers aim to open a new chapter on the story of people's relationship with reading.

Most imagine reading to be a solitary pastime but a group in Plymouth has found fellowship through enjoying books together. Members of the Silent Book Club, which meet in venues around Plymouth, bring their favourite books to read quietly for an hour before chatting and sharing recommendations. The club has its roots in the USA where it was formed by Guinevere de la Mare, with her friend Laura Gluhanich, in 2012. From its beginnings in San Francisco it has grown to have more than 1,500 chapters in 54 countries, including Plymouth in Devon.

Research by The Reading Agency, external, a charity encouraging leisure reading, including audiobooks and e-books, found those who considered themselves readers reported higher levels of social connection, sleep, better concentration and higher empathy. Carina Spaulding, the agency's head of research and evaluation, said data in a 2024 report showed reading as an activity in itself helped people feel more connected to others.

In Cornwall, a group of "fairies" are helping give people greater access to books. Unlike the fairies found in story books, they do not have wings or leave money in exchange for teeth, but instead hide books in public places for people to find. Carys Wiggans, who began the Cornish branch of The Book Fairies, said: "It's about getting people to read books that maybe they wouldn't normally read or have access to books that they don't have access to. There's no cost, there's nothing that is required from them except that excitement."

Can book fans turn the page on decline in reading? - BBC News

With more here:

Silent Book Club - About

Plymouth, Devon, UK – Silent Book Club

Official Cornish Book Fairy | Facebook

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"thinking inside the box" - teaching approaches for the online classroom

Teaching and learning online became necessary if not commonplace during the pandemic:

Jay Doubleyou: the homeschooling revolution

Jay Doubleyou: is e-learning a good thing?

Jay Doubleyou: how to teach on zoom

Now the teaching and learning world is a very different place:

Jay Doubleyou: the english teaching industry is evolving

And today there are all sorts of great places to go online:

Jay Doubleyou: great online resources to improve your english

Jay Doubleyou: voice recognition apps to help learn english pronunciation

But even before 2020 this was already happening - as we learnt to adapt our teaching and learning approaches to the 'online classroom'.

The following are notes from an excellent seminar given in February 2016.

Screen-sharing is so easy:

Show your screen during a meeting - Microsoft Support

Sharing your screen or desktop on Zoom

Material-free lessons: getting teachers and students to notice:

Pedagogical grammar: teaching options, with Scott Thornbury – The TEFL Zone

The role of ‘noticing’ in grammar teaching – The Art of TESOL

Noticing and second language acquisition: Studies in honor of Richard Schmidt | NFLRC

There are lots of tools to help working online:

Virtual Classroom and LMS Software | WizIQ

Online Learning With The World's Most Popular LMS - Moodle

Learning management system - Wikipedia

Open eLMS: FREE LMS that's AI Powered - Open eLMS

25 Free LMS in 2025 to Check Out | SC Training

The Socratic method in online teaching:

How I Designed an Inclusive Socratic Seminar (and You Can Too!) - YouTube

Refresh Online Discussions with a Socratic Approach | U-M LSA LSA Technology Services

Socratic method of teaching In Online Tutoring

Finally, there are a lot of free online seminars for teachers:

Training | TeachingEnglish | British Council

Events Oxford TEFL • Oxford TEFL

Teaching English online | Cambridge English

With thanks to Nicola Clarke-Siegel:

Nicola Clarke-Siegel - English Teacher - The Abbey school Faversham | LinkedIn

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british universities cutting foreign language courses

The British (and Irish and Americans and Australians) don't have to learn French or German or Chinese or whatever - which might be the answer to why the British don't learn foreign languages.

These subjects are clearly not seen as a priority in Britain.

The problem is that this is self-perpetuating - as for years, the UK's critical shortage of foreign language teachers has meant students can't be taught.

As reported earlier in the month in the i-paper, language courses are in danger of dying out - with university lecturers facing losing their jobs.

Yes, it seems that Modern Languages degrees are at risk in UK unis - as reported by the EL Gazette and Sofia Smith Galer: 

That is, at least, what Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said recently in an i paper exclusive. “The single biggest problem facing our country is the catastrophic decline in language learning, both in schools and now at universities. Learning a modern language becomes a little bit like learning Latin and Greek. It becomes something that ancient universities tend to do and other universities withdraw from.”

88 out of 166 UK universities are running either redundancy or restructuring schemes, and languages degrees are seriously at risk within this climate because fewer students seem to want to take them. The number of students taking up language degrees has dropped massively in the last 20 years; in 2003, there were more than 160,000 language undergrads, whereas in 2019 there were just 75,000. This is in line with declining numbers at GCSE and A Level, too...

Multilingualism brings innumerable health and social benefits; something for me to unpack, perhaps, in another newsletter. Quite apart from languages generating more job opportunities for young people, linguistics as a discipline is also incredibly important in the development of AI; without such expertise, we put ourselves at a technological disadvantage.

Another area of concern as I write my book on linguicide are the UK’s long suffering indigenous languages; when the cuts were tabled in Aberdeen, Gaelic was one of the single degree programmes that was facing the axe.

If you are British and hear rumours or reports that your university is considering cutting jobs in languages, I’d like to hear about it; I’d also be interested in hearing about the gravity of cuts you have already had to face in the last five years.

And yet, decision-makers need to realise that English is not the language of the successful British exporter.

Where's the money in that?

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how to become an excellent teacher - giving feedback and demanding high

For teachers to really get it right, they need to connect with their students - and what students want more than anything is to have their teachers tell them how they are doing.

As educationalist John Hattie discovered in his research, the most important thing is feedback - answering the question ‘what has the greatest influence on student learning?':

Jay Doubleyou: students want feedback

It's all about trusting relationships and 'oodles of feedback':

Schools to provide a positive , optimistic, invitational, trusting and safe learning climate. One that welcomes student errors and develops positive peer influences.

Teachers who are seen by their students as quality teachers. Who provide clarity of expectations and a belief that all can learn. Teachers who are 'open' to new ideas, who develop a positive learning climate, and who value the importance of student effort to improve.

Jay Doubleyou: students want feedback part 2

Educationalist Scott Thornbury also sees feedback as central:

feedback | Search Results | An A-Z of ELT

Correct Me If I'm Wrong (Scott Thornbury) - YouTube

Vic Richardson draws on similar research with similar results:

Vic Richardson - Developing teachers for stronger results - YouTube

All of this amounts to gathering the evidence and realising what students need and what teachers need to do and to be:

Jay Doubleyou: evidence-based teaching

Over a decade ago educationalists Adrian Underhill and Jim Scrivener launched a new initiative:

Demand High Teaching asks: • Are our learners capable of more than we currently ask of them? • Have the tasks and techniques we use in class become rituals and ends in themselves? • How can we stop “covering material” and start focusing on the potential for deep learning? • What small tweaks and adjustments can we make to shift the whole focus of our teaching towards getting that engine of learning going? TTJ 25_2

What is Demand High? | Demand High ELT

Here's an excellent introduction they wrote for the Guardian: 

Teachers urged to go beyond 'right' answers and stretch all learners throughout the lesson

Demand more from students and they will learn more | Tefl | The Guardian

And here's their blog:

Demand High ELT | A discussion about re-inventing our profession

Here Silvana Richardson gives a talk and workshop session on the topic of demand high and quality learning:

Silvana Richardson - Beyond demand high: Making quality learning happen for all - YouTube

But let's finish with a video from Jim Scrivener:

Are you challenging your students enough to learn English? How do you know if tangible learning is taking place in your English language classroom?

Jim Scrivener - Demand High for teachers and learners | TeachingEnglish | British Council

And there's lots more!

Why “Challenging” Isn’t Quite The Right Goal

Demanding the best from your students, and helping them believe they can achieve it (Infographic) - McREL International

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using the white/black/interactive board in the esl/esol/tefl class

Have you used a white board (or black board!) or some sort of digital board (online or interactive) recently - and what have you used it for?

It can be a very useful tool indeed - and can be planned quite carefully.

For example:

• ESL Activities: Disappearing drill
• get students to draw, show/mime, or explain vocabulary using the board
• timelines
• create your own blockbusters for the board: Blockbusters Grid Game Templates | Teaching Resources
• auditory pelmanism on the board: Pelmanism: a fun way to teach vocabulary - Alex Walls ELT
• using the board to display visuals and students' own work
• reverse translation/reverse quizzes 
• 'GLALL' (a Game-Like Activity for Language Learning) Lesson Share: Playschool for grown-ups? Changing the rules of the game in language teaching | Article | Onestopenglish

And more ideas to plan for:

• brainstorming using a mindmap/spidergram
• prediction and input before another activity
• feedback after an activity

When it comes to more spontaneous use of the board, we need to think about:

• colour-coding for different aspects of language
• word class
• grammatical features
• collocation
• where to write on the board
• how long to leave it
• what the students should be recording themselves
• features of pronunciation 
• phonemic script
• word stress and sentence stress
• connected speech
• intonation patterns
• more than just words: context, dialogue, sentences

And all of this can be used for recycling and practice at the end of the lesson:

• definitions, explanations, translations
• more sentences/collocations/examples
• topic around the word
• synonyms/antonyms
• drilling/pronunciation

The board can also be used for language improvement - or delayed error correction:

• a handout featuring examples of typical spoken errors to examine via the board
• Error Correction Techniques - A Primer | EFL Magazine
• Error Correction | TeachingEnglish | British Council

Some basics:

• how clear and large is your writing or typing?
• how about dividing the board into sections?!
• don't worry if your spelling is wrong! get the students to look it up!
• ask your students for feedback about using the board

And we can all reflect afterwards about how we've used the board.

Finally, some links/further reading:

• TeachingRecipes.com
• Memory Activities for Language Learning | Memory Activities for Language Learning | Cambridge University Press
• BILBROUGH BOOK.indb
• Using the board | TeachingEnglish | British Council
• 15 Things to Do with a Whiteboard | TEFL Net
• Out of thin air – bringing the whiteboard back into clear focus
• Whiteboarding: the Input Session CELTA Forgot | ELT Blog
• Delayed correction | TeachingEnglish | British Council

With thanks to JW for putting on an excellent seminar.

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teaching informal spoken language in the esl/esol/tefl classroom

Teaching a language in the classroom is perhaps the wrong place to do it: after all, students will be meeting and using the language OUTSIDE the classroom, where a lot might be very different!

A good thing to do in the classroom, though, is to look at the differences.

Here's a very good guide:

How To Teach Formal And Informal Language | EnglishClub

With a few activities here:

Formal and informal language games - UsingEnglish.com

Ultimately, it's about encouraging students to learn in that 'real environment':

Creating informal English learning opportunities – Reset Training and Support

To finish, here's a specific question based on the very English phase "and stuff like that": what informal spoken language should we be teaching and how can we do it?

The academic response is in Language issues — NATECLA volume 14 no 2

With more access, with some great ideas and practical input here:

Language Issues: The ESOL Journal: Ingenta Connect Table Of Contents

Language investigations - Teach Real English!

Specifically here:

‘and stuff like that’ informal spoken language, pp.148-155 in Best of Language issues: articles from the first 20 years of NATECLA's ESOL journal

Best of Language Issues : Articles from the First 20 Years of NATECLA's ESOL Journal (Best of Language Issues : Articles from the First 20 Years of NATECLA's ESOL Journal): Amazon.co.uk: Bhanot, Rakesh, Illes, Eva: 9781872972855: Books

Linguistics Research Digest: Spoken language and stuff like that

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