elt video: scott thornbury

english language teaching, also known as elt, is what i make a living on. and i thought, well, why not include a series of videos in the list of things i could say anything about. so, let’s be it, then.

this first one i caught while searching for something on british council / bbc website. to be honest, i had never seen the man who according to some has lately become a voice in the teaching of english as a second language. of his books there was one on the teaching of grammar that changed much of the way i used to teach it. in my opinion, the most striking aspect of his work (books) is his ability to take what is there (being written on language learning) and give it a spin. at the end, you say, “gee, i never thought about it or saw it from that angle.” this is clearly an invitation to always consider things from new perspectives. i hope to expand on this and his work later on.

for now, i intend to direct my attention to some interesting points of his 2 videos we see here:

• the first is on repetition. most coursebooks handle topics of units singledly. that is, unit 1 is on bees and never again you will “see” anything on bees again. he invites ts to consider using texts about bees from a different genre, ie, a poem. by the way, isn’t true that unless ss are exposed to different uses of the same word, will they be able to learn to use it.
• the second video is on register. especially topic development that deals with cohesion, which also deals with repetition. in the case of register, isn’t it true that words are associated with the situations they happen to represent. even if we use the word bee figuratively somehow we remain close to its original idea of animal. back to register, all we need to do is make ss aware of language.

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